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After spending 15 years writing his first book, “Riding the Elephant Unraveling the Mystery of My Childhood Trauma,” Philip March sat in his home office in Emerald Hills and named his self-publishing business Overcome Press.
That is a telling choice based on the story behind his recently released memoir, which begins: “The following events are true,” and then states some names and identities have been changed to protect privacy.
The next page quotes an Anonymous survivors’ group: “While most societies have maintained a sense of taboo regarding incest, in point of fact, the sense of taboo has not been in committing incest, but rather in talking about incest, especially by those who have experienced it.”
In his book March openly writes about his own experiences with incest, recounting the decades of therapy and treatments he has gone through to help him understand “how did I have an entire section of my childhood erased?” after a therapist told him he was likely a survivor of sexual abuse.
His efforts as a middle-aged man to regain access to repressed childhood memories take him on a long journey through his past where he unearths uncomfortable family secrets in his Christian Science household.
At 64 he explains, “I grew up in Los Altos Hills. Behind this façade of affluence there was some very negative stuff going on behind the scenes. And so the point is it’s not just inner-city people who have trauma, it’s in all walks of life.”
He hopes by sharing his story he “could be a lifesaver” for others in similar situations.
After he graduated from Gunn High School, where he excelled in math and physics, he attended Principia College in Illinois before earning his MBA at Santa Clara University.
March went on to work in technology in Silicon Valley, got married and started a family.
He writes about that and goes into more detail on incidents that impacted him such as getting a divorce, losing his aging parents, and receiving the news that his older brother died suddenly in a boating accident on the San Francisco Bay.
Looking back, March notices some disturbing patterns developing over time — his outbursts of rage when dealing with authority figures, getting fired from several jobs, taking unhealthy risks windsurfing on the bay, and binge drinking to the point of blacking out. When he hits rock bottom he seeks out professional help.
These days March meditates, does yoga, kite surfs, cycles, and still attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings every week. Out of the 10 different therapies he tried over the years, two stand out as most successful for him in solving his personal mystery and understanding “what the brain will do to protect itself.”
He describes “riding the elephant” as a “known metaphor for how the subconscious and conscious brain interact.”
He found Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) helped him uncover some old memories, yet warns for some patients the therapy can retraumatize them.
And he unearthed more past experiences when he used psychedelics with a life coach in “a very controlled and measured” setting during one weekend.
March also credits both a dear friend from business school and his wife, Kathy Jones, with supporting him throughout his search for answers to what happened to him and his quest to heal.
“I consider myself a survivor. Yes, I was victimized, but I’m a survivor,” he declares.
March’s research points to FBI statistics that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused in the United States.
“They’re based on reports, and a lot of people think they’re on the low side,” he adds.
He wonders why “less than 1% who’ve been through that participate” in support groups for sexual abuse survivors? Why, he asks, aren’t the groups reaching more people? Is it stigma, or a broader issue of society not wanting to talk about this?
When March retired three years ago he ramped up his focus on writing his memoir. He took four continuing education courses at Stanford University to learn about writing dialogue and nonfiction, non-fiction publishing, and marketing. He took the chapters he’d written earlier in his self-discovery days and then set aside time every morning to write more.
He used the software word-processing program Scrivener to organize his 221,000 words, and with editorial assistance, pared down his final draft to 85,000 words.
Now that he’s busy running his own advertising and marketing campaigns he is pleased to see a five-star review on Amazon complimenting him on conveying the “resilience of the human spirit.”
“I want the story out there and for it to resonate with the people it could help,” he said. At the end of his book, he lists resources. Three he found particularly helpful are: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Voices of Recovery (San Mateo County) and the book “The Body Keeps the Score” by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk.
Find out more about March and purchase his book at philipmarchbooks.com.
