Step in the Right Direction
One woman’s journey to protect children and help survivors thrive after childhood sexual abuse
Fiteen hundred miles is a long way to walk, but you don’t need to tell Lauren Book that. She’s planning to spend the month of April traveling across the state of Florida on foot. And she’s been doing it for a decade.
Book is a former state senator representing parts of Broward County. She was the Senate minority leader from 2016 until last year and hopes to return to the state senate in the future. She’s a wife, mom of 8-year-old twins, and founder and CEO of the nonprofit Lauren’s Kids. She’s also a survivor—“a thriver,” she corrects—of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a trusted adult. She launched Walk in My Shoes in 2014 to raise awareness, help protect children, and support her fellow thrivers.
The best part about the endeavor, she says, is that she’s not alone.
“We have people come from all over—Texas, Ohio, even France—to be a part of it, so that their child can feel what it is to be a thriving survivor,” Book explains.
April is National Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Child Abuse Prevention Month. Walk in My Shoes kicks off with opening ceremonies in Key West on April 1, and Book and fellow participants begin walking the next day. “We are going to walk every day until [April] 30, all day every day,” she says. “It’s very, very intense.”
Book uses the collective pronoun to describe walk participants, but in fact, she’s the only one who completes the entirety of the journey. “Walking 1,500 miles across the state of Florida is kind of crazy,” Book says, adding that if she had anticipated repeating the walk every year for a decade “I might have done a Segway or something.”
Book covers up to 25 miles a day and does some strength training to prepare. She forgoes pedicures in advance as calluses help protect her feet from blistering, and she often damages or loses toenails along the way. She invests in quality socks and multiples of her favorite athletic shoes, which she stores in a freezer when they’re not in use to slow their breakdown on the hot asphalt. “I’ve really gotten the particulars down to a science.”
This year, walk participants will wear friendship bracelets representing a specific child or advocacy group. Book plans to wear bracelets to represent the overall Florida initiative and looks forward to trading bracelets along the way.
Walk in My Shoes has stops in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Coral Springs and Parkland, Sunrise, Naples, Sarasota, Lakeland, Cocoa Beach, Daytona Beach, The Villages, Orlando, Ocala, Gainesville, Jacksonville, Pensacola, Panama City, Fort Walton, and Marianna before concluding with great fanfare in Tallahassee on April 30. She aims for an early afternoon arrival, though the exact time is hard to predict.
“We walk the final mile up Apalachee Parkway and end in front of the historic Old Capitol,” Book says. “We always end in Tallahassee because that is where true change takes place, where you can make legislative differences, where you can truly make the world a different place.”
The last mile is a literal uphill climb, which is an exhausting task after the month-long journey. It’s also true for the figurative, acknowledging the challenge of bringing healing to those who’ve faced childhood sexual abuse. According to Lauren’s Kids nonprofit, in the U.S., more than 42 million people have experienced childhood sexual abuse—that’s one in three girls and one in five boys before their eighteenth birthday. Book was part of that statistic. Her seven years of abuse began when she was 10 years old at the hands of a nanny. “I can’t tell you how upset I get when I hear ‘stranger danger,’” she says. “[Most often] it’s not somebody who jumps out from behind a trash can. It’s somebody that those children know, love, and trust.”
Book’s abuser was eventually prosecuted and is serving a jail sentence, which was just a small part of her healing journey. Her nonprofit and advocacy work, development of Safer, Smarter Kids—a school curriculum to help protect and empower kids—and legislative role all play a part. So does the camaraderie she shares with those who have been touched by abuse and join her in her advocacy journey.
“I look forward to being with all those young kids,” Book says. “It’s a special thing to become part of the fabric of these different communities.”
To learn more, visit: laurenskids.org
