Shirin Ariff’s empowering and heartbreaking memoir tells the story of how she experienced and survive trauma and abuse. When she re-married her second husband and moved to Canada, she was kept as a slave in her own home and endured her husband’s abuse. She hopes to show hope with her writing to other victims, learn more about her journey below.

Hi Shirin, thank you for discussing your memoir, The Second Wife, with us. Please tell us about yourself, where you are from and what your book is about. What inspired you to write it?

Hello! I was born in Kolkata, India and live in Toronto, Canada. I am a proud mother of four beautiful children, an award winning author, an inspirational speaker and women’s empowerment coach. After braving immigration to Canada and surviving cancer, I committed to helping women find their inner strength and become their own guiding force. My book is a memoir with a bit of self-help activities to make it interactive for the readers. There are several reasons for writing this book. I wanted to be heard. I wanted to leave a legacy of no abuse for my children. I wanted to be the voice of all those silently suffering women who are going through what I went through. I wanted the men to know the impact on us women when they hurt us.