A Spectacular Dawn

A Spectacular Dawn is the final in this series and here Gabriel Orion Marie takes you into the heart of her healing, her conscious reclaiming of her sanity, her soul, her life and her joy. In this volume she shares extensively from her correspondence with Dr. A. and we are allowed to witness the depth of respectful, professional love that was a key ingredient in the thoroughness of her healing.






Note from the Author

This book, A Spectacular Dawn, is the third in a series of books that I have written to share with you my personal story of intense suffering during childhood and how I embarked upon an epic healing journey. This journey included an unexpected method of communicating and healing from the inexpressible by drawing and painting with an enlightened witness as my guide.

There are many themes in the areas of wounding and healing from sexual abuse, incest, and torture, and for my books, I have chosen themes that were most prominent in my journey. I created over 325 paintings and drawings during several years of my therapy and have arranged selections of them by themes for chapters. I tried to choose paintings in each topic that I felt would communicate best what I am trying to share.

These themes and paintings are divided into three books, the Recovery From Incest Through Painting My Story series:

This White House (Book One) - Gathering The Wood





• Chapter 1 A Legacy of Shame: A Brief Autobiography 
• Chapter 2 First Revelations: Beginning Therapy 
• Chapter 3 Child Pornography/Child Prostitution 
• Chapter 4 Multiplicity 
• Chapter 5 Inner Deaths: Borderline Series 
• Chapter 6 Obesity and Measurement 
• Chapter 7 Spirituality and Guilt 




Going Sane (Book Two) - Tending The Fire





• Chapter 1 The Therapeutic Relationship 
• Chapter 2 Establishing My Insanity 
• Chapter 3 Tortured: Segreto Oscuro (Dark Secret) 
• Chapter 4 The Penis Question 
• Chapter 5 The Fiercest Taboo 
• Chapter 6 Sensations 
• Chapter 7 Some of My Selves 




A Spectacular Dawn (Book Three) - Witnessing the Gold




• Chapter 1 Choosing Consciousness 
• Chapter 2 Grieving 
• Chapter 3 Letting Go 
• Chapter 4 Forgiveness 
• Chapter 5 A New Beginning 
• Chapter 6 The Dawn and I 
• Chapter 7 Only Now 




It is with great joy that I now share with you this part of the healing journey where the emergence and integration of Light—A Spectacular Dawn—has taken place. I have come to believe that this Dawn resides in each of us, no matter how broken we are, and that it quietly awaits our pursuit and discovery so it may lavish upon us its illuminating and liberating power.



Reviews


A Spectacular Dawn is the last of three books that chronicle the author’s story, through words and drawings, of childhood abuse and what she did first to survive and then to recover. The first two books in the series are for those seeking and ready for a personal story of childhood torture and incest and its effects, as depicted through raw images and descriptions. There are those who will resonate to the first two books, take hope from knowing that others have moved beyond surviving traumatic childhood experiences to living a full life, and be inspired to break silences to tell their own story. Some readers, however, may have difficulty with the explicit images and specifics of torture and abuse described in the first two books: mental health professionals and other readers will need to decide about readiness for the details. In A Spectacular Dawn, the author focuses on her process of healing. Through her perceptiveness, intelligence, and moving art, the author reveals how some of her reactions to her abuse (such as dissociation/multiplicity) helped her to survive. She also elucidates how she was able to truly emerge, reclaim herself, and cope and grieve in new, adaptive ways through introspection, her art, and the safety, support, and guidance of a therapeutic relationship. She demonstrates how painting allowed her to express and release some of the unspeakable things that occurred to her as a child as well as depict the healing that was occurring within her. Hers is truly a story of fortitude, courage, and resurrection. Because this book provides useful insights to mental health professionals from the perspective of an experience-based expert, as well as inspiration to survivors of abuse, I rated A Spectacular Dawn five stars.

Pamela Fuller, Ph.D., author, of Surviving, Existing, or Living


Having read all of 3 of Gabriel's books in 2 days, I was more than ready for the dawn of her healing. I would urgently recommend, however, that everyone read this third book in sequence. Only after living with Gabriel through the horrors of her early life can one appreciate her Dawn.  Gabriel's healing takes place on a transcendent level few of us can even comprehend, let alone experience. Without the apparently inexhaustible resources of her unique and resilient mind, no dawn would have followed her night. Brava, Gabriel. Please do not ever let the day-to-day struggles of your current existence take away your awareness of the miracle you have created just by living. We survivors need you too much.

Jean Cozier, Awakenings Foundation President