Eric Hoffer Award Final and Eric Hoffer Award da Vinci Eye Winner
About.com 2012 Reader’s Choice Award for Best Parenting Teens Book
Receiving the Champion of HOPE Award: For an individual who Expresses Hope, Opportunity, Healing and Education in San Diego County
Walk A Mile In Her Shoes: Team Tornado Warning 2011
Green Talk Radio Pod Cast
Santa Monica College: LoveSTRUCK™ The Twilight Phenomenon
Walk a Mile in Her Shoes was a great way to kick off The Domestic Violence Awareness Month in San Diego!
Together with a few friends I formed “Team Tornado Warning” to participate in the 1 Mile Walk in High Heel Shoes to benefit the YWCA – San Diego and
Becky’s House. What began as a rainy day clear up in time for this fun filled event where the majority of participants seemed to be men.
San Dieguito Academy – Career Day
A day devoted to meeting with students and introducing them to different career choices. It was my distinct pleasure to speak before an 
English Honors class where the students were fully engaged. What began as a lesson in “what’s it like to be a writer” segued into an informal discussion about abuse in relationships. It was a fantastic event!
Tornado Warning is a Mom’s Choice Awards® Gold Recipient
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Highlighted Title:Tornado Warning
Domestic Violence in 300 Words or Less
November 1, 2010 by Danica Davidson · Leave a Comment
For Domestic Violence Awareness Month this past October, Deborah Siegel prompted the 12,000 members of SheWrites, an online community for women who write, to:
In 300 characters or less, narrate a nugget about a woman who survived. She may be your sister, your friend, the woman next door. She may be a character in your novel or a figment in your mind. She may be a woman in an existing work of literature or a song. She may be . . . you.
Siegel helped cofound the group with Kamy Wicoff just over a year ago with the goal of “merging the world of feminist activism and literary activity.” Members from all 50 states and 30 countries have taken part in literary feminism through such prompts as Wicoff’s “Mad Yet? Take part in our first-ever She Writes Day of Action!” and Siegel’s “Say It With Me: DIE, Literary Sexism, DIE.”
With the new, “I Will Survive” prompt, Siegel says,
I wanted to come up with something to honor Domestic Violence Awareness Month by using writing as a way of witnessing, truth-telling and healing. … I let [the stories] be intentionally anonymous when I was crafting the prompt. I think the ambiguity of whom the survivor is makes it the potential Every Woman. It contributed some safety and some flexibility.
It’s been a very popular SheWrites action, going viral on Twitter with the hashtag #IWS. The responses have been intimate, blunt and haunting. Here are some that struck me:
Pride is the man with the lovely wife who, as long as she obeys his every demand, feels all is well in the world. –Debra Kay Hannula
Eventually, I realized I was avoiding speaking unless spoken to and answering questions with anything definitive until I had a clear idea of what he wanted the answer to be. –Maria I. Kuroshchepova
Silence, when undertaken willingly can be good but it becomes abuse when one is told to shut up or worse yet that their words, their feelings are relegated to the heap of irrelevance by the one who wishes to silence you or just as bad, walks away while you are in mid-sentence. –Rosey Goodman
[S]he wrapped her naked bruised body in a bedspread and climbed out the window to freedom. –Julie Jeffs
It is as if introspection serves as a ceremonial ablution and through that ritual the chokehold of shame is rinsed clean and makes room for me to see that I am not a victim. … I can no longer stay quiet in this world, I have a voice and I feel it reverberate off my internal walls, making its slow climb upward until its melody can be heard all around. –Elin Stebbins Waldal (excerpt from the memoir Tornado Warning)
Guest Post by Elin at Gloria Feldt, author of, No Excuses, website blog.
