Heroes in My Head
CBC Books | | Posted: May 23, 2019 5:42 PM | Last Updated: May 27, 2019
Judy Rebick
In this riveting memoir, renowned feminist Judy Rebick tells the story of the 11 personalities she developed in order to help her cope with, and survive, childhood sexual abuse. In Heroes in My Head, Rebick chronicles her struggle with depression in the 1980s, when she became a high-profile spokesperson for the pro-choice movement during the fight to legalize abortion. It was in the 1990s, when she took on her biggest challenge as a public figure by becoming president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, that her memories began to surface and became too persistent to ignore.
Rebick reveals her moment of discovery: meeting the 11 personalities; uncovering her repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse; and then communicating with each personality in therapy and on the page in a journal — all of this while she is leading high-profile national struggles against a Conservative government.
Heroes in My Head is a fascinating, heartbreaking, but ultimately empowering story. With courage and honesty, Rebick lays bare the public and private battles that have shaped her life. (From House of Anansi)
From the book
In early July 1989, I got a call at work from Clayton Ruby, a progressive lawyer in Toronto. I'd known Clayton for more than a decade. In 1972, he and his business partner at the time, Paul Copeland, had defended Grass Roots, a radical youth group that had occupied a piece of land at the University of Toronto to set up a tent city for transient youth. Twenty-one people were arrested.
"I'm working on the Barbara Dodd case and I need your help," he said.
Of course I knew about the Barbara Dodd case. Her ex-boyfriend, George Murphy, had sought an injunction to stop her from having an abortion. A year and a half before, on January 28, 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada had ruled that the law criminalizing abortion was unconstitutional. The procedure was now legal in Canada. But on July 5, 1989, Ontario Court justice John O'Driscoll, who was known for his anti-abortion views, made Dodd's fetus a ward of the court, halting her scheduled procedure at Women's College Hospital. The Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics called O'Driscoll's decision "judicial terorrism" and demandd that the attorney general appeal the dangerous precedent. Dodd's sister, Liz Dodd, hired Ruby to appeal the decision on Barbara's behalf.
From Heroes in My Head by Judy Rebick ©2018. Published by House of Anansi.