The Tell: A Memoir

Published in 2025, The Tell is a critically acclaimed memoir by venture capitalist Amy Griffin. Growing up in West Texas, Amy was driven and hard-working. Throughout her adolescence and the first decades of adulthood, she was constantly in motion, building her career, nurturing her marriage, and raising her four children. 

Eventually, the breakneck pace of her life began to take a toll on Amy’s mind, body, and relationships. During a session of psychedelic-assisted therapy, Amy discovered long-repressed memories of sexual assault at the hands of a middle-school teacher. The Tell delves into the devastating aftermath of her revelations, examining The Impact of Repressed Memories on Personal Identity, The Societal Pressures of Perfectionism, and The Therapeutic Power of Vulnerability that Amy embraces while telling her story and connecting with others. 

This guide uses the 2025 Penguin Random House Kindle edition of the text.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of rape, child sexual abuse, and the use of mind-altering substances.

Summary

Amy Griffin grew up in the small town of Amarillo in West Texas. Amarillo’s community was tight-knit and steeped in Southern values. Amy knew everyone who lived on her street; her neighbors were kind and trustworthy, and she knew that she could turn to any of them for help. Gender roles were strictly adhered to, and women were expected to make motherhood and domestic tasks appear effortless. Amy’s family owned a chain of convenience stores in town, playing a prominent role in the community. People knew Amy and her family, and Amy felt the pressure of representing her family and community in public. From a young age, she was hyper-focused on behaving well so as not to embarrass her family in any way.

In middle school, Amy started running, going out early in the morning or after school. She loved the sense of freedom and control over her body, and it became a lifelong habit. However, many of her memories from middle school were plagued by a fear and anxiety that she couldn’t quite place. The freedom and joy of childhood had evaporated and was replaced “by teenage neurosis and an insidious need for control” (31). She began staying later at school, determined to “work three times harder than everyone else” (31), and she was constantly afraid of being found “unworthy.”

After graduation, Amy attended the University of Virginia on a volleyball scholarship, where she continued running, even when her coach warned her that this habit was harming her game. Throughout college and her first years as a young professional in New York City, Amy maintained her scrupulous behavior, rarely drinking and never doing more than pretending to smoke if her friends passed a joint around. She dated, hoping that being “chosen” by a man would provide her with some of the external validation that she craved, but her love life was unsuccessful and even traumatic. Finally, she met John, a kind and loving man with whom she felt completely safe. They were married, and Amy felt like she could finally slow down and let her life begin.

Amy and John had four children, and Amy spent the next 10 years striving to be an excellent mother. When she wasn’t attending to her children, she trained for triathlons and started her own investment firm. Eventually, her body began to rebel against her breakneck pace. Sometimes, Amy felt as if her “body knew something that [she] didn’t” (70). She had panic attacks that were triggered by seemingly benign circumstances, and she often experienced back pain and hip pain, undergoing a number of surgeries. When a physical therapist suggested that she slow down and listen to her body, Amy inexplicably burst into tears.

Additionally, Amy’s daughters were nearing their teenage years, and their relationship was becoming strained. One evening, her youngest daughter complained that she felt “disconnected” from her mother, as if she didn’t really know her. Amy knew that there was something she needed to face, and she decided that she was finally tired of running. Because John once had a positive experience with psychedelic-assisted therapy, Amy decided to try a session.

Just moments into her first session, Amy recalled memories of sexual assault at the hands of her middle-school teacher, Mr. Mason. The revelation shocked her, but Amy also felt an intense sense of relief. She told her husband immediately after the session and spent the following days struggling to understand how she had repressed these memories for so long. Amy decided to pursue legal action against her abuser and hired a lawyer who began gathering information to build a case, including searching for other survivors. Meanwhile, Amy began sharing her story with her closest friends and family. She found the topic incredibly difficult to discuss, but she also found sharing to be therapeutic: a remedy for her shame and years of silence.

Amy believed that finding other survivors or anyone who remembered incriminating details about her abuser would help corroborate her memory so that others would be sure to believe her. She wanted her abuser to face legal consequences to set a good example for her daughters and other women everywhere. However, the case hit a wall when Amy’s legal team discovered that the statute of limitations on her allegations had expired. This was a blow, but Amy had no choice but to accept the reality. She decided that she wanted to move on, letting her trauma take up less space in her life.

Two years later, Amy learned that her old middle school was set to be demolished. She wasn’t sure that she was ready to return to the scene of her trauma, but she knew it was her last chance to see the school again and confirm her memories. While she was home in Texas, she arranged to have coffee with a former classmate, Claudia. Although Claudia and Amy had never been close, Amy vividly remembered loaning the other girl a dress for a school dance, and she suspected that Claudia might have been similarly abused by their teacher. Claudia denied any knowledge of Mr. Mason’s abuse but always remembered the kindness that Amy had shown her with the borrowed dress. Amy realized that Claudia was vivid in her memory not because of their shared trauma but because she reminded Amy that kindness was part of her “essential” self that the abuse hadn’t been able to dim.

Reflecting on this time in her life, Griffin comments that life is never perfect; it is complicated and messy, but even things that are ugly or inconvenient must be accepted. She asserts that everyone is perfect by virtue of being themselves, and denying certain parts of one’s self or one’s history is harmful to everyone.