This story originally aired on April 16, 2016.
For some people, home is not a place of safety and comfort. When writer Anastasia Selby was growing up around the Seattle suburbs and Olympia, home was a dangerous place of neglect and abuse. As a young girl facing some tragic circumstances, Selby often ran away from home.
Selby drew the strength to do that from what might seem like an unlikely place: the novels of acclaimed author, Judy Blume.
Titles such as "Are You There God? It's Me Margaret" and "Tales Of A Fourth Grade Nothing" riveted young Selby. In those kid's books, she found the confidence to escape her troubled home life and hack it on her own.
