 With its profound effects on social connection, cognition, memory, and emotion, trauma disrupts the continuity of the self. It is strikingly common for a trauma survivor to feel that she is not the same person she was prior to the trauma, and even that at least a part of her has died; as Brison puts it, “I felt as if I was experiencing things posthumously … as though I’d somehow outlived myself” (8–9). To reconstitute the self in a new form, the survivor must construct a meaningful narrative that incorporates the trauma, but many survivors face obstacles in this endeavor such as disordered cognition, memory gaps, feelings of despair and futility, and the lack of an audience willing to hear, believe, and understand their story. Such isolation is exacerbated when the trauma was humanly inflicted (as with rape), since such assaults, as Brison puts it, “[sever] the sustaining connection between the self and the rest of humanity” (40). Brison’s own account emphasizes the “extent to which the self is created and sustained by others and, thus, is able to be destroyed by them” (62); this relational element is central both to trauma itself and to any possible recovery. Because “violent intrusions by others … severely impair our ability to be connected to humanity in ways we value” (61), recovery requires slowly repairing connections—both to others and to damaged parts of oneself—and rebuilding a sense of trust (again, of both oneself and others).