Deidre Olsen - Empowerment through Sexuality and Writing

Deidre Olsen, writer

Award-nominated writer and filmmaker. Deidre Olsen is a Canadian award-nominated writer based in Berlin. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Cut, NBC News, Salon, Vice, Maclean’s. Shondaland, Narratively and more than 50 publications. As a young child, Deidre was a victim of child sexual abuse by a babysitter. In this episode we talked about how her parents were able to spot the signs of sexual abuse and reported it to the police. She went through the Canadian legal system and unfortunately her perpetrator was able to get away and escape justice. A victim of multiple sexual assaults, we discussed how this impacted her mental help, decision to move away from British Columbia to Toronto and eventually onto Berlin. She used alcohol as a coping mechanism and eventually was able to get mental health assistance and a borderline personality diagnosis. We examine how BPD diagnosis and recovery from alcoholism has affected her life, and how work on her memoir in progress has helped her connect with her trauma in a way that therapy couldn’t. As survivors with tremendous access to legal documents, Deidre and I reflect on the mental toll that sifting through these documents takes on survivors. Today, she is living in Berlin and happily married to her partner Paula.

Deidre uses They/She pronouns.

Links:

Website:

https://www.deidreolsen.com

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/deidreolsen

Articles:

Living ‘Out Loud and Proud’ in Berlin

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/03/style/paula-sapion-miranda-deidre-olsen-

wedding.html

Being Sexually Abused, I Let Myself Deteriorate 2017

https://www.thecut.com/2017/11/self-neglect-as-a-coping-mechanism-after-sexual-trauma.html