SINGAPORE - As a child-rights activist in Singapore, Sofia Abdullah deals every day with horrific cases of abuse. Few know, however, of her own.

Between the ages of eight and 14, Sofia (not her real name) was sexually abused by her grandfather.

The shame she felt was so great that she could not tell anyone, not even after his death in her late teens. It took her another 15 years to open up to her mother about the abuse.

Now, in her memoir The Years Of Forgetting, she is ready to tell the world.

"I've seen other survivors do it and I think it was cathartic for them," says Sofia, now in her 40s.

Her friend, who was also a survivor of abuse, died recently. "I wish I could have told her that I knew what it felt like to tell your story, to see it written down on paper."

The memoir was published by Epigram Books under a pseudonym to protect her family's privacy. The divorcee, who is single, says Sofia is the name she would have given her daughter, had she been able to have one.

Memory is a tricky thing for survivors of sexual abuse, who often question if events happened the way they remember them.

"You dissociate," says Sofia. "It's so traumatic, your brain shuts off." Though she reckons the abuse occurred over six years, she only recalls four incidents.

She did keep a journal in which she wrote about what happened to her. As a child, she thought and wrote predominantly in Malay; it was only in her teens that she switched to English, which she now thinks was an effort to distance herself from her trauma.

In 2015, when she decided she wanted to write the memoir, she revisited her journal. It was hard, she says. "Flood-inducing. Tears and tears. But I just felt that it was something that I needed to see."

The repercussions of the abuse have made themselves felt all the way into her adult life. She questioned if she, a child, had led her abuser on. She became anorexic and struggles with sexual intimacy, which she believes contributed to the breakdown of her marriage.

She grew emotionally distant from her family, especially her mother. "I think I forgave my grandfather, ironically, before I forgave my mum," she says.

"You expect your parents to be your protectors. It's not necessarily fair play, because she had absolutely no idea. There was this chasm between me and her."

Her mother was devastated when she found out about the abuse. "I just want her to understand," says Sofia. "I think a lot of survivors want to be loved unconditionally, because growing up, we never felt safe."

The book is constructed around the phases of the moon, a literary device inspired by Eleanor Catton's 2013 Booker Prize-winning novel The Luminaries, which makes use of astrology in its structure.

The moon was often a source of solace for Sofia when she was lonely or could not talk to anyone about what she was going through.

Even today, it is not easy for her to revisit the past. The last few weeks, she says, have been emotionally wrenching for her as she put the final touches on the book.

"I go through every single proof as it comes back and it triggers me. I've had crying episodes for weeks."