Julie Peters - Want: 8 Steps to Recovering Desire, Passion, and Pleasure After Sexual Assault

Praise For Want

Julie Peters has given us a work on sexual trauma that is at once sweeping yet intimate. On every page there is the vibrant energy of intellectual curiosity as well as the searing truth of lived experience. In her book, she challenges us to not just be readers, but also witnesses to her journey. Its at times painful, often humorous, always illuminating. Anyone who has been touched by trauma knows that theres a resonance that lives on long after in the body and mind. But in her near-experience book, Peters also shows us the resilience and radiance.

Ian Kerner, PhD, sex therapist, and New York Times
best-selling author of She Comes First

Wow. Beautiful. Kudos. This book is such a compassionate, nuanced look at an incredibly complex, deeply-entrenched set of flawed societal norms and patriarchal beliefs about power, sex, punishment, and entitlement. And most importantly, some great advice on healing; helping survivors and society in general.

Paul Gilmartin, host of the Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast

It is a rare and wondrous thing to read a book that seems to see into the most secret and private corners of your life, your bodythat seems, in fact, to have been there for a long time, waiting to provide you with what you had not known youd desperately needed. Julie Peters has written such a book. With unwavering honesty, penetrating insight, warmth, humor, and aplomb, she lays out strategies for a tangible, nourishing, and vitally ferocious self-love. The book is written from the perspective of a survivor of sexual assault (and what a tremendous and generous gift it is for those who have shared the experience), but the practical and practicable wisdoms here are for everyone. The reader feels variously transported to a therapists office, a research facility that studies modes of gentleness, a night spent talking over wine with a dear and learned friend, and into the center of a circle in which a witch mixes her healing potions and sings her wild incantations. I hope that (particularly straight, cisgendered) men will join me in reading this bookboth for the insight into the lives of the women (and other-gendered folks) who surround us, with whom we are intimate or not, with whom we share space, and for the revelations it offers into our own lives, our own fraught relationships with pleasure, food, addiction, sex, our bodies. As Tony Kushner writes in Angels in America, The Great Work Begins. Julie Peters provides us a map.

Jeremy Radin, poet, author of Slow Dance with Sasquatch and Dear Sal

Julie Peters new book Want: 8 Steps to Recovering Desire, Passion, and Pleasure After Sexual Assault provides women who have experienced sexual assault with a roadmap toward healing their shame and rekindling their desire. Whats unique about this book is that the sexual assault that the author shares about so vulnerably happened when she was an adult, with a best friend whose advances she had been rejecting for months. Peters takes readers on her own personal journey from trauma to reconnecting with her body, emotions, and eventually her own desire and sexuality. While the book is well thought out and researched, it is Peters no-nonsense, tell it like it is, personal narrative that is both refreshing and so relatable to many womens experiences. Add this book to your bookshelf!

Xanet Pailet, Sex & Intimacy Educator and Coach, author of the best-selling book, Living an Orgasmic Life: Heal Yourself and Awaken Your Pleasure

This book paves the way forward to newer, better sex and relationships for sexual assault survivors. Julie Peters weaves personal experience and research to bring us readers deep into the psychology and physiology of sexual desire post-assault. This book empowers survivors to go beyond the limiting healing narrative our culture imposes and to reclaim sex as a source of pleasure and joy moving forward. Its full of practical strategies for a better sex lifestrategies that take into account survivors histories and challenges.

Katie Simon, writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Medium, The Washington Post, and more

This is a potent, provocative, multi-sided look at deep and painful issues between the genders. Julies depth of knowledge in this work is illustrated by her ability to know when to engage difficult edges and when to hold people to account, as well as when to bring levity, breathe, and remind of us of our shared humanity. Her profound courage as a rape survivor to share so deeply is matched by the wisdom of her nuanced exploration of violation pattern in broader society. She is able to do so with an utterly non-shaming and compassionate voice that also consistently includes and thoughtfully considers the victimization of men, transgendered, and non-gender binary people. Her voice is just the kind of eldership that is so needed in the complexity of gender identity, power, and violence issues.

David Hatfield, M.A., M.Ed., process facilitator and consultant, Canadian coordinator for International Mens Day, founder of Manology: Exploring 21st Century Masculinity.

Julie skillfully weaves together science, history, and feminist and trauma theory with her own sexual assault and healing. She offers practical trauma-informed tools for the reader to support their own safe embodiment and writes in an honest, funny, and hopeful way about the struggle to make sense of the world and our lives and how to thrive in the aftermath of trauma. Her heartfelt writing reaches out to the reader, like a friend who bears witness to your most vulnerable moments while mirroring them back in her own. I think that this book is a must for anyone wanting to understand their own journey after trauma and needing the support of a wise, compassionate, and well-informed presence along the way.

Nicole Marcia, MA, trauma-informed yoga therapist

Reading Want , I found myself exhaling deeply every few pages. Peters sets out to do what many survivors wonder, at one point or another, if were capable of doing: she seeks to heal from her assault by understanding it from every direction. From within the body. From fields upon fields of research. From turning toward the wound as opposed to away from it, all the while remaining transparent about how shes learning right alongside us. In the same candid and warm tone youd expect from sitting down to drinks with your best friend, Peters shares frankly and sincerely as she moves through each new learning, be it clinical, physiological, or societal, holding it up to the light to see where it might fit best in the very real, intricate mess of moving beyond the harm thats done to us.

Kelsey Savage, writer and sex educator

Despite sexual violation being an enragingly common story, Julie manages to pull out her own unique narrative, and, in true yogic tradition, seeks unity with self to self, self to others, and others to self. Simply astounding.

Monique Desroches, trauma-informed somatic therapist

Julie Peters brings pleasure to life after sexual assault through vulnerable stories, supportive tools, and social critiques. This blend of thoughtful work will support folx in their healing and their growth. I am so into a world where we encourage more understanding of our complex humanness, and Julie allows us to breathe with her and try together. Powerful, vivid, and profound; Julie welcomes you to yourself.

Tanille Geib, sexual health educator

Julie has eloquently navigated the fine balance of trauma and triumph. She articulates perfectly an application for healing, infusing a gentle, knowledgeable language with a lightness that is hard to achieve in this subject. Her blend of earnest personal sharing and well-researched material drew me in and left me enthusiastically turning page after page and nodding my head in solidarity. This book gave me permission to go deeper into my own experiences by being delighted and eager to use her techniques and practices of self-acceptance and care. Practical, playful, and poignant, Julies perspective reads so clearly and genuinely I truly feel this book is a must for any survivor or ally wanting to deepen their journey of healing.