What a week to be going on the radio in my home territory for the first time. This is the week Time Magazine announced their Person of the Year. How smart of them to not choose one person but a vast array they are calling the Silence Breakers. It makes my heart flutter and my blood boil: Joy at the rising of this tide and Rage that SURPRISE, SURPRISE – this has been going on for centuries, folks. But I can handle it. I can handle the holding of two vastly different emotions at the same time – I’ve been doing that for as long as I can remember.
Take a moment and watch a great video about a wonderful, diverse array of women and men who’ve survived the range of sexual exploitation and abuse, Silence Breakers one and all.
I want to underscore the truth that the most important breaking of silence is survivors telling themselves the truth about their experience. That in and of itself is a powerful act of resistance, of self-acknowledgement and affirmation. Not everyone is ready or supported enough to tell others or go public or viral with their disclosure. And that is absolutely A-OK.
And just an aside about “disclosure” – it bothers me like crazy that everyone in the media says something like, “X woman has alleged…” or “It is alleged that Mr. X has sexually harassed…” When we come forward we are SAYING something, we are DISCLOSING something. To say we are alleging is to infer that we are asserting something without proof. When I disclose about the incest I experienced I am making something KNOWN, revealing the truth. Just sayin’.
Enough ranting. I want to spend most of my time reveling in how wonderful it is to end the year on the same note of recognition, the same anthem of resistance, the same harmonious uprising as the Women’s March on Washington gave us at the beginning of the year.
I’m told I need to have talking points for my radio interview. Some pithy well crafted sound bites to deliver to my interviewer in less than 30 seconds. Well…good luck, Jenson. Actually – I wish it were a TV show – like maybe with Ellen DeGeneres. Cause all I really want to do this week is dance. I can so easily imagine dancing into the audience with Ellen. Social change icon, Emma Goldman, said a century ago, “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” But I’ll be on the radio – so what’s the equivalent of dancing on the radio? Maybe I’ll ask Bill while he’s interviewing me.
Thank you for reading,
Donna