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Resilience Is Futile
- The Life and Death and Life of Julie S. Lalonde
- Narrated by: Julie S. Lalonde
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
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Publisher's Summary
For more than a decade Julie Lalonde kept a secret. As an award-winning advocate for women’s rights, she crisscrossed the country, denouncing violence against women and giving hundreds of media interviews along the way. Her work made national headlines for challenging universities and taking on Canada’s top military brass. But while appearing fearless on the surface, Julie met every interview and event with the same fear in her gut: Was he here?
Fleeing intimate partner violence at age 20, Julie was stalked by her ex-partner for more than 10 years, rarely mentioning it to friends, let alone addressing it publicly. The contrast between her public career as a brave champion for women with her own private life of violence and fear meant a shaky and exhausting balancing act.
Resilience Is Futile is a story of survival, courage, and ultimately, hope. But it is also a challenge to the ways we understand trauma and resilience. It is the story of one survivor who won’t give up and refuses to shut up.
What the critics say
“When reading Resilience is Futile, you can’t help but be motivated by Lalonde’s ability to regain control of her own life while improving the lives of countless other women.” (Jessica Rose, rabble.ca)
“Lalonde captures these moments of silencing, giving as much weight to her shame-fuelled decisions as the later journey of uplifting self-respect and sovereignty. These confessions convince us of the complicated, nuanced realities of being stalked, many of which are often dismissed as romantic or charming by those who are not privy to the fear they elicit.” (Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Quill & Quire)
“Lalonde is an engaging writer who mixes humour and horror, irony and moments of acute, brutally honest self-awareness to open the door to a world that receives too little attention.” (Matthew Behrens, rabble.ca)
What listeners say about Resilience Is Futile
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Carolyn
- 2021-03-15
Important story but skip the book
Her story needs to be told and heard, and I wasn’t familiar with her before reading this book, but I get the impression that one’s time would be better spend reading an article or two about her and her work. Her writing (and reading) has an amateur style, and the book contains a great deal of unnecessary detail that doesn’t add to the story. Nevertheless I am glad to have learned about her and I applaud her for her work.
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- Roberta W
- 2022-08-07
Compelling and shocking
Energetic and compelling biography, well narrated by the author. Her story will shock you, and she is lucky to be alive. A good primer on stalkers and violence against women.
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- Kindle Customer
- 2022-07-26
required listening
From a fellow survivor of stalking in Ottawa at the same time. This books was incredibly hard to read, but needed. Hard to hear about the complete lack of support still given to people facing this type of violence. No story of domestic violence is easy, nor should it be packaged in a way that feel easy or comfortable to listen to. I encourage everyone to listen and remember that there is no right way to survive this kind of thing, or right way to tell your truth. Julie wrote in a poignant way that was easy to follow while still showing the chaos of living a life with a stalker.
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- Rebecca Stafford
- 2021-09-03
Crushingly raw
After seeing a random Tweet a couple of days ago I was curious about “this little book on resilience.” I anticipated more of a treatise on “how-to” I think and this is definitely much more a memoir, but the raw honesty about how so many of us cope with horrible experiences is compelling. Thank you Julie for sharing your pain with us. May it be a fire in the belly for the rest of us that are still trying to outrun our own pain.