Memoir · Essays · A Life in Pages

The Words of Sophie Marino

I am currently writing my first memoir. Years ago, a therapist told me to put all of my trauma in a box, wrap a bow around it, and place it on a shelf. So I did. I left it there for years—closed, contained, but never really gone. Eventually, I opened the box. The words began pouring out of me, and I haven’t stopped writing since. What began as a way to make sense of nearly two decades of my life became the story I knew I needed to tell.

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Who is Sophie?

About the Author

Writing the stories I carried long before I found the words to tell them.

My story is one of love, marriage, motherhood, coercive control, and survival, and the truth that leaving an abusive relationship does not always end its reach. It is about more than what happened to me. It is about identity, strength, and a battle against the systems we are taught to trust—what it takes to keep going when they fail, and what it means to reclaim a life that was, for too long, held under the control of another. For years, that story lived quietly within me. Now I am writing it. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I have always chosen the thousand words. A photograph can show you that my eyes are green and my smile is bright—and, if you look closely, the pain held quietly beneath it. But give me a thousand words, and I can tell you why. Where that pain came from, what it means to fight back, and how the survivor within me learned to speak. And perhaps, somewhere in those words, someone will recognize a fragment of their own story. That is why I write.

Who is Sophie?

Memoir Excerpts