BREATHING THE NIGHT OUT

A story of intergenerational sexual violence and healing

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
— Maya Angelou

“I wasn’t writing a book. I was writing a suicide letter to my daughter, trying to explain why I took my own life.”

What began as a goodbye became a fight to survive.

Breathing the Night Out is a raw, unflinching memoir that traces 95 years of incest, murder, addiction, homelessness, and incarceration through one family and finds, against the odds, room for love, justice, and healing.

Writing this book came at a cost; emotional, financial, and spiritual. When those costs are met, part of the proceeds will go to The Gatehouse, a Toronto-based charity dedicated solely to supporting survivors of childhood sexual violence. The Gatehouse believed in me when I no longer believed in myself. They helped me rise, and they put me back in the fight.

“Breathing the Night Out is a miracle. Ghrian Shine embodies beauty, truth, love, and power—fierce, elemental, and impossible to destroy. This book overwhelmed me with sadness, rage, and grief, yet left me filled with awe at her courage and clarity. What Ghrian reveals is nothing less than the original war—the war against children—and through her story we begin to understand how all violence is connected. Shine’s clear seeing and compassion light the only path out of this inherited blindness. Her voice is articulate, strong, and alive—a gust of fresh air in a suffocating world. This is an extraordinary work of survival, truth, and hope. Ghrian Shine opens a secret door that is not hidden—the truth.”

Andrea Robin Skinner, daughter of Nobel Laureate Alice Munro, and child sexual violence survivor-advocate whose courage sparked a global conversation about childhood sexual violence.

About The Book

Ghrian Shine’s memoir, Breathing the Night Out, opens in a small Canadian town and unravels 95 years of incest hidden inside one family. It crosses the darkest landscapes, childhood sexual violence, murder, addiction, loss, incarceration, and homelessness and still finds room for tenderness, rage, and, ultimately, healing. This is not only Ghrian’s story. It is the story of generations: survival passed from one scarred hand to the next.