LOOKING is never easy
I want to say this out loud
It has been extremely difficult (still is) for me to take a deep, unflinching dive into all the horror and human disgrace surrounding what I now understand as the “rape academy.” I didn’t arrive at this understanding lightly. I had to force myself - again and again - to look. To keep looking when every instinct in me wanted to turn away. To read the actual texts. To sit with the documents. To listen, fully, to the testimonies. Not just intellectually, but in my body.
And I didn’t just look; I felt. I let it land. I let it move through me. Over and over.
What it has done, what it continues to do, is strip away any lingering self-doubt and confusion about what happened to me, and what is still happening to me within a system that conditions, distorts, and silences. A system many of us are only just beginning to truly see.
There is something almost indescribable about the moment you realize: I was right.
That quiet, persistent voice inside me that kept saying, “Something is way off here.” It wasn’t paranoia. It wasn’t oversensitivity. It was clarity trying to break through conditioning.
I was not crazy.
I was not selfish for not wanting to share my body during certain seasons, certain moments, certain internal “no’s.” My body is mine. Not situationally mine. Not negotiably mine. Mine!!!
I was not cold-hearted or uncaring for stepping back from doing the emotional heavy lifting-especially when it was expected, assumed, and rarely reciprocated. There is nothing noble about abandoning yourself to carry what someone else refuses to hold.
I was not a bitch, (well, maybe sometimes 😉) for shutting down conversations that demanded I over-explain, over-justify, and over-translate things that were never mine alone to articulate. Especially when the other person was unwilling to do even the smallest amount of self-examination.
I was not trying to position myself “above” anyone. What was actually happening was that my understanding, and my willingness to reclaim my power was confronting something uncomfortable. And that discomfort was misread as threat and hierarchy.
I was not pushy. I was responding to defensiveness that left no room for dialogue, no room for nuance, no room for me. And I refused to be erased one more time!
And maybe most importantly: I was not wrong for changing. For seeing more. For refusing to keep participating in something that required my silence, my shrinking, or my self-betrayal.
If anything, what I am now beginning to understand is that every moment I resisted, every boundary I set, every time I said “no” or “this isn’t right”, that was me staying connected to something true. Even when I didn’t yet have the language for it. Even when I was told, directly or indirectly, that I was the problem.
I wasn’t the problem.
I was responding, in the only ways I knew how at the time, to something that was deeply off.
And now, I don’t have to second-guess that anymore.
I wish to name a few people who have been incredibly instrumental in this awakening process. I could not have gone this deep without you. You were/are a steady voice when mine began to shake. You were my backbone, when the old structures attempted to hold. You were my courage when my body shook with terror.
✨ Prajna O'Hara ✨, Dina Honour , Paul Overton, Jenna Gallarzo , Sophie Strand, Letters from a Feminist, Alexandra Winteraven (they), Elayne Kalila and there are so many others.
*Whenever the woman refuses to be dehumanized, she is said to intimidate the male.” ✨ Prajna O'Hara ✨
*Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female-whenever she behaves as a human being, she is said to imitate the man. Simone de Beauvoir
*I am not free while any woman’s unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. Audre Lorde
*Until it is no man; it is all men - a man on a video
*The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. -Audre Lorde
Powerful words, Lila. Thank you.
looks like popcorn in a bowl