Letter from Jean

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Dear Web Site Visitor,

Many people have asked me why I wrote Dear Judith. The answers to that question are many, and I give different ones according to my mood and my healing process. Part of my healing is learning that I don’t have to ask answer every question put to me. But I am happy to answer any questions you may have about the book, or me, and why I wrote it.

Who are you, and who is Judith?

I’m Jean Cozier, author of Dear Judith, and a sexual abuse survivor. I’m fifty-three years old, and I began recovering, and understanding, memories of being sexually abused as a child since sometime around my fortieth birthday. I suspected at many points in my life that I had been molested, since I come from a family with a history of alcohol abuse and violence.

I met, or rather re-met, my cousin Judith in my mid-thirties. At the time, I had completed several years of therapy, and a letter from her came to my mother’s house shortly afterward. I decided to answer it and try to get to know Judith, and let her get to know me. That decision changed the course of my life forever.

What happened to Judith?

I lost Judith in 1998, and spent the next several years trying to come to terms with her death, and my grief. In her memory, I founded the Judith Dawn Memorial Fund for the Arts, which provides financial support to rape and sexual abuse survivors who wish to pursue the creative arts as a means of healing, empowerment, and self-expression. To date, we have distributed awards totaling over $50,000 to more than thirty survivors. At present, the program is only open to residents of four counties in Illinois and one county in Wisconsin. See more information about the program here (link coming!).

What are some other ways you are helping yourself, and other survivors, heal and grow?

In the years since Judith’s death, I have tried to locate other organizations that help survivors of rape and sexual abuse heal their wounds and make better lives for themselves. Organizations that provide help and counseling are too few, and their resources are too limited. For now, I am concentrating my efforts on the Judith Dawn program, and a program at Illinois Masonic Hospital in Chicago that offers group counseling for rape and sexual abuse survivors. A unique feature of this program is that the groups are co-facilitated by survivors. This program began at Ravenswood Hospital in Chicago, and when that hospital was closed, I was able to get the program re-established at Illinois Masonic.

Every cent of every dollar in proceeds from the sale of Dear Judith goes to support the Judith Dawn Memorial Fund for the Arts. I have been supporting that program with personal funds, and will continue to do so, but it is my dream that Judith will help support the program herself, by moving people with her story. When you read Dear Judith, you will hear how hard she worked at economic self-sufficiency, and how she died before she could make that happen.

What made you decide to write a book?

Several years ago, and for the life of me I can’t remember when, it dawned on me that the letters Judith and I exchanged over our eight years together would make a book. I felt, however, the story was incomplete until I could develop a point of view, a perspective, from the present. I also worried I wasn’t “healed enough” to tackle a project this huge. I went ahead and started, however, and found that the “point of view” I was struggling with wrote itself, and took the form of a private journal that documented the process of writing the book. And by the time I finished writing, I discovered that I had wasted a lot of time worrying, because when I finished the story, I found Judith again, and healed my grief.

People continue to tell me I talked to them about writing this book before I ever started. It still amazes me that I have no memory of those conversations. I only know that when I took a short vacation to “go through and organize” all my letters to and from Judith, I discovered that I had already done so. Memory is a funny thing, and I have promised Judith that I will never let my thoughts and feelings about her go undocumented again.

So, why did you write Dear Judith?

-	To keep her close to me, so that she will never be farther away than my bedside table.
-	To help other survivors, by sharing her story and mine.
-	To help support her program.
-	To find out, for once and for all, if I had it in me to write a book, and
-	To heal wounds so old I had forgotten I had them, and grow into the writer, and person, I always wanted to be. I’m still working on that one.

Jean