Book SummaryThe Tell, by Amy Griffin

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Tell

Can psychedelic therapy help you recover lost memories? Amy Griffin says it can, detailing how it helped her unlock repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. In The Tell, Griffin explains how a therapy session assisted with the psychedelic drug MDMA brought this long-buried trauma to the surface, setting her on a path toward healing. She also explores the negative impacts of patriarchal Texan culture, the pitfalls of perfectionism, and the road to healing from abuse.

Griffin is a venture capitalist who founded G9 Ventures, the investment firm that helps get early-stage startups off the ground. Her firm has supported the growth of several notable female-founded brands, including actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s beauty and wellness business Goop, actress Reese Witherspoon’s media company Hello Sunshine, and the dating app Bumble. Griffin’s memoir was met with critical acclaim when it was published in...

The Tell Summary Part 1: Becoming Amy Griffin

Griffin begins by describing the forces that turned her into a healthy, happy, successful adult. But she explains that these forces had a dark side, too: Despite attaining all these appearances of success, she felt haunted by something she couldn’t name. In this section, we’ll explore the positive aspects of her journey as well as her silent struggles.

How Griffin Became a Powerhouse

Griffin writes that from the outside—and as far as she could remember—her childhood seemed idyllic. She grew up in the small town of Amarillo, Texas, where her parents ran a convenience store empire. They had high expectations for her—everyone in their community knew who she was, and she had to represent her family and their business well. So, she was motivated to excel at everything she did. Her parents supported this by modeling strength and a relentless work ethic, by encouraging her to be kind, and by praising her leadership skills.

As a result, Griffin says, she became an overachiever. She was a star student and popular among both her classmates and her teachers. She also excelled at athletics; she took up running around age 12 and participated in several sports, including...

The Tell Summary Part 2: Unraveling the Abuse

Even though Griffin had achieved great success, her silent struggles left her feeling haunted. She knew she had a problem, but she didn’t know what it was—until psychedelic therapy helped her identify it. In this section, we’ll explore how her memories of childhood sexual abuse surfaced, what those memories revealed, and the impact that remembering had on her.

Psychedelic Therapy

Griffin explains that her upbringing discouraged drug use, but her husband opened her eyes to the benefits of psychedelics. Under the guidance of a trained facilitator, he’d been using a pure, safe form of the drug MDMA (commonly known as its street-drug equivalent, ecstasy). It had helped him understand his past better and become more emotionally open. He asked Griffin to meet with his facilitator to learn more about his experiences and how psychedelic therapy works.

During this meeting, the facilitator explained that MDMA helps a patient access deeply buried thoughts, emotions, and memories and meet them with a sense of self-compassion. This allows the patient to process those experiences without feeling overwhelmed in the moment. The facilitator also explained that when working with a...

The Tell Summary Part 3: Griffin’s Healing Journey

Being consumed by her memories left her feeling isolated and overwhelmed, and Griffin didn’t want things to stay that way. She thought of herself as a survivor, not a victim, and was eager to move forward with her life.

(Shortform note: Some people prefer the term “survivor” over “victim” because they associate survival with strength and victimhood with weakness. Experts say it’s best to use the term a given individual prefers, but some argue that defaulting to “survivor” can minimize the seriousness of the violence that occurred or pressure victims to project resilience before they’re ready. To capture the breadth of people’s experiences, we’ve used both terms throughout this guide.)

In this section, we’ll explore the four measures she took to heal and reclaim her sense of wholeness and agency: telling her story, pursuing legal justice, strengthening her relationships, and learning to trust herself.

Telling Her Story

The first step Griffin took toward healing was sharing her story with others. She explains that she...

The Tell Summary Part 4: An Unanswered Question

Griffin’s healing left her in a happier, more grounded place, but one major question still loomed over her: Did Mason abuse anyone else? She hoped not, but she suspected he had, and she knew that finding other victims would prove that the abuse she remembered really happened. She reached out to several childhood classmates with the hope that they’d reveal their own accounts of abuse, including a woman she calls Claudia.

Though they weren’t close friends, Griffin had once loaned Claudia a dress for a dance. She wondered if she had done this because, on some level, she knew that Mason was also abusing Claudia. So, she met with Claudia to discuss her experiences and asked if she’d been abused, too. But, Griffin explains, Claudia maintained that she’d never been abused and said she was sorry she couldn’t help Griffin more.

Shortly after their meeting, Griffin received a postcard in the mail. The postcard implied that someone she had spoken to had also been affected by Mason’s abuse but wasn’t ready to come forward. Griffin assumed the postcard came from Claudia, but Claudia denied it. Griffin never found out who sent it—but, she writes, **it suggests that Mason did have other...

Shortform Exercise: Learn to Trust Yourself Again

Griffin writes that part of her healing process was learning to trust her instincts after spending so many years suppressing her thoughts, feelings, and memories. In this exercise, examine how past trauma, challenges, or difficulties may have made you doubt yourself, and think about how you might learn to trust your instincts again.

Think about a difficult experience you’ve dealt with, whether it was abuse to the level Griffin faced or something less violent but that still made you struggle—social, financial, or familial problems, for example. How did you cope with or respond to this struggle?