Opening our mouths to the light. Narrating lived experiences.
After writing a book many years ago, after speaking with people not directly related to this and watching the stars tonight, I am ready to write again. After 7 years, I think it’s time to close the circle again, to spiral discourse the way we’re meant to. Thoughts and feelings have been swelling in me for some time, and I’ve felt scared to write again. Yet, it’s time. It’s the season of victory.
Thoughts are born and need to be manifested through our hands and words when deeply inspired.
I have been reading and studying and writing PhD stuff. Yet I am holding my story, the stories of victories I read, and the voices of those I listen to in the flesh.
Personally, writing in a public space isn't comfortable, but I've found that I'm not alone with this feeling of vulnerability.
Writing something new will be a whole new layer shed, but this time one of pure victory. When I wrote a book previously, I went deep and shed a layer that was old, crusty, and too small. It glided sometimes, yet mostly flaked off me...you know what it is like when you have an itchy scab that won't fall off, don't you?
Tender in spots. Difficult not to pick the whole thing off too soon, aware that too much picking could tear too-new skin that might bleed and undo previous healing.
This time around, the writing is different. The energy is purely dynamic and shifting like I'm alchemising words.
And I'm ready to fight these demons of oppression in the arena.
I feel a warrioress. I want to get in the arena and banish the demons who hurt children, tear apart families, destroy our cherished communities. I don't care the size, weight, ugliness of the beast. I've been getting ready for this for years. I am ready to rip flesh and fight for victory. (I’m speaking metaphorically and literally, not physically.)
I never realized before the feelings of why a warrioress might jump into the arena. What compels her? Now I know. It isn't that she wants to lose herself. She isn't a masochist. She doesn't wish to hurt herself. She doesn't even like pain. She’s shit-scared.
Yet she's learned how to transform and harness this great energy to her benefit because she doesn't care about any of that anymore. The plan to win is greater than any fear she has experienced. And she knows the secret: she has already won.
That's the great secret hiding in plain sight.
She knows she already has won, has victory because she knows her demons' weaknesses. She's honed her skills for years. She has watched, observed, learned their patterns. Hunted them like a mountain lion patrolling her territory. She’s trained herself by patrolling at precisely the exact times according to their rituals. She knows when these demons eat, sleep, shit, scratch their demonic genitalia.
And she knows her territory like the back of her paws. She’s already claimed their territory. She’s been pissing around the edges of her territory for years. They’ve gotten used to her scent as if it was theirs as she’s marked the areas precisely in the same places at exactly the same times and normalized her scent.
She knows exactly when she will attack. They don't know they are on borrowed land, and even borrowed time. They don't know, or perhaps don't care. Unaware of her power and her disgust towards them. She is their serial stalker. Keeping her enemies close, so close. And she's planned her ferocious pounce for years.
A clever cat.
I have a picture of a demon in my living room. The demon was a cartoon I bought and framed for my husband when I visited Chile. Then I realized over time the symbolism of having a picture of a demon on the wall in the living room. The significance occurred to me after looking at this demon day in, day out that I'd rather know where they are and watch them, than be oblivious, ignore them or have them watch me unknowingly. I really understand now the importance of keeping our enemies closest. About watching them like a serial stalker. So I stare into the eyes of that demon. I might even growl at it one day.
And the arena I talk about is a political one, which may be the type that I feel the most disturbed by because the political is personal and vice versa. This battle is not nearly as much within me anymore but it certainly feels it. As do the injustices I see. I've considered this.
The arena is political because the more I read about what I research, the more social structures may be as traumatizing as the abuse itself. And the dynamics that create the environments where abuse occurs is as essential to change (more?) as working with the people. And this makes sense because the majority of the voices have not been heard. They have been buried in 'scientific' research, quantifiable data listing pages of deficits. Minimal focus on the stories that drip off the end of a survivor's tongue that share the triumph that can only be heard through connections and focusing on her strengths. And stepping aside with oppressive preconceived ideas of how she should feel, what she should be like, what disorders she will have. Phewt.
These oppressive messages have been circulating for five decades in western research and still are predominant. I will also credit the research outlining strengths, albeit often as an add on to a deficit streaked paper. The amount of international research that still focuses on deficits compared to strengths in this topic is enormous in comparison. This tells me that this research is still what is infiltrated to our professionals as 'gold standard' knowledge. Because it dominates, does that mean it is right? Is this what history has taught us?
And there is a lot we can change in our communities from a governmental level to decrease the risks to our children from experiencing abuse. The government also have access to this research. Researchers have explored this from many angles, including why perpetrators offend. Yet the prevalence rates of sexual violence have not decreased worldwide over more than three decades. Thus it is time to spin a new yarn, dear governments. The old yarn is crusty and isn't working. Better yet, how about we tell the truth: The knowledge and wisdom we seek is already in ancient wisdom, in existing circles of discourse that have preceded the yarn of lies. The answers are in the people. We don't need government step-ins. We need them to move aside because they are the perpetuating problem.
Therefore, I fight in the arena, showing my scars, wounds healing from previous fights, half-naked, dirty, bruised because I fight for my little girl who was abused and with the knowledge that this could have been avoided. I fight for the truth for children and families being hurt by this avoidable trauma that exists because of oppressive power structures. And the deficit-based language that holds people down and keeps people from using their voices by disclosing (witnesses or victims), confronting the truth out of fear of what this means about them, foretold in discoloured paintings of murky brushstrokes that have been plastered clumsily across the old canvas.
Our powers that be could do a lot more. They could move their assets aside and let the people take over. Yet they won't. So for me, this means it is time to use voice alchemy. A mix of beautiful victorious voices raising their high pitched screams in the collective strength of their lived experiences. Hair raising screams. Ear piercing battle screeches. Shrieks that split rocks in half. Yet I foresee the sounds will drip off their lips like the water of a gushing stream. Or, perhaps, rolling melodic waves that rhythmically push and pull back?
It is time to share lived experiences of power and pain because these voices will create change where government machines will not and cannot. It is time to be the sparrows soaring across the fields in full flight together, shifting and weaving our wing patterns together, under, over. Over the cornfields knowing our patterns, trusting our intuition, soaring at full speed and height.
We are strongest when we lift our voices together and open our mouths to the truth, open our mouths to the light.