There are a thousand similar stories of this misplaced guilt and the shame. After, I felt ashamed, as if my irrational request mitigated the fault of his felony. I also wrote this book because after I was raped, I asked the boy who did it to please sleep over. My relationship with my parents means so much to me. You have to show the people you love, and how they shaped you, but you don’t want to hurt them. How hard was it writing it knowing that everyone would be privy to the most intimate details about your life?ĪSPEN MATIS: It’s an awful puzzle to write a memoir. JEFF VASISHTA: This memoir is brutally honest, both in detailing your rape and your relationship with your parents. Seven years later, as she completes her degree at New York’s New School, her compelling and intense memoir, out this Tuesday via Harper Collin’s imprint William Morrow, should be essential reading in dorm rooms across the country.

A few months later she dropped out and sought solace in her childhood passion, hiking, embarking on a grueling 2650 mile trek from Mexico to Canada, known as the Pacific Crest Trail. Matis was raped on her second night at Colorado College. However, her journey from small town Massachusetts to a major publishing deal is not one she can recommend. PHOTO COURTESY OF CORRINA GRAMMAĪt only 25, Aspen Matis has been published in The New York Times and has a blurb from Lena Dunham on her debut memoir, Girl in the Woods. On the trail she found her strength, and after a thousand miles of solitude, she found a man who helped her learn to love and trust again-and heal.ABOVE: ASPEN MATIS. Exhausted after each thirty-mile day, at times on the verge of starvation, Aspen was forced to confront her numbness, coming to terms with the sexual assault and her parents' disappointing reaction. A nineteen-year-old girl alone and lost, she conquered desolate mountain passes and met rattlesnakes, bears, and fellow desert pilgrims. Her desperation growing, she made a bold decision: She would seek healing in the freedom of the wild, on the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail leading from Mexico to Canada.In this inspiring memoir, Aspen chronicles her journey, a five-month trek that was ambitious, dangerous, and transformative. Dealing with a problem that has sadly become all too common on college campuses around the country, she stumbled through her first semester-a challenging time made even harder by the coldness of her college's 'conflict mediation' process. Overprotected by her parents who discouraged her from speaking of the attack, Aspen was confused and ashamed.

On her second night of college, Aspen was raped by a fellow student. Girl in the Woods is Aspen Matis's exhilarating true-life adventure of hiking from Mexico to Canada-a coming-of-age story, a survival story, and a triumphant story of overcoming emotional devastation.

Girl in the Woods by Aspen Matis