mandated reporter
Before I share something with you, I encourage you to check in with yourself.
Notice if you’re unsettled, frozen with despair. Maybe you’re tired, numb, or none of the above. Maybe it’s hard to know how your body feels.
I invite you to consider finding a comfortable place, in a chair, on a couch or bed, where much of your body is supported. Holding a cushion or rolled blanket to your belly and allowing your head to be supported will invite more ease. Can you send the message to your body that, at this moment, it is safe?
If emotional safety, through your body, is a new concept for you, take it slow. Imagine you’re offering safety with your grounded presence to an overwhelmed child. Exhale, long and slow.
This is a trigger warning for childhood sexual abuse. There will be absolutely nothing explicit. Still proceed only if your body and soul has the capacity for this heart conversation about my way forward as a survivor and self-designated, mandated reporter.
The imprint from the loss of bodily autonomy through sexual assault cannot be underestimated or erased. It is a permanent tattoo, its ink leaked into my bones and reminds me that I did survive despite the devastating impact on my nervous system, my ability to trust, and the fury when my pain is minimized or dismissed as “too much” or an “overreaction”.
In the midst of all the loss, my voice survived.
It survived so it could confront the following:
The psychological warfare method of dumping of the Epstein files - keep us horrified, and too angry, in despair, or avoidant of it all, to notice that the revolution has started
The recognition of the worldwide networks of deviance and denial
The control and violent oppression that the entire western civilization was founded on
The centering of the comfort of men, particularly white men, on the backs of Indigenous peoples, Black, and Brown humans, women, children, the vulnerable
And the coming to light of those who neglect their ethical duty to be mandated reporters, regardless of their occupation
All of this is a dark specter suffocating abuse survivors in real time. Like me.
My day-to-day capacity to deal with:
Memories that arrive as hauntings
Frayed nerves. Fear episodes.
Insomnia.
Attachments and addictions.
And a white-hot rage that could fuel the sun.
fluctuates and the desire to self-medicate looms large.
Even with a football field full of documented proof of the atrocities committed by the rich and ridiculous, there is still no accountability. Yet! I and the young child I once was, grieve that there will never be any justice for us, or millions of others on every square foot of this planet who have suffered abuse.
It’s like having a duct-tape-grade bandaid being ripped off each day to keep the original wound bleeding out.
In the midst of this grief, a friend gave me a gift of herbal astrology cards. I pulled my first card from the fresh deck to get the Milk Thistle, represented by the peaceful warrior.
A gentle, cloaked monk figure is armed with word-swords, cutting when necessary and calming when needed. The thistles in her hand, with sharp and stunning blooms, are a known soothing remedy for melancholy yet embody the tenacity of a badger.
Called forth my inner peaceful monk who has a badger's ferocity, these ideals are guiding me through this dark timeline and will be my armour for the revolution.
Peace
Prioritizing my own peace. Recognizing the physical, mental, and emotional erosion of chronic people-pleasing and choosing my peace over the constant comfort of others. Rejecting self-abandonment that comes from putting everyone else first. Offering heart-soothing peace to the child I once was who did whatever it took to survive.
Action
Being aware of the nutrition, exposures, and activities that ground my nervous system and those that don’t.
Gathering with thoughtful, awakened, healing women. Being conscious of the interactions I have with children and women to ensure I’m not continuing the cycle of control and oppression with careless utterances.
Noticing when I am centering my life around the comfort of men over my own peace and encouraging other women to recognize the same.
Ordering age-appropriate books about consent, bodily autonomy, and self-awareness of the inappropriate attention or expectations for family members with young children.
Learning
Learning about what organizational action is needed to support the world embracing a matriarchal model. Working with the women in my life to develop circles of care, encouraging each other to have difficult conversations from a place of love, learning to stop giving beyond our capacity, learning to ask for help, and resisting the urge to be ultimately responsible for the healing of others. Community care over competition, control, and capitalism.
Unlearning the racism woven into the fabric of everything I’ve ever learned. Recognizing that I have greatly benefited from simply being born white. Learning from Indigenous, Black, and Brown women who have carried this torch for centuries before I was born. They are survivors with word-swords. Offering deep respect for their courage, creativity, and teachings. Celebrating them. Amplifying them. Listening, and accepting, with humility, when I get it wrong.
Defueling the patriarchy. Defunding organizations of oligarchs and billionaires - moving slower, choosing rest over manic productivity, consuming less, buying local, focusing on gathering over giving and receiving. Rejecting the premise that women, children, and the vulnerable are only valuable for their ability to provide comfort, convenience, capital, and pleasure for men.
Calling on men to recognize how they benefit from their silence in the face of these atrocities knowing that most women and children in their lives have suffered or will suffer abuse. Your silence keeps your path clear but makes sure the path for the women and children in your life is thorny and full of quicksand. And for the men who see themselves as protectors of the vulnerable, who do you think you need to protect women and children from?
Rejecting any religious community that doesn’t realize how they are complicit in the patriarchy of control and oppression, and address the damage done by Christian nationalism, the purity movement, spiritual warfare talk to distract from the evil in the pulpits and pews, the James Dobson ideology of abusive parenting, and their silence. Silence only serves the system.
Support
Within the limits of my capacity as a neuro-glitchy, highly sensitive, hermit-level introvert, I commit to listening to survivors. I don’t have the skills for organizing protests nor do I have a large audience or funds to launch big actions.
I have words. And a broken heart held together by the belief that words matter. If they can give one survivor hope, allow one survivor to know that they’ve been heard, and believed, then words can help point us the way home.
To the survivors:
It was not your fault. It was never your fault. You deserved safety. I’m sorry you weren’t protected. You deserve to take up space. You deserve to be here.
You survived. Your words survived. Your words matter.
In order to have the capacity to support others, we must choose ourselves, first.
We can choose peace-laced, justice-rage words and actions, rooted in care, even at the cost of the comfort of others.
We can choose to prepare for a world of women-led community care.
We can choose the children. The women. The survivors.
We can choose to be mandated reporters.
May you find your words, may you find peace in your body, your mind, and in your community.
(YouTube version - https://youtu.be/jJG0xcBgDmc)
