Virginia Woolf once said, “Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.” Woolf lost many of her illusions as a young child through instances of trauma. The first of these came when her half-brothers, George and Gerald Duckworth, began to SA her. In her personal essays, Woolf revealed that the abuse occurred from the time she was six up until she moved out of her family home at the age of 23. While this abuse most likely prompted many of her struggles with mental illness, her mother’s death in 1895 appeared to be what solidified them. Soon after, at the age of 13, Woolf had her first mental breakdown. #history