Joanne needed to write Nothing to Discuss in order to comprehend her own story. As she cobbled together the narrative, occasional newspaper articles shocked her by describing abusive scenarios oddly familiar. In her quest to understand more, she dove into firsthand accounts of domestic violence and professional analyses on the topic to discover that thousands of women/people share similar realities to hers. And that the common denominator is silence.

It may have taken her a quarter-century to find the courage to share her own truth, but Joanne’s hope is to inspire other controlled and abused women/ people to take back their stolen voices, the way sharing her story has allowed her to reclaim her own.

Joanne lives with her husband, Grant, in New Westminster on the unceded land of the Halkomelem speaking peoples.