Strange Sally Diamond

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of anti-gay bias, racism, ableism, misogyny, kidnapping, imprisonment, rape, sexual abuse, physical abuse, psychological abuse, and suicide.

Strange Sally Diamond explores the life-long impact of trauma on individuals. Sally Diamond is strange precisely because she has experienced trauma. Though she has repressed her trauma, this repression is as dangerous as the trauma itself. Having been abused for years as a child, Sally enters society as a victim. Although Sally is raised by two loving parents who adopt and care for her, the past continues to haunt her. Sally has a difficult time relating to people and distrusts others because she is aware that her differences make other people uncomfortable. As a result, she prefers to be alone. Sally endures secondhand revived trauma when she reads her father’s notes about her biological mother and starts seeing similarities between her own self-destructive, violent behavior and her mother’s trauma. Sally goes through therapy to help her remove herself from that behavior and find a happier way of living, but the trauma she has fought to work through reappears through her fear of Conor Geary and is manifested in the disappointing betrayal of