This is part of my story.
Normally on International Women’s Day I reflect on all the amazing women in my family who were trailblazers in their own right. I had a great grandmother who was a suffragette, another great grandma who immigrated from Ireland by herself at the age of 13, a stepmom who paved her own way out of adversity, a mother who rose to the top of her field and has impacted so many lives through her work, and a plethora of aunts, cousins, girlfriends, and female coworkers who inspire me every day.
This year, I am channeling their strength to share my story and bring awareness to the fact that despite how far we’ve come, it is still not safe to be a woman in America.
1 out of 4 women in the US will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. 1 out of 3 women in the US will experience physical violence from a partner.
These statistics are staggering. This means that if you have a sister, a mother, an aunt, a daughter that statistically, one of those women will experience sexual violence. It means that if you have a wife, a friend, a niece that statistically, one of them will be physically abused by someone they love.
I want to share my story because I believe the only way to make this a safe place to be female is by talking about it. We need men to be our allies — to teach their sons that no woman owes them anything. We need men to call out other men when they are being aggressive, inappropriate, and dangerous. And all of us need to stop blaming the victims of sexual assault and domestic violence because no one asks or deserves to be violated, bullied, or abused. Whether they are wearing a tight dress or sweatpants, whether they flirted with or ignored the guy at the bar, whether they are a waitress, a lawyer, a teacher, a stay at home mom, or a stripper — the victim should never be the one who is blamed.
My story will make many of you uncomfortable, but the burden of violence, of shame, of fear that survivors of sexual and domestic violence have endured on their own should not be ours alone to bear.
Not the type…
I am a survivor of both sexual assault and domestic abuse. I was abused by a partner during college and I have also been harassed and assaulted several other times throughout my life. Normally when I tell people this, one of the first responses I get is “you don’t seem like someone who would let that happen.” This simple response implies so much for me. It implies that there is a type of woman that people expect to be assaulted. It implies that because of how I look, where I come from, or who I am that I don’t fit that profile. That reaction also stirs up renewed feelings of shame inside me, that I was somehow responsible for being assaulted and abused, that I let it happen to me.
No one asks to be raped. No one deserves to be abused.
I think of myself as confident, smart, successful, vocal, strong and yet, I was abused for years. I come from a long line of strong, independent women and yet, I was assaulted. I have an amazing father, who respects me and taught me to respect and believe in myself and yet, I was bullied by my ex boyfriend for nearly a decade.
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The hidden parts
I never told anyone about the abuse I suffered at my boyfriend’s hands. I kept it secret for years, and only after a decade (and therapy) do I now feel somewhat safe talking about it.
Our relationship started out sweet and innocent. Two outsiders from a small town in Michigan who found each other. We could talk for hours and we both had big, creative ambitions. The abuse started slowly, so slowly that I can’t pinpoint when it began. It started small with degrading comments about my appearance, about my ambitions, about my family, about my friends. When we moved in together, he became controlling and sometimes physically violent with me. Eventually, I lost touch with nearly all my friends, walked on eggshells every second of every day, pulled away from my family, and learned to cry silently.
I thought I loved him and I convinced myself that the good times outweighed the bad while he was slowly convincing me that I wasn’t worthy of anyone’s love. I stayed with him for nearly 8 years until finally one day, I saw him and our relationship for what it was. When I decided to leave, I arranged for one of my coworkers to call me 30 minutes after I would arrive home and that if I didn’t answer, to call the cops. I was terrified that he was going to try to kill me, or himself, or our pets. Luckily, I was able to leave safely.
When I reflect back on those years, I want to say that it feels like someone else’s life. I want to say that I can’t believe I stayed, that I don’t know what I was thinking. I want to say that because I want disassociate the person I am now from the person I was then. I want to say that because I hate this part of my story and wish that I could carve it out of my past…but I can’t. It is a dark part of my life that will forever be intertwined with the bright moments of art school, of living in NYC, of traveling abroad, of becoming an adult.
One of the hardest things about coming to terms with being a survivor of domestic abuse is that it will always be part of my story and part of who I am. No matter how different I am today, no how successful I become, no matter how happy I am, I was once a victim.
Call it by its name
I also want to share my story because I believe part of the reason so many women remain silent about sexual assault is because they don’t want to acknowledge that it happened. We don’t call an assault an assault for a lot of reasons. Maybe we don’t want to make a big deal about something that we were able to brush off quickly. Maybe we don’t want to report an incident when we know we won’t be believed. Maybe we don’t want to count those “smaller” encounters as assault because they happen so often they don’t feel like they should count. Maybe we don’t want to claim it as an assault because we don’t want to feel like victims. Maybe we don’t want to relive the details of a terrifying and humiliating experience only to be told nothing can be done.
I guarantee you that nearly every woman you know has been unwillingly grabbed, touched, or fondled at least once. I also guarantee that nearly every woman has brushed off that unwanted touch or giggled it away to avoid a scene or an escalation. We need to start recognizing these incidents as assaults because if we leaved them unnamed and unknown, we will never be able to show how regularly this happens.
I was assaulted when I was 15. It is only in the last couple of years that I have been willing to recognize it as such. A friend of mine dropped me off after seeing a movie and grabbed me without permission. It happened so quickly and I was so shocked that I didn’t know what to do. I simply said good night and went to bed. I felt awkward and unsafe around him from then on, but we had a shared group of friends so I just moved on and never mentioned it.
I was also harassed and assaulted at my job during college. I was the first girl to be hired in three years at the Starbucks I worked at. During the morning rush, I was always partnered with the same guy on the espresso machine. It started with him standing a little too close to me when we were working together. It made me uncomfortable, but I really wanted to make friends and I really need the job so I didn’t say anything. Then, he began making comments about pretty girls like me or talking about how good my hair smelled or how nice I looked. He would “accidentally” grab my hand then he started running his fingers down my leg when he bent down to get more milk out the fridge or he would put his hands on my hip as he reached around me.
I finally got up the courage to tell my manager. He answered by telling me it wasn’t a big deal. My manager asked me if I really wanted to “make a thing” about this. “You know, he takes care of his mom and family, right?” So I let it go.
A few weeks later, he snuck up on me while I was changing downstairs before my shift started. He pushed me against the wall and tried to kiss me. I told my manager again what happened. He told me to change before I get to work so it that wouldn’t happen. This person continued to harass me until I was eventually transferred to a new store and he was promoted.
The burden to bear
I hate that part of my identity is that I am a survivor of assault. I hate thinking of myself as a victim of abuse. For years I couldn’t handle the shame and stigma associated with it. I haven’t talked about it outside of a very few close friends because it still makes me feel small, weak, scared and embarrassed. But, the strong women who paved the way before me and all the amazing young women I know need me — and all the other women who share these experiences — to speak out.
We need to share our stories, not to normalize the abuse, but to shine a light on how common this is. We need to share our stories because we need everyone to know that you can be successful, happy, healthy, and come from a good family and still be a survivor of abuse. We need to share our stories to show that you can be a strong, intelligent, resilient woman who still carries the shame and pain of an assault. We need to share our stories so all the other women who are survivors know they are not alone. We need to share our stories so we can learn from each other in hope that the next woman‘s survival and healing experience is easier.
My Lessons Learned
I am not the violence I suffered. This has been the hardest lesson for me to learn because there is so much shame associated with being a victim of sexual violence and domestic abuse. Because part of me always feels complicit in the abuse and that experience is a heavy burden to bear. Moana (yes, the Disney movie) has helped me cope with this.
*Spoiler alert * There’s a moment at the very end of the movie where Moana realizes that Te Kā the lava monster and Te Fiti the goddess of life are the same person. Moana understands that Te Fiti transformed into this raging, angry, destructive force when her heart was stolen. Moana turns and slowly walks to Te Kā, singing a reprise of the main theme. Right before she hands her the heart, she sings: “They have stolen the heart from inside you, but this does not define you.” Yes, the violence I suffered will always be part of me, but it does not need to define me.
If you have a woman in your life who is or was in an abusive relationship, and got out — they need you. If they were able to leave, that means they shattered their entire fragile world to escape. It means that it got so bad, that they were willing to leave everything to save themselves. Even if they pushed you away or lost touch with you, please don’t hold it against them. They were just trying to survive another day. They need your help, support, and love without judgment to rebuild their lives and rediscover their identity.
Even though I had pretty much pushed my entire family away, they welcomed me with open arms when I left. I had friends who opened up their home to me so I had a safe place to stay, no questions asked. Their support and love at that time meant the world to me.
If you are in an abusive relationship and are ready to leave, please ask for help. You don’t and shouldn’t do that alone. There are resources out there to help you leave safely.
The statistics are staggering.
1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted. 1 in 3 will be the victim of domestic abuse. And those numbers only reflect the women who report their abuse and recognize their assaults as such. But how many more are like me? How many more teenagers are being touched or date raped and are too ashamed to say anything? How many more college students are being harassed, groped, and assaulted on the dance floor, at the restaurant they work at, or in their dorm they live in and aren’t saying anything? And how many more women are privately, quietly living in their own personal hell with a partner who is hurting them?
A third of our population lives in not just fear, but near certainty, that their bodies will be violated and their lives will be threatened. Your daughters, your sisters, your mothers, your friends, your aunts, your nieces, your grandmothers, your coworkers. All the women you know are living in a world where violence against them is pretty much a guarantee. So on this Women’s Day, recognize the women in your lives for their contributions, thank those that paved the way before them, and acknowledge the work that still needs to be done.