I Woke Up In China

We spend our lives running. Running to work, to meet our friends, to get to the movies before they start-always rushing from one place to another on a whirlwind of activity. For some this hectic schedule is a form of escape, a reflex to avoid something deep inside that is too horrible to imagine and too painful to confront. For Kehinde Komolafe, moving halfway across the world is what it takes for that running to come to a stop. Following her inner voice, Kehinde leaves behind her successful banking career in London for a new adventure in Beijing and suddenly finds herself alone in a foreign land with very limited abilities to communicate to those around her. This forces her to look for solace in the one place she has been avoiding her entire adult life: inside herself. Finally uncovering the truth about the sexual abuse she experienced during her childhood, she knows now that there is no going back to who she was before moving to China. Able to face the horror of her past and fight to heal it, she begins to unravel the core of her being and unleash her true nature. Inspired by the World Health Organization's findings that estimate one hundred and fifty million girls and seventy-three million boys under the age of eighteen experienced sexual violence of varying degrees in the year 2002 alone, Kehinde selflessly shares her story. A raw, emotional tour de force that is bracingly honest and emotionally resonant, Kehinde's memoir lets other survivors of childhood sexual abuse know that life can go on, that what they experienced is in their past, and their future is as bright as they care to make it. A brave account of healing, personal growth, and an adventurous travelogue, IWokeUpInChina is an honest, searing, and inspirational story that offers a very real and balanced picture of what happens to the victim of sexual abuse.

Kehinde Komolafe considers herself to be a woman of many places. Born in Nigeria, she has spent most of her life living in the UK, though she acquired a Spanish ＂self＂ from living in Spain for three years and truly became an adult and gained ＂full consciousness＂ living in China. On her quest to have very tough conversations with herself she took up writing a journal. But after discovering that there were literally hundreds of millions of people all over the world who, like her, experienced childhood sexual abuse, she was compelled to go beyond journaling in order to speak to and for these millions of victims. Kehinde’s day job is running a communication skills consultancy in China. IWokeUpInChina is her first book.