Get Booked – Perry Power, Breaking The Silence, Stories From Survivors Of Sexual Abuse 250722

Hello, you're listening to Get Booked, the women's and men's radio station. I'm Hazel Butterfield and a huge book fan, so I love doing this show. Get Booked is all about talking to authors, chatting about anything and everything books related, and all the joy, enlightenment, and escape that good books can provide. So sit back and let us entertain you with a different guest each week, sharing who they are, what they do and what inspires them. Now today on the show we have Perri Power on the show with his book Breaking the Silence, a selection of stories from everyday people who've been abused. And Breaking the Silence looks to encourage young men in particular, but anyone in reality, to share their experience of sexual abuse. The more we share, the less victims live burying their trauma deep down to be dealt with on their own, which unfortunately often results in horrific mental health issues. The aim is to break down the shame, the stigma, to flip the narrative and bring people together, not isolated in fear. And I've read this book, and I just— I had to dip in and out of it because it's incredible, so powerful, but actually really helpful to— anybody just to help us understand each other. Uh, Perry, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us on Get Booked. Hey Hazel, thank you for having me on. I, I smiled when you said that you had to dip in and out of it because for some people it can be a tough read. For, for some— I'm not saying what's for you in that regards, but for some other people too, it's a book where it's like you pick it up for specifically around sexual abuse, but then when you start reading it, you're like, okay, this is actually applicable in many different areas in life because totally, you know, living in silence. Yes, this message is specifically for people who've been through sexual abuse, but it could be from people who've been through domestic abuse, you know, emotional abuse, physical abuse, any type of abuse, any type of silence, any type of secrets, and how living with that secret can cause many different paths that you go down leading to self-sabotage. So I'm happy you said that because a lot of people experience that. I, you know what, I wholeheartedly agree because there were so many elements, especially with the activities, which I want to go into a little bit later. Some of the activities are applicable to anybody about just owning their story, owning who they are, and we all have different stories and we all have things that we need to work through. There's a fantastic quote in there actually about— I can't remember it verbatim— but about, you know, the biggest gift we can give ourselves is understanding ourselves and understanding our story. I think it is so incredible. If we start off by telling our listeners a little bit about you. Yeah. So I, I'm from London. I'm from originally from Chiswick in West London, and I'm an actor. So that's something that I've been doing ever since I was a kid. I went to college to do performing arts. I went to temporarily to acting school, acting classes. And it was something that my dad allowed me to do growing up, but he— when I made a decision, I was like, well, Dad, you know, I'm doing this. Yes, but I'm actually doing it with my life. And then it was like, oh, well, now hold on a second, hold on, Plan B please. Get a trade, get— do something under your belt. Because— and I always remember that, and I never listened to it. And, um, yeah, yeah. And, uh So that's me even until today, and I'll talk about that a little bit more in my story, how very, in a weird, beautiful way, things can loop back around to why you're on this planet. As long as you don't give up and you stay on some type of course, you'll get to exactly where you need to go. So my biological mother, she walked out when I was 4, which just left my dad to raise me. For a couple of years. And then my— he then met somebody who then became a stepmom. She moved in. She then sort of filled the shoes of a mother role because I only used to see my biological mother maybe once, twice, three times a year for quite a few years. Then as I became a teenager, it's like growing up, I used to see her every second weekend and we formed a really good relationship and we're fantastic now, which is great. But so my stepmom came into the picture they got married in South Africa. So my stepmom and that side of the family are from SA, and that happened when I was like 8, 9 years old. They got married. Now, where things started, which is what fueled the book and what fueled the charity, the movement, and everything that I'm doing— when I was about 11 and a half, I was in— I was at my nan's house my stepmom was there, and my step-granddad was there, and my nan. Now we're sitting in the living room, and there's 2 couches, coffee table in the middle of the 2 couches. So if you— so for people listening, if you sort of imagine a living room with 2 sofas facing each other with a coffee table in the middle, and then depending on what side of the room you're sitting on, so it'd be your right side or your left side, there's a TV. So you sort of turn your body to watch the TV. Now, when I was 11 and a half, my— I was sitting on my step-granddad's lap with a blanket over us. We're watching TV. My stepmom's on the other couch also watching TV. Now, my step-granddad used to smoke roll-up cigarettes all the time. He always had a cigarette in his hand. Now, my stepmom's watching TV, and out the corner of her eye, she noticed the cigarette fall out of his hand onto the carpet. Now she doesn't take much notice of it. Why would you? Carry on watching TV. But the moments go by and she's, why on earth is he not picking up a cigarette? Because now it's burning a hole in the carpet. And she looks up and then she notices hand movements. Sorry, throat's gone. Noticing hand movements in my private area on his lap. And then she sort of darts up, doesn't know what to do, walks out of the room into the kitchen, calls me, Perry, I need you in here. I walk into the kitchen, and she just questions me, but I don't really give much away. She then takes me home and tells my dad. And then my dad, his reaction at the time was to have a go at me, to shout at me. My stepmom's like, well, no, why on earth are you shouting at him? Like, go and question him. Well, you know, I know what I saw. So my dad questions me and asks me about what happened. And I said to him about my step-granddad was just sort of you know, playing with me in that way. And, um, and he then sort of stopped me. He said, right, you're not going around there anymore, okay? You're not allowed to go around there. You're not allowed to see him anymore. And, uh, don't tell anybody about what's happened. Don't go to school, tell your friends. Don't go and tell your mum. Don't go and tell anybody, right? Just stays at home. I remember at that time when he said that, I had no idea what he's getting pissed off about. My sick granddad, what he was doing to me wasn't bad. I had no idea. It's a form of love that another family member wasn't giving me, as far as I was aware at the time. And at that moment, my dad kind of became the villain of the story because he became this big bad wolf saying that I can't go and visit my sick granddad anymore. Now, looking back, my sick granddad groomed me for a lot of years, right? But the thing with that, at that age, he became kind of like my idol. I loved the guy. Right? You know, he would take me to the pub and let me take sips of his Guinness. I'm not allowed to drink at that age, right? But he, you know, he was like— Well, that's grooming, isn't it? Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So when my dad said, "You can't go and see him anymore," you know, now I became annoyed at him. Now, a couple years later— so I have a lot of— and this is what trauma does, you know, there's a lot of blockages. For example, I don't really remember that conversation with my dad. I do not remember anything from that specific moment of that memory of my stepmom on the couch watching it. That was an account from her. I don't remember any of that. I don't remember— I remember, um, abuse that happened between me and my granddad, and a lot of times I was sitting on his lap and he was feeding me up, or he's breathing into my ear, he's pressing up against me, he was groping me, all these different types of things. But I don't remember that specific situation with my stepmom in the living room. But I do remember a couple years later, I was in English class and we had a substitute teacher and her assignment, you know, sometimes substitute teachers, they just give you something to do in the class just so they can sit there and not do anything. And she gave us an assignment to write a short story. So write a short story, at the end of the class you're going to hand it in. For, at the time, an unknown reason, right? Um, obviously looking back, I was just sort of crying for help in a way that, uh, I just needed to share it. I wrote a short story about a boy being abused by his sick granddad, and I handed it in as if it was just any other story. And social services got involved. My dad was furious with me, didn't speak to me for like weeks. Uh, whereas, you know, when you look back, it should have been the opposite. It should have been caring and love. But yeah, fear and anger are so closely aligned, aren't they? They are massively, massively. So I then ended up getting a school counselor assigned to me. Her name was Anthea. And I, I had her like, I think it started off maybe once a week, then very quickly went to like once every 2 weeks, once every month, once every 6 months, and towards the end of school would be like once a year. I'll go for a check-in meeting with her. Now, I remember out of all of those meetings with her, I remember two of them. One of them was because at the time she had brought like this, like this MP3 player back home when she visited China or Japan. And that was really cool. I'd never seen it before. And that's the only memory I remember from that session. And then another memory was her taking me to an office in Chiswick in London. For an out-of-school session. And so I don't remember any of the sessions with her, but I then leave school, I go to college, and I'm studying acting. And this is where I think things started to change, because when I, when I was in college in London, I was a boy who was a virgin, didn't have many friends, he wasn't that confident, and he was a boy who was abused. We then moved location. We moved out of London and moved to a place called Bracknell in Berkshire. And I moved to Bracknell College and I was like, I was thinking to myself, nobody knows me here. So I can create a new character. I can create a Perry Power 2.0. And this guy, when he walks into college and people start speaking to him, they're going to get this perception that this guy has slept with tons of girls. He doesn't care about anything. He does what he wants. He's got loads of friends and he's a cool guy.. And I wore those shoes and I faked it until I made it. And I did become that person in that college. And what's interesting about that is what I found out later on. I went traveling around Australia with my girlfriend at the time, came back, I get into personal development, I get into entrepreneurship. And then this guy, this guy called Lewis Howes brings out a book called Mask of Masculinity. And when he's on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, he talks about how he was abused as a boy, and he was abused as a boy, and he grew up as a man wearing these different masks. And when he said it in that way, he articulated it in a way where I was like, oh, that's what I was doing, you know. I worded it in a way, I'm creating a new character from acting, but what I was doing— and it's all the same thing, but worded in a different way. What I was actually doing was creating these masks that I was going to start to wear. So not only can I run as far away from the identity of a boy being abused, but I can actually adopt somebody who I— adopt a skin that I was proud of wearing. And when I realized that, I was like, right, okay. And this is like maybe 3 years now into, into personal development. And, and I had this sort of level of awareness at the time was like, right, I'm aware of this now, this situation. What am I going to do with it? Am I going to carry on living a lie, or am I going to take these masks off and start to actively confront the person who I've been running away from? And I chose that path. That evening, I told my girlfriend at the time about the abuse. I told her that the guy who she started dating wasn't the guy, that was a made-up person. And that was the very first time that I broke my silence about the abuse was to her. And then from there, a couple of months later, I did it at a business mastermind conference to like 6 or 7 entrepreneurs. And then from there, driving home, I was like, right, I need to do it again. But I don't want to tell every Tom, Dick, and Harry. I want to tell the world. I just want to do it once. Let me just tell the world. So I'm driving home and I'm like, I'll do it when I get home. And then a voice comes into my head, Perry, you won't do it when you get home because as soon as you're walking through your front door, you're going to step back into your comfort zone. And then you'll sell yourself this story as to why you shouldn't do it because you've already done it. You don't need to do it again. People don't need to go onto Facebook and watch a video about a man talking about being sexually abused. But I knew that's just a voice. So I pulled my car over, put my phone on the dashboard, took me 7 takes, and then I then recorded, I think it was like a 17-minute video talking about the abuse, about my, um, about my dad, uh, because my dad in 2017, he passed away from a heart attack. He became an alcoholic for about 3 years, high blood pressure, diabetes. June 1st, 2017, he died from a heart attack. And that was also in the mix of this whole sort of, you know, path of trying to connect the dots in my head. And then just to sort of sum this whole story up, when I released my story, I go around to my auntie's house, who's my dad's sister, and she in part raised me too, because she would, um, take me to school and pick me up from school, and then my parents would come and pick me up in the evening. So my auntie, my cousin— my cousin being like 5, 6, maybe 7 years older than me— I went around their house and my auntie says, 'Oh, we watched a video.' I said, 'Yeah, okay.' She goes, 'Um, you know you weren't the only one who was abused.' I said, 'Well, I know Kelly was too.' Now Kelly's my cousin. Kelly, I can say her name because her name's in the book. I said, 'Kelly was too. We used to speak about it growing up.' She used to share with me some of her stories and her struggles with it. And then my auntie was like, it wasn't just you and Kelly. It was also me, so my auntie, and your dad. And then that there was like, ah, I sat back on the sofa. All the dots connected. Why he was an alcoholic, why he was fighting away the demons, why he told me to keep it a secret, why he shut me down whenever I brought the abuse up, right? Why, like you mentioned earlier, fear and I think you said anger, anger are very you know, close, and that's why he reacted in that way. And that's when I made it my mission to help specifically as many men as possible not going down the same road as my dad, but if we broaden that up, as many people as possible living in silence, to break that silence so that they don't live a life full of pain and secrecy and worse. Well, the more people share, the more we understand as well. Can you imagine if you'd never actually known why your dad was the way he was. And the more we understand about each other, the more compassion we can have. And I must ask, I mean, the way, the way you tell your story, it's, it's fantastically done. The way you can go into so much detail with such composure. Does it get any easier? Uh, well, I mean, I'll say yes to that because if I compare me sharing my story now to the time where I very first shared my story, is like black and white, it's polar opposites, you know. So I do believe 100% that the more times that you share your story— now we'll get into the specifics because I would never recommend somebody who's living in silence to just go out there and tell somebody. There's a different way of doing it. And that's something that I learned. But I do believe, yeah, the more times that you share your story, it's like every time you share your story, you're owning your story even more. And when you can own your story, you're stepping into a position of power. And if you can step into a position of power, then you have full control over the outcome as to why you're sharing it. I think that's why I said in the intro, it's about flipping the narrative, owning what your story is. It might have been what somebody else did to you, but you can own what you do with that narrative, and I think what you said then as well about how you talk in the book about ways to actually share your story and to understand a little bit more about yourself. There's, I mean, this book has been, had the pages turned on it so many times it's kind of twice the size, and there were, the way that you help people kind of come to terms with things rather than just go straight out there and kind of record. There's elements in here, I think some of my favourites, like page 94, 106, and my favourite 121, where we just kind of— you're empowering people to understand a little bit more about themselves and to feel positive about themselves, which is great to kind of arm people before they possibly make themselves more vulnerable. And I think that was incredible. I mean, um, one of my favorite— I must say my favorite, um, is just— I think it sounds really bizarre to say it's your favorite, but something that we should all be doing, which is why again I think you said that this book is potentially for anybody and everybody. Um, I think everybody out there listening should list 10 times in your life when you've made a courageous decision How powerful is that when you can actually own the incredible things in your life rather than dwell on something that's possibly not the best? Um, and also just, do you believe you have the power to be anyone you want to be and why? Owning what we think about ourselves, I think it's so incredibly powerful. These activities are something that As I said, I've turned the pages, things that I can just turn to every now and again when I kind of need to give myself a little bit of a boost, a reminder of who we are and owning just how incredible we are. When we're low, all we think, we're in a mindset of just thinking about the negativity, aren't we? We are. And to dive into that a bit, if we look at my dad, he became an alcoholic, he became very negative, and he died before the age of 50. Me, I I'm not an alcoholic. I don't do drugs. I'm into personal development and I'm into helping other people. So those are two, you know, those are two people who are abused by the same man, but they walk different paths. Yep. I could have walked the same path as my dad, which is why I say that you can't always control what happens to you, but you can always— and I sometimes get fought on this and I will always stand my ground— you can always control how you respond to it. It's difficult sometimes. It's difficult a lot of times, really is, depending on the circumstances that you're in and the environment that you're in. However, you can still control who you want to become. You might not be able to be like, right, right this very second, I'm this person. But you can be like, right, I'm painting a picture. This is who I want to become. So what's the steps I need to take every single day in order to become that person? Hence what inspires some of the questions and the exercises in this book. Let's shift identity into the person that we want to become. Okay, you went through abuse, right? You still wearing the shoes of a victim. How about wearing the shoes of a survivor? And then if you want to, you can wear the shoes as a warrior where you want to use your story to help and inspire other people. But right now, victim to survivor is a transition that you can make. It's a shift of identity. It's like, okay, it's going from why was I abused so many times by this man or by this woman? To, and why has it always happened to me? You know, a lot of times I've gone through abuse as a kid and then attract partners in adult years who further different types of abuse. Oh, you know, why has this happened to me? I'm a victim. Why has this happened to me? And I get it. And I can say this because I've been there. Or it's like, okay, I went through abuse, but what did that teach me? Can I lead with curiosity and understanding to try and allow myself to see what happened there, maybe why it happened, right, if I'm, if I'm able to, and then have that allow me to let go and move forward with my life knowing that that has created some deep wounds that have now turned into scars because now I'm a battle warrior being able to move forward and create a better life for myself. And also, people who have gone through something and they don't share because they feel shame, it can turn them insular and therefore quite lonely, which again makes you different, and I guess more, more seemingly a target because people who are lonely and somewhat more timid, um, does that— do you think that possibly makes you a little bit more susceptible to these sort of situations? Yeah, like, you know, I, I watch a lot 24/7. As soon as I open my eyes, my whole life is in the world of abuse and trauma, right? Because it fascinates the hell out of me, trauma and how to heal from it and everything like that. You just have to go onto my social media to see everything I do is around it. And, um, and I was watching a— it was— it wasn't necessarily— I guess you, you probably would label it as a documentary. And they were talking in there, he was in a room with multiple women, and this one woman was saying about how she was abused by her mum's boyfriend and, you know, for years, and she ran away from home and she kept on attracting shitty boyfriends. And how she was walking down the road with a friend of hers and a taxi man pulled up and asked, you know, about giving a lift. And it basically wasn't a taxi man, it was somebody in a sex ring, and took him to a hotel. And he was saying— and she's like, you know, I don't understand how I can just get pointed out And this man who is in his, like, I think he's in his, like, 60s, you know, so he's got many, many, many, many, many years, um, on me in regards to research into this world. And he was saying about how he goes, whether you like it or not, people who live in a world of abuse, as in they are the abusers, right, they become masters. Like, if you just look at body language, Pete, there's, you know, the body language experts out there who can pick up on cues If you, if you take those skills, but you plug that into somebody who just wants to do bad, like an abuser, they can spot people, and they can spot their mannerisms, they can spot the, the way that they carry themselves as they're walking on the pavement, and they can spot that they are an easy target, and they won't be too hard to get them into the life that they are currently controlling. So in answer to your question, it's like 100%. Sometimes the reason why people keep on attracting this is because people who are abusers can spot this and they can see them as an easy target. That's just one option. We have the other option where it's like, well, you know, if you've come from a life where there's so many wounds, you're going to attract more wounds because there is an element of you attract what you are to a certain degree. So it's like, well, if you can heal those wounds and you can take ownership over your story, do you really think you're going to attract somebody who's going to abuse you again? No, because you're going to spot it from a mile away. And you've set up boundaries to not allow that person back into your life. And this is why sharing is important. Breaking the Silence is about this. It's— yeah, as well as you offering your story and your knowledge of how to own your story and the exercises that we've been talking about, there's various stories from actually quite a variety of different people and in different ways as well, and different outlooks towards their experience. And I think the variety is fantastic. If that word is appropriate to be used. But I think, I mean, as I said, yeah, I had to dip in and out of it because it is powerful stuff. But I just think it's so incredibly important. And I love that you decided to publish it through— you decided through Amazon, didn't you? You just decided, get it done, just do it. Yeah, that's it. It's just I wrote it. Second episode of Jeffrey Epstein documentary caused me to write a book. I wrote it in about under 4 weeks and I sat on it for over a year because in my head I didn't have the finances, the situation or anything to get the book published for a publisher. I was like, you know what, dude, just do it yourself. You got the Google Chrome extension Grammarly, spell check it yourself. You got the photos from your latest acting headshots. Just go onto Canva, do the text and then just do it yourself. And I'd done it myself and then it hit number 1 in 2 different categories on Amazon. You know, it's incredible. Yeah, yeah. And what's the response been like to the book and people reaching out to you? Oh, it's, it's crazy. It's like, it's— and the interesting thing as well about when you get a book out there, obviously it's my first book and I've already got like my second book I want to start writing, which is Own Your Story, Own Your Life. Like, we took one of the chapters in here is about owning your story, and that I had the most response sent to me about that chapter being life-changing because people know about Tony Robbins who says, "Change your story, change your life." And I'm like, "Hold on a second." For people who've been through abuse, they don't need to change their story just yet because a lot of them are trying to change their story in a way they swap those words out. They're trying to run away from their story. Once you own your story, then you can own your life. And that's what my next book is going to be about. But for this book, it's it's— the response has been insane. And it's interesting how, like, what it's like when you've done— when you've written a book is there for life, right? Like, I, you know, I had a fantastic launch last year, and then, um, and then I really sort of kicked up my content game again, I think, like, maybe a month ago, uh, the beginning of June. So yeah. But, uh, the beginning of June, I really kicked up my game. I started doing reels, and I started doing what sort of got me everything in the first place media-wise and stuff like that. And then boom, like last month, over 600 book sales just last month, right? Wow. And it— yeah, and I was like, geez. And now, you know, I'm getting anywhere between, between, I'd say, 15 to maybe 30/40 messages a day on Facebook, maybe 5 a day on Instagram. And like, my, my Facebook following went up by over 20,000 people on my profile within the last 4 weeks. That's such a responsibility as well, because you don't want to— you don't want anyone to slip through the net and try to get back to everybody. But that's, you know, when they're coming through at that volume Well, it's a lot, isn't it? It is a lot. And it's— I think this has always been something that I've played around with is like, I, you know, for example, Lewis Howes, if you message him on Instagram, he responds back to you. And it got to a certain point where I'm like, there's no way this is Lewis Howes. It's got to be a team, right? And for me, it's like, well, with my brand, as my audience grows, I don't want somebody responding back to people and people thinking it's Perry, right? For me, it's just, it's just a lack of— there was an argument, it was like, well, you know, it doesn't matter if they know it's you or not, at least they believe the perception that you've reached back out to them. But like, it just, it just doesn't sit right with me. So like, so far I've been responding, there's still a ton that I haven't responded back to, and I'm dedicating a few hours, like 4 to 5 hours a day, just going back through DMs. But like yesterday very quickly, had this one woman. And it's interesting because, like, you have people that will say, "Hey, Perry, you probably won't respond back to this or even see this." And I'm thinking, who do you think I am? I'm just a guy. Like, who do you think, you know, what do you, like, who do you think I am? You know? And I read it. I'm like, obviously I'm going to respond back to you. And this one woman yesterday is a mother. Well, I saw the message yesterday, but she had messaged me like a week ago. And her daughter has been abused by her dad. Now dad's in prison. And the woman now has kids and she's constantly trying to commit suicide. And she, you know, she was doing okay, but when she had her first kid, it all just went to shit and she doesn't know what to do with herself anymore. She tried to go into therapy and it hasn't worked out for her. And she's like, I won't say to her that Perry's going to reach out to you just because you may never see this message, but she's not on social media. Can you email her? I was like, of course I will. So I sent her, the daughter, a very long email yesterday, giving her every bit of help that I can. And then the mom messaged me saying, my daughter's on FaceTime right now crying to me that you've responded and you've helped in this way. And that really made me not realize, as if I never realized it before, I do realize it, but it's, it, it sort of like reconfirms to me that the path that I'm on is a lot of responsibility on my part, that if I'm putting myself out there in the way that I am, my story, there's gonna be people out there who are gonna reach out to me and depend on my response and what I have to say. Um, and that response yesterday was very, very interesting. And that is why I make it a point of responding back to every single person, because there's always people out there living in silence who feels like they're alone, and for some reason a counselor or a therapist won't help them right now. In the future they will, but not right now. They don't need to sit in a chair with somebody. They need to reach out to somebody who's young, right, similar age to them, right, who isn't a professional, who has been through it and is on the other side speaking out loud and proud. See, this is why I love doing this show, because I get to meet some incredible people. I've read some, some books, some that have been turned into fiction to actually get across a particular story. But people who have taken something that's happened to them and have turned it into a positive. It's given them purpose, they know that they're being able to help somebody else, and that is so incredibly powerful. And, you know, the more people that open up and share with other people, the more that, you know, we can all help each other. I just think it is incredible. The book, I mean, it's definitely not easy reading, but it is helpful. You don't have to have something that you need to break the silence on to appreciate this book, and that's what I want to get across to our listeners. I also want to point out as well that you can just easily get hold of it on Amazon. Just type in Peri Power: Breaking the Silence, or I have put up a link on my website at hazelbutters.com field.com. Can you just let our listeners know a little bit about where people can get hold of you, your Instagram, websites, various bits and pieces, social media? 100%. So I'm very easy to find on social media. If you just put in Perry Power, you'll see me. My bio, my branding is very much geared around trauma and abuse and what I do, uh, so you'll be able to find me easily. Instagram I am Perry Power. TikTok, I am Perry Power. On Facebook, Perry Power. So you can pretty much find me very, very easily. And then, um, very, very quickly, last thing I want to say is, let's just say for some reason you don't buy the book, you know, within the next 3 weeks for whatever reason, and you're still living in silence, very, very quickly is that if you're living in silence, don't break that silence to somebody yet. Okay? Rather than making that step number 1, make that step number 22. And for the first 21 times, I want you to break the silence to yourself first in as many different ways as possible. It could be writing a poem. It could be choreographing a dance piece. It could be writing a piece of music. It could be saying it to yourself in the mirror. So many different ways because the more times you say it, the more that you're taking ownership of your truth and of your story. And then when it gets to number 22 and you want to tell somebody, You're not hanging on to their response, okay? You're not relying the future of, of your story on whatever they have to say. Rather, you're in a seat of power and you're just saying it because you need to get it off your chest. So, and it's been comfortable within yourself as well before you take that rather important step. Yeah, right. So now I want to talk about— we should cover so well— masculinity. There's Page 11 and 108, one of the quotes that you've put in on masculinity by Melia Keaton Digby: The crisis facing our boys today is not masculinity, rather it is toxic patriarchal hyper-masculinity. In many ways, our boys are constantly clashing within themselves between who they really are and who they are expected to be. The stress of guarding and protecting a false 'False Self Creates a Deep Wound in the Male Psyche,' and you really do cover the elements of masculinity and how it can affect people sharing their story. You've covered it very succinctly, can we just talk a little bit more in detail about how this affects men sharing, men and boys sharing their story? Yeah, I think that's, you know, I think we've— and I'm proud that it's getting that way where it has become a topic where people know what masculinity is to a degree. People know that men should cry more, men should open up more. You know, that's spoken about a lot now, which is good. So it's— and I do see, I do see a change happening. With a lot of men and a lot of boys. Um, but like, if we use my dad as an example, I remember Christmas Day a year after, uh, my nan passed away— his mum— many years ago. And it was Christmas and he had to leave to go to the bathroom to cry. And I didn't know that was the case until a couple years later. And I never saw my dad cry. Growing up, never saw him cry. I remember once when, uh, when I got mugged in a park, he left the house with a baseball bat to try and find them. And he— my dad was like, you know, his— his— my nan, his mum, born under the Bow Bells, East London, proper Cockney. My dad was Cockney, and he was a man's man. And this is a stereotypical man's man, so he wouldn't cry in front of people. He was, you know, he wouldn't be afraid for a confrontation if it came to it. So if we paint that picture of what that man should be, and then we say to that man, okay, cool, so you're that man's man, right? He's like, yeah, I'm a man's man. Okay, great. So how about you speak to us about the time you got abused as a kid? No, I put in, right? That for— I heard this somewhere, but for a man to speak about their abuse is like suicide. That's what it feels like. Because if they were to do that, it shatters this, this character or this persona, shatters, shatters their identity that they believe is them or has been them for so many years. And that's why I talk a lot about masculinity in the book, because my dad was the, you know, look up masculinity in a dictionary and there's a picture of my dad's face. And look where that got him. He took his story to his deathbed. And listen, there's women out there who do the same thing, right? 100%. But if we look at statistics and if we look at, you know, for example, if we look at the statistics of men getting abused to women getting abused, it's, you know, pshew. You know, like, as in, it's crazy. As in, you know, it's in favor of the women having it done more than the men. Now, is that the truth? If we actually got the real statistics out, it still may be the truth. However, it does not highlight the actual real statistics. Now, I am somebody who's in the trenches, who gets messages every single day without fail from survivors of abuse, from victims of abuse, most of them breaking their silence to me for the first time. I had a dad yesterday tell me about what happened to him as a kid, and he said, "Nobody knows. My wife doesn't know. My kids don't know. Nobody knows." And it happens to A lot of men. But the thing is, I think especially married men, I know a lot of times the reason why a married man doesn't want to say is because they believe that the woman, their wife, is going to leave them because they're no longer a man. Because they're, you know, they're sort of this, this, their sexual presence, them, their identity, their identity, right, is now going to be shattered because they're not a man anymore, right? Because they were raped by their dad or whatever the story is. So it's like even if that's not the truth, which obviously it isn't, but in their mind, even if they're like, well, even if there's a small percentage of that not being the case, my wife may support me, is it worth the risk to bring that to the table? Is it worth the risk, right? And they say no. So they keep it because, you know, waking up today, do I need to share it today? Don't need to share it today. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow. Same way people say, I'll go to the gym tomorrow. They don't, right? It's like they don't share their story tomorrow. So they wake up next day, nah, I'm not ready today, I'll do it tomorrow, right? And then they do that again and again and again. And then they start drinking, whatever else it is, or they become a work addict, sex addict, whatever it is. It's just master. And that's why I talk a lot about masculinity. And you know what's funny as well is like women, when I wrote that, I did say for the women reading this, and you can understand this as well for maybe the male people in your life, but there was a woman who reached out to me who I actually met in an acting class, and now she's currently writing the movie with me. She's an Indian girl from America, well, she lives in America, and she read my book, and then when it got to the chapter of masculinity, she threw the book down and started crying because that chapter made her realize that her mom had been sexually abusing her her entire life and she didn't know. That's the thing though, people sometimes don't actually— no, they don't know— engage or understand that what has been happening to them— no, it's wrong— until they hear. Another reason why it's important to share. Um, wow. Yeah, sometimes just one word, a sentence, something phrased in a certain way for it to trigger, you know, the fact that you are a victim too, you know. Do you know what, it's, it's interesting because people fear that if they talk about something that they know has happened to them that is damaging, they fear that if they open the floodgates, will they ever be able to close them? Or this whole, I'm too busy, I don't have time to deal with this now, but it never it never just goes away. You don't bury something and it just disappears. It's the same with grief as well, where people just try and bury it. It always comes out somewhere. And so something does need to happen. And it's— but, you know, I, I appreciate it's incredibly scary not knowing once you open the floodgates what is going to happen. But realistically, not opening those floodgates is what is currently happening. Any better? Well, that's it. Is it any better? And for those people who say, well, yeah, I'm doing just fine, right? Which is a story that I'm telling themselves. So, okay, you might be doing just fine now, but how will you be doing in 5 years' time or 10 years' time? Because trauma affects the body, you know, Body Keeps the Score, uh, it's a great book. And the body, your body does keep the score. They say that it's not what an intruder takes from your home, it's what they leave behind. And it's what the abuse— like, trauma isn't what you went through. Trauma is a silence that you're currently living in, right? And that silence will be creating a version of you that you may feel like, okay, well, I'm all right with that person today. Sure, I might react badly with the kids, Right? Sure, I may make some decisions with my partner that I'm not necessarily proud of, and I'll correct that. But it doesn't get better unless you heal those wounds. It doesn't get better unless you break that silence. So you're a huge book fan as well then. You just referred to, um, quite a good book there. Do you have a favorite book that you would recommend to anybody that's your kind of go-to? Um, oh, I mean, if we're going to talk about general books, and I have two general books, one of them is When I stop talking, you'll know I'm dead. Okay. It's a fantastic— just this guy. And sometimes I think it's also because I feel like I'm in a Sahara desert sweating my ass off. And because it's very hot here in the UK for anybody listening. And I'm in a room where us British people don't have aircon. Right, unless you're very well prepared. Um, uh, basically this book, When I Stop Talking You'll Know I'm Dead, is about— ah, damn it, why can't I remember his name? Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man, Jeremy Weintraub. Weintraub. Yeah, there we go. Right, the reason why that's a great book is because he is somebody who came from just very, a very, uh, well, I say he's very poor, I mean, his dad did do things with jewelry and stuff, but he ended up going out on his own from a very young age And he essentially, cutting the story short, he made a life for himself. He became a producer of like the Ocean's film, Ocean's Eleven and all that sort of stuff. Right. And he was also— I remember this scene in the book. I'm like, what a G. He was lying in bed with his missus and he says, now at the time Elvis had just taken a break from his career and went into the army, right? And now Elvis is, you know, he's sort of like finishing up his duty in the army. And then he's coming back and he says, I'm going to take Elvis on tour. I'm going to be the guy who takes Elvis on a comeback tour. And his wife is like, what are you talking about? You, you don't do anything with music. Like, you're not even an agent. He goes, I'm gonna do it. And if you actually really like think about that just for a second, think about that, how bizarre that sounds. But then he went and ended up, um, going to, uh, his manager, which is a cowboy, and asking how much would it cost to take Elvis on a tour. And he goes, you won't be able to afford it. How much? Million dollars. Goes to a bank, manages somehow to get a million dollars, pays a check, and then he just— he has no idea what he's doing, but he learns as he goes. And he takes Elvis on a tour. Then after Elvis, it was Frank Sinatra. And he basically is a very good example of, of creating whatever destiny that you want and completely rejecting the thoughts and opinions of everybody else who doesn't feel like you'll be able to do it. If you have the passion, if you have the passion, there's so much more that you can do. Yeah, that's incredible. I've just put it on, I've just put it in my basket. Yeah, it's a, it's a great book. Um, and then, and then the other one is a classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Yeah, of course. Brilliant. Um, well, a couple of things I like to ask people that come on the show are for 3 top tips on how to try and achieve a good level of mental well-being, at which I'm pretty certain you're gonna have more than 3 tips. Oh yeah, yeah. So with that, and I was thinking about them, I was like, do I go down the path of saying like meditations or fitness? And I was like, well, I could do— and I was really sitting with this and I was thinking about it, I could do— I said, but my problem if I say things like meditation, yes, But then, but what if there's things underneath the surface that continuously pop up? So I was like, okay, well, let me just go to what I know. So my 3 things on tips on good mental well-being. The first is to break the silence to yourself in as many different ways as possible and then to others. Because if you can build solid foundations rather than unstable found— and you know, the unstability of a foundation is you live in silence, you're living with traumas, and not really managing it, but then you're trying to like do things like meditate or— and they will work 100% because they'll allow you to slow down your thoughts and make you realize that you aren't your thoughts. Yes. And they may help you revisit the breaking the silence later on for sure. But I've decided to go in right from the bottom with the heaviest stuff. Break the silence to yourself first in as many different ways as possible and then to others. Second tip is is to own your story. 'Cause if you can own your story, then you can own your life. Well, how do you own your story? You confront. You confront the demons that you've been running away from. You do the things like breaking your silence. And you also do the things like leading with curiosity. 'Cause if you can lead with curiosity to try and gain understanding over why you went through what you went through, that may enable you to paint a picture, i.e., give you context to then be able to walk forward. So it's not about whether you agree with it or not, it's about you gaining an understanding or what I call leading with curiosity. And then tip number 3 is to create boundaries, right? Because if you could do all of that and then you can start to create boundaries around those in your life and those who may come into your life in the future, and you create boundaries around yourself to help you keep the foundation strong and not let people come in and inject poison into there, whether they mean to do it or not, but that's just part of who they are, and you can create the boundaries, then you're protecting yourself and allowing yourself to heal and to grow even stronger moving forward. Well, you smashed those out the park. The pressure is on now for the final question. Yeah, uh, they were fantastic. I mean, to be honest, I've, um, I've just— I'm in the process of getting a book published, and it is all about going through, um, 20 weeks worth of therapy to understand 'understand myself' and I'm then kind of explaining how understanding myself helped me understand how other people treat me and how I treat other people and how it forms the mistakes that we make. Yeah. So yeah, they really resonated with me, thank you. Something else I always like to ask my guests here on Get Booked is a way of making sure that people are following positive people in the public eye and who is there out there in the public eye that you admire? Um, I, I'll give, I'll give 3 people if that's okay. Yeah, go on, why not? Well, so I give, I'll give one that is in relevance to everything I've been saying. His name is Gábor Máté. I think he pronounces Máté, Máté. Gábor Máté. Uh, I think he's Hungarian. I think he's Hungarian. And he— I've referenced him earlier, uh, he's in the line of trauma. He's in his like 60s, I think his 60s, and he is just— he's 78. Oh wow, 78. All right, fantastic. That's made— that's made me amazed even more that he's still doing this at 78. Uh, and he's just, uh, he's just the GOAT. He's the OG. And whenever he speaks, I listen because his wisdom— and actually his, like, brand is the Wisdom of Trauma— and his wisdom around trauma and around healing is just absolutely phenomenal. Phenomenal. So if people are interested in the work of— he only really talks about trauma and healing. So if you're interested in that sort of stuff, then Gabor is definitely the guy who you should follow. And then the other two are extremely extremely famous people, but they've been— they would have been with me, I think, in my story since I was a kid. And that is Dwayne Johnson and Sylvester Stallone. Uh, the reasons why— for Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock, I grew up a massive WWF fan, massive. And The Rock was my favorite guy. I used to do the People's Eyebrow, used to have his belts, I used to— everything was The Rock growing up as a kid. And then, you know, and then I start to take acting seriously, and then I see his transition from the wrestling career into him being an actor. And then when I stepped into entrepreneurship, I actually started to understand what— sorry, the, um, the struggles and the story behind Dwayne Johnson transitioning into Hollywood. Uh, and in, in short, it's because he went into Hollywood, but he, you know, they said to him, like, he'd done like the Tooth Fairy, and I think it's Tooth Fairy or some, like, basically some movies that he weren't proud of. And they said to him that you need to lose muscle mass, right? So you can morph into these characters. And he had this, you know, as an actor, yeah, you're meant to be able to morph into different characters. Matthew McConaughey losing weight for Dallas Buyers Club and things like that. But it made me realize it's like, well, if you don't want to follow this stereotypical path of how you're meant to do something right, he's very inspirational because he went into Hollywood They, all these casting directors and agents, for you to get jobs in Hollywood, you need to start losing weight or you're going to only play one character and nobody's going to hire you. So what he decided to do, for a very brief moment in time, he listened to them. But then he's like, this is actually clashing with my identity. It's clashing with who I'm meant to be. I love to weight train every day. I love to build muscle mass, but I also want to act. So I'm going to do this my own way. He creates Seven Bucks Productions. He does his own thing. And now look at him. He's the most famous person in Hollywood. Right? Most well-paid person in Hollywood. People give him hate, people say he's a bad actor. But if you actually understand the brand behind that man and how he has architected this whole thing to be where he is, there's no way you can look past him without admiring and respecting him. So sometimes success is down to character, isn't it? Yeah, for sure, for sure. So that's Dwayne Johnson. And the other one is Sylvester Stallone. The reason why is because he has stayed humble since day one. You just have to watch any type of interview with him, see how he interacts with fans, he's always been humble. And for me, mainly is because of his beginning days. And I can relate to him. I slept on the floor in my house a couple of years ago with my dog, and I was halving my food dinners with my dog in the same way Sylvester Stallone used to do. And he was trying to make it as an actor, just him and his dog, same as me and Amara. And, and he had to sell his dog for, to, to, to pay rent. And I didn't sell my dog to pay rent, but there's a lot of similarities. And he made it from that to then knocking on door after door after door to sell Rocky. And he kept on saying, no, I'm going to be the main person in the script. I'm going to be the main person in the script. And that is what I'm doing now with this movie for Breaking the Silence, which we've got a production company and a producer attached to it. And I said to him, I was like, listen, I am playing a lead in this, in this. This is on my story. And I had many people say, well, Perry, why don't you just produce it? Right? Because if it's about your story, you don't want to play it. You can oversee somebody playing. I said, no, I'm playing the lead in this story. And it's a very similar path that I'm walking to Sylvester Stallone, which is why I admire him, because he just has a lot of characteristics I admire. Do you know what? That's a fantastic example how understanding the story behind somebody can alter our perception. And I think it does epitomise the importance of your book, Breaking the Silence. Quick reminder to everybody to go and pop onto Amazon and to go and check out Peri Power everywhere on social media. We've run out of time and I really wanted to talk about the elements of forgiveness, but you know what, people are just gonna have to go and buy the book to to find out what you've got to say about that. Likewise, they're going to have to buy the book to find out more about werescuekids.org and the Andy Project, I do believe. That was something else that I really wanted to talk about, theandyproject.org.uk. But, but, as I suspected, we stormed through today's show. I've still got about another 10 things that I want to talk to you about, but you'll have to come back on the show at some point. 100%. Yes, 100%. And maybe a 2-hour show will possibly get through nearly as much as what I'd like to. Thank you so much, Perry, for joining us on Get Booked for Women's and Men's Radio Station. I found what you've had to say is so incredibly inspiring, and I think it's very important to get the word out about breaking the silence. And I wish you all the best of luck with your book. Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it. You're very welcome, and best of luck with all your endeavors. I think you're going to smash them all out of the park. Thank you. Wow, what an incredible interview. That was Perry Power with his book Breaking the Silence. After being sexually abused by his step-granddad at the age of 10, Perry Power lived in secrecy for over 12 years. This led him down a path of self-sabotage. This is an until the sudden death of his father in 2017. Perry went on to break his silence and embark on a mission to help as many victims as he could to also break theirs. Breaking the Silence is a guide for victims of sexual abuse to help them break their silence. This book is split into 3 parts. Part 1 is Perry's story of abuse and how he broke his silence. Part Part 2 is the stories of 14 other survivors of sexual abuse, and Part 3 is steps one can take to break their silence. An incredibly helpful and brave book. Perri believes the most important person to break our silence to first is ourselves, and then to others. He hopes with this book he can help make that that happen. Go and check it out, and as we said, you can pop onto Amazon to get Breaking the Silence, or you can pop onto my website and on the latest blog of book reviews on hazelbutterfield.com, there's a little buy here link for you. Now, Get Booked is on at 5 AM and 5 PM every weekday on women's radio station, and every Tuesday at 4 PM at Men's Radio Station. Come and join us, get involved. And if you want to catch up on previous shows, you can at womensradiostation.com/shows/getbooked. And on our SoundCloud, each week you give— we give you the extra special insight into a different book and the author each week. Next Next week we have Amanda Robson who has just released her fourth book, very exciting, a domestic noir, one of my favourite genres, and no stranger to this show, so that's going to be absolutely fantastic. Then following that we are going to have Jim Chambers with Urban Scarecrows. I've just finished this book and it is kind of dystopian but really not too far in the future, and I really couldn't put it down. It was incredible, and it kind of looks back on just how differently the elections could have gone in 2019 if there was a rogue government. An absolutely fantastic book. I do urge you to go and try that one out. I have put my latest selection of book reviews up on hazelbutterfield.com. I always entitle my blogs with a literary quote, and the latest blog is entitled "I guess there are never enough books." Books are the quietest and most constant of friends. They are the most accessible and wisest of counselors and the most patient of teachers. That was of course Charles Eliot. Her soul belongs to words and books. Every time she reads, she is home. On my latest book blog, we have featured Kate Rea's Good Husbands, Colleen Hoover's It Ends with Us, Susan Cole with Bookish People, and there is a review up there of today's guest, Perri Power, with Breaking the Silence. I'm Hazel Butterfield, and you've been listening to Get Booked for Women's and Men's Radio Station. If you want to come on the show, please do get in touch with me either at hazelbutterfield.com, or you can email me at hazel@womensradiostation.com. Maybe you have a book review that you want to share, or maybe You're just a huge reading fan and you have so much to share. Maybe you're just on the cusp of writing your first book. Please do get in touch, we want to hear from all of you. Enjoy the rest of your day and thanks again for listening.