Maybe it was the revelations from the first accusations against Harvey Weinstein, or the release of the president’s “grab ‘em by the pussy” recording. But sometime in the last two years, I decided to write down every time I could remember being sexually assaulted, threatened, or harassed.
I started in single digit childhood and counted nearly two dozen instances by the time I stopped counting at age 35.
From the teenage family friend who tried several times to have sex with me when I was seven but fortunately failed (a few years later when I told my mother who told his mother, nothing was said but they made me a bridesmaid at his wedding); the hand under my skirt on a crowded subway; the date that started pleasantly enough but quickly turned vicious and overpowering; the friend of my roommate who came by late one evening on the pretext that he’d left something in our home (when he wrapped a belt around his hands and said no one would hear me scream, I ran out of the house in my nightgown and woke up the neighbors); being invited to a “party” only to discover I was the only guest; to the boss whose open-mouthed advances I spurned who later punished me with a week-long suspension without pay; and the stranger who threatened to hurt me because I did not respond in a friendly enough manner when he tried flirting with me on the street; the instances piled up.
This week’s guilty verdict in the New York City Weinstein case has again brought up a flood of memories. Not so much the individual instances, but remembering my myriad reactions.
As a child I felt grateful and flattered for the attention from a teenage boy, even though I could sense something was wrong. Sometimes I felt fear. Sometimes I felt powerless and frustrated. Sometimes I felt angry, other times dismissed. Sometimes I blamed myself for what I must have said, or the way I was dressed or for putting myself in certain situations. Sometimes I resigned myself to what was happening, thinking that it was just part of life and would be over soon. Each time I got away without serious physical harm, I felt relieved and lucky. After each instance I felt smarter that I knew what to look out for to prevent a next time. But with every reaction I had made myself the cause.
These reactions are not at all unique to me. Women have been strategizing and rationalizing our safety in the world of men for millennia. Besides developing a heightened level of physical stress that over time feels normal, it messes with our minds, our self –worth, our spiritual sense of safety in almost irreparable ways.
For many years, I have been actively addressing the damage done to my psyche from all of these instances, and how it shows up in my dating life, my work life, my work as a leader, my friendships, my role as a mother, and most of all, how I see myself as a woman.
My studies with Pathways Institute, Landmark, Celebrating Women Understanding Men and the School of Womanly Arts, with therapy, yoga and meditation have helped me uncover the vibrant, confident, authentic, sensual and capable women I was born to be.
It’s a slow and deliberate path that I am still on, and it is not for the faint of heart. But the results continue to be revealing, stirring, rewarding and empowering. And I know that I will continue to uncover and nurture my own innocence, burnish my own light and step into my divine strength until my last breath.
