Survival is Just the Beginning: Kelly J. Baker

When Dr. Kelly J. Baker was two years old, her mother fled Baker's abusive father. But then a custody arrangement left Baker behind for much of her childhood, the new target of his violence. Out of this traumatic childhood, Baker patched together a new life. From the trailer park to college and on to a doctoral program, she succeeded against all odds. But the pain of her childhood trauma didn't abate-it only burrowed deeper.

These stark, haunting essays are not about brokenness, but rather about the slow realization by the author of what she survived and how she grew stronger from a place of vulnerability. Final Girl reckons with what it means to be shattered by those you love and trust and what it takes to pick up the pieces and forge ahead.

Baker tackles family trauma, parental abuse, grief, and her own mental illness with striking honesty and grace. By facing the moments she would rather forget, she shows us how survival is just the beginning: we mend ourselves and surround ourselves with love-and then we rise.

Kelly J. Baker is a freelance writer with a religious studies Ph.D. who covers religion, racism, higher education, gender, labor, motherhood, and popular culture. She's written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Rumpus, and The Washington Post among others. She's the author of the award-winning Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK's Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930 and The Zombies are Coming!: The Realities of the Zombie Apocalypse in American Culture.