Inspired by the #MeToo movement, a Guelph author has penned a memoir that recounts a lifetime of mistreatment and abuse she suffered and how she refused to succumb to it.
Montaha Hidefi, the author of Groping for Truth – My Uphill Struggle for Respect, said she hopes her story will inspire others who have had similar experiences to not keep them bottled up inside them.
Hidefi was born in Venezuela to Syrian immigrant parents, moved to Syria in her teenage years before living in the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands and now Guelph.
Hidefi said she faced sexual harassment for most of her life, no matter where she lived.
“I went through a lot of groping, people were groping me in the streets,” she said.
As a young girl, Hidefi said she suffered abuse from her own mother.
The book will be released on Dec. 6, which also happens to be National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.
Hidefi has been writing for over 20 years, but this is the first time writing about herself.
“When I have written in the past it was marketing material mostly, it was not related to me,” she said. “This time, it was hard. It was very difficult. There were times I would stop in front of the screen and just freeze and cry.”
Hidefi had considered putting her life story in print as far back as 2010, but the project kept getting put on the back burner until about this time last year when the MeToo movement against sexual assault and harassment began to go viral across the globe.
“Nothing was happening with it, but it was still in my mind,” said Hidefi. “Then all of a sudden the book project came back, but this time it came back through the MeToo movement.”
With the support of her husband and friends, Hidefi began to write.
She said the process of reliving the stories from her past was painful at times.
“You keep them all of your life inside of you and you don’t want to share them, and then all of a sudden to share them in a book — it isn’t easy,” said Hidefi.
She began by writing the first draft of the book in the third person, shying away from using the word I.
“I could not write it in the first person,” said Hidefi. “One day I wrote ‘I’ and stopped. And then continued, and then it was really hard.”
“By the time I wrote I 10 times I felt like I was sitting in a pool of blood, like everything was bleeding. But eventually I got used to it and then I changed everything to the first person.”
One particular story from Hidefi’s past was so buried in her mind she had to undergo age regression therapy to reveal it.
“Every time I went back to edit or reread that chapter, it was going back in time to when it happened, it was the same feelings,” said Hidefi.
Through the book, Hidefi said she hopes to inspire others who have had similar experiences to open up.
“Don’t swallow it and don’t think it’s okay. Don’t convince yourself that it’s okay,” said Hidefi. “You don’t have to write a book — just talk to someone.”
Even through she suffered harassment and abuse much of her life, she did not let it hold her back from finding success in life.
“It was like an engine for me,” said Hidefi. “Every time I had an incident and I felt I was down under the water, that same thing was the energy that pulled me out of the water and pushed me toward doing something.”
Groping for Truth – My Uphill Struggle for Respect is published by OC Publishing in Halifax. A book signing is scheduled for Dec. 20 at St. Louis Bar and Grill from 6 to 8 p.m.
