The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence

"De Becker witnessed horrific domestic violence as he was growing up. He felt guilty that he couldn’t protect his mother. As an adult, he made it his life’s work to protect others. This book is his effort to arm people with information to strengthen their physical and digital defenses. This book taught me about the difference between good fear and bad fear. Bad fear prevents us from living our best life. Good fear heightens our sensitivity to people, places and things that we should avoid. One might call it intuition. As de Becker explains, “when it comes to danger, intuition is always right in at least two important ways. One, it is always in response to something. Two, it always has your best interest at heart.” There need to be more governmental resources focused on gender-based violence. We need to look at the ways in which gender justice intersects with racial justice, with climate justice, with immigration justice. There is a lot of work to do, but it’s doable work. We just need resources to identify solutions that are more effective. To get those resources we need awareness. That is one of the reasons why I wrote Assume Nothing ."