Marilyn Van Derbur
AUTHOR

Marilyn Van Derbur

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Marilyn Van Derbur was crowned Miss America and then graduated from the University of Colorado with Phi Beta Kappa honors. Marilyn chose motivational speaking as her career and was named “Outstanding Woman Speaker in America” after 30,000 questionnaires were sent to business and civic meeting planners asking whom they considered to be the outstanding speaker. For 16 years, she was the only woman guest lecturer for General Motors. Marilyn’s worst nightmare came true when she was 53. A newspaper reporter learned she was an incest survivor and the next morning it was a front page story in The Denver Post. Within weeks, over 3,000 men and women came forward in the greater Denver area for help and support. Marilyn immediately founded an organization called SUN (Survivor United Network). She contributed to and raised tens of thousands of dollars. Up to 500 people came to SUN each week for 35 different support groups. Everything was free. When People magazine put her picture on the cover, there was a national outpouring from survivors who turned to her for help and support. She opened the door for tens of thousands of sexual abuse survivors to also speak the words, many for the first time. During the past 20 years, Marilyn has spoken in over 500 cities. She never leaves the room until men and women have personally said everything they want and need to say to her. The culmination of Marilyn’s work is her book, Miss America By Day. Using her experiences as the scaffolding and cutting edge research as the foundation, she shares knowledge and insights through stories that are riveting and instructive in her book: Miss America By Day. Of the 1,900 books entered, Miss America By Day won a prestigious first place Writer’s Digest award. It is now in its 9th printing and is graded a 5 star – the highest a book can be rated - on Amazon. It also received an international “media award” for the best-written book on dissociation by a professional association that networks internationally with top clinicians, educators and researchers.
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