Take Back The Night is tonight. It is an incredibly powerful to march, stand, and listen to each other’s experiences. It’s healing, empowering, and an important experience for many survivors and allies. But, processing everything that happens, from the survivor speak outs, performances, the clothesline project, and the act of marching together is necessary. We will be handing out programs at the rally with a couple strategies for self-care. These are suggestions for things you can use or do if you’re having challenging feelings. It’s normal to have a variety of feelings like anger, sadness, hopelessness, hope, or power after an event like this. It is important to acknowledge these feelings and to take care of yourself. Just a reminder, if you are feeling overwhelmed there are people that can and want to help. At the rally, there will be Advocacy Center Advocates wearing pink armbands that can help you if you’re working through some overwhelming feelings. You can also call our 24-Hour Hotline: 607-277-5000 or the Suicide Crisis Hotline: 607-272-1616 This past year, the quote by Audre Lorde in Bursts of Light has been on my mind. “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” This statement is incredible. We live in a world where some people are given advantages that protect their health, safety, education and some people have to march in the streets to get others to recognize their humanity. Taking care of yourself and giving yourself time to process and heal isn’t self-indulgence. Self-care isn’t about being happy, it is about finding a way to exist in a world that does not want some people to exist. And when that happens, it is self-preservation. And that self-preservation is an act of warfare. In a piece reflecting on Bursts of Light, Sara Ahmed comes up with a definition of what self-care is, “Self-care: that can be an act of political warfare. In directing our care towards ourselves we are redirecting care away from its proper objects, we are not caring for those we are supposed to care for; we are not caring for the bodies deemed worth caring about. And that is why in queer, feminist and anti-racist work self-care is about the creation of community, fragile communities, assembled out of the experiences of being shattered. We reassemble ourselves through the ordinary, everyday and often painstaking work of looking after ourselves; looking after each other. This is why when we have to insist, I matter, we matter, we are transforming what matters. Women’s lives matter; black lives matter; queer lives matter; disabled lives matter; trans lives matter; the poor; the elderly; the incarcerated, matter.” To read more of her reflection on Audre Lorde’s often restated quote, please follow this link. Below, I’ve listed a couple suggestions for self-care. This isn’t an exhaustive list. Self-care looks different for everyone. There is no one way path to healing. As long as we are deliberately and intentionally choose to put our well being first, even if it’s just for a little bit each day, we are fighting against injustice. Here are the suggestions from the self-care cards handed out at the rally. Talk- Find friends, family or other support people to share your feelings with Laugh- Identify activities and people that make you feel good and happy Eat Healthy- making healthy meal choices can help us to feel good about ourselves and our bodies Relax- Make an effort to take a walk, a bath, do yoga or meditate; even for a few minutes Focus on the good- Work to highlight the positives, which will help to identify active solutions as problems arise Ask for help! If you are feeling overwhelmed there are people that can & want to help! For more readings on self-care, please take a look at the posts below: Self-Care and Social Justice Work Practicing Radical Self-Love: Why You Need Self Care the Most When it Seems Impossible An Interactive Self-Care Guide For Black Women, Self Care is a Radical Act 5 Tips for Self-Care in a Culture That Glorifies Stress Take Back The Night marches will leave: Ithaca College -- Textor Ball at 6:15pm Cornell -- Ho Plaza at 6:30pm Community March -- GIAC at 301 W. Court Street at 6:45pm The Rally will begin at 7pm at the Bernie Milton Pavilion! ASL interpreters will be available at the rally. We will also have shirts for sale from a sliding scale of $12-20
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I take back the night, day, afternoon, morning. I take back my life. My body. My mind. My soul. As a survivor of lifelong domestic violence, I dissociated to escape my trauma-filled childhood reality of witnessing abuse. I internalized the toxic notion that feeling powerful requires domination and control, foundational elements of toxic masculinity, and I am currently in the process of detoxifying my soul of it. I witnessed my alcoholic father emotionally and verbally abuse my mother and watched my mother, a hypochondriac, retreat in her domestic shell away from him. I used to underestimate my childhood trauma with sayings along the lines of, “Other people have it worse.” and “I wasn’t sexually abused.” as an effort to minimize my deep-seated pain. Only recently have I gotten in touch with my childhood triggers: aggressive body language, angry tones, doors slamming, certain smells. I take back my life in order to shatter this toxic cycle. I embrace the divine femininity that has always been inside of me and feel it dance alongside my evolving masculinity. I now accept help and freely ask for it when I am triggered (this can’t be stressed enough!) I also resist the urge to feel entitled to people's’ bodies, time, and space; men can always do better in this regard. Boundaries are key to living a feminist life. Along with domestic violence trauma, I grew up as a rural femme queer child with no LGBTQ role models to look up to and I felt extremely ostracized. I felt isolated from other boys because of extreme childhood bullying and always trusted girls and women easier. This gender dynamic dovetails into my present adulthood life: I have to fight identity-based shame every single day. I have to remind myself that there's nothing wrong with me, that I am worthy simply by existing. That my femininity is a gift from God. That my queerness makes me who I am and that I am proud. I remind myself everyday that I am proud to be who I am. I carve happiness out of trauma and deep pain because I deserve love and smiles, just like everyone on Earth. Bullying can spark severe trust issues in adults; assuming good intentions and good will can be extremely difficult for harshly bullied youth like me. It can engender extreme paranoia with multiple triggers of childhood bullying that affect people well into their adulthoods. For me, I have a strong sense of justice because of my extreme bullying. I don't want anyone else to go through that again. No one should. I want to trust men and create fulfilling relationships with them but my trust issues with boys stemming from my childhood bullying restricts my ability sometimes. It's an everyday struggle. But I will never give up. This is why I take back my life through my story. My story is my truth. My story is also the story of countless other LGBTQ kids in rural towns struggling to locate their identities, locate their allies, locate their safe support systems. To conclude on a positive note, I am so grateful for my sisters and my community. Y’all are helping me take back my life. Thank you, Vanesa and Sandra. We are the Power of Three. You two are the reason I got through high school. Thank you my high school friends, to my badass all-girls volleyball team. You know who you are. Thank you to my bestest of friends. Thank you, Mom. And yes, thank you Dad. My healing centers forgiveness and I must forgive in order to move on. I take back the night through forgiving myself. I attached a poem of mine from my blog queerasaverb.wordpress.com: I read somewhere once that almost anywhere inside, a spider is at least six feet away from you at all times. We know they’re there, tucked in the walls, hiding. But when they reveal themselves and perch on our windows and bathroom floors, we scream, run away, and stomp them to death. Spiders actually do more good in households than harm, killing our unwanted pests. Why do we let irrational fear control us? Trauma is every spider on earth. Ubiquitous. Hidden in the shadows. Waiting to be visible but feared or murdered when it shows its hairy body. Even if we don’t want to acknowledge it, it’s always there. Always The Clothesline Project was started by a group of women in Cape Cod, MA in the summer of 1990. They organized around one statistic that was released by the Men’s Rape Prevention Project that found that 58,000 soldiers died in the Vietnam War and 51,000 women were murdered by their significant others in the same time. One of the organizers, visual artist Rachel Carey-Harper, modeled her project off the power of the AIDS quilt project, suggested using clothesline and shirts as a way for women to tell their stories. The Clothesline Project allows survivors of domestic violence to “air their dirty laundry.” Survivors will decorate T shirts to tell their stories, either with artwork or words, and hang it on a clothesline. It shows that other people suffering are not alone and that domestic violence is not a private issue but a public health issue. The Clothesline Project gives people a way to share their experiences; to start telling their story and to heal. It starts dialogues. It shows that the people who experience domestic, sexual, or emotional violence aren’t just statistics but people in our communities and neighborhoods. The Clothesline Project started with 31 shirts on the village green in Hyannis, Massachusetts and has since grown to an estimated 500-600 Clothesline Projects internationally and 50,000-60,000 shirts. The Clothesline Project will be on display during the Take Back The Night rally on Friday, April 28th from 7-9pm on the Commons. As part of this year's theme "Healing Through Storytelling," below is the account of a Collective member sharing why she Takes Back The Night. If you'd like to answer Susanna's call to listen and speak out, please join us on April 28th. If you'd like to share your story and be featured in a blog post, please email us at [email protected]. I wasn’t one to say 'no, why did they?' I am 48 years old, and this is the first time I've been involved with Take Back the Night. Why now, you might ask, as I have. What's changed? Of course, I've been aware of sexual assault and domestic violence, ever since asking my mother what happened to Mary on All My Children, back when we called it "Mommy's cartoon." As a child I watched After-School Specials and crime dramas, and I read issue-driven young adult novels. Eventually I heard stories about classmates and acquaintances, in hushed tones, often accompanied be nervous, barely-suppressed laughter and speculations about the victim's participation: the woman who danced naked on a table, then never returned to college; the woman who "entertained" multiple men in her dorm room and then was ostracized; the woman who passed out and then awoke to being penetrated -- at least that's the story she told. Somehow, as a woman, I had become complicit in the culture that blames the victim of sexual violence. I had learned to question the stories, in part because I questioned my own role in the relatively minor experiences I had had with unwanted sexual advances. My body did not always feel like it was my own. My mind often did not feel like my own. I had learned to question everything, but most notably, to question myself. I did not feel in control of my public persona, my reputation, my role in society. I was a blank slate to be written upon by the actions of others. I did not feel capable of saying no, and when I did, I later questioned whether I really meant it. As a result, I felt distanced from other women. I felt that we were at war, that they were always telling me how I should be and that men were telling me something else. I was caught in the middle. The problem was, I individualized my experience: I wasn’t afraid to walk alone, at night, why should they be? I wasn’t a cold fish, why were they? I wasn’t one to say no, why did they?
Like many people, I wasn’t motivated to change this perspective until it became personal, which, ironically, also made me see things from a social/cultural perspective, and my own role in perpetuating the myth that the victim is to blame. It made me question the overly simplistic dichotomy of man/woman and aggressor/victim. It was the intertwining of the individual and the institutional that struck me so boldly, finally, in the head and in the heart. A child is neglected by parents without resources, who are hobbled by mental illness, poverty, and addiction, and a predator steps in to fill the gaps. The child is not heard, not believed, is blamed for his bad behavior and sent to detention centers, where he is further abused and made to feel invisible. As he grows into a man, family and teachers enlist the aid of the authorities, and they further mold him into an outsider, a renegade, a broken person, and they blame him. He makes many poor decisions; he learned, in being a tool for the desires of someone else, that his perceptions could not be relied upon, and he finds the everyday dizzying. He lashes out in violence; he has learned that violence gets results. He drinks to excess, over and over again; he has learned the value of blackouts and forgetting. He tries, over and over again, to end his life; he has learned that reality is unbearable. In that narrative, that story that is more common than any of us like to think, lies the inter-connectedness of all of us. These are our institutions, our safety nets, our values, that have failed this child. We are, as a society, implicated in the perpetuation of systems that allow some people to be less visible, less important, less human. And these failures are toxic for all of us, not just for the survivors of such violence. The implications are often life long, in the form of PTSD, depression, anxiety disorders, and behavioral issues. Loved ones also suffer, feeling the brunt of the frustration and confusion that sexual violence can cause. Sometimes, for survivors, surviving is all they can manage, and potential is squashed. What if all those survivors could contribute, fully, to our society? They can, and if I have my way, they will. A first step is to listen and to not turn away; to resist blaming, but instead to take responsibility, as individuals and as a society. Language matters. Common decency matters. Mutual respect matters. Sexual violence crosses all boundaries of gender, age, class, and race. It is about the misuse of power. All of us who can speak out, must. We need to stand together to create a world where personal boundaries are respected, where people feel valued, where no means no; where we feel free to say no, and know we will be heard. We must create a world where all of us are seen in our glory and in our imperfection. We need to take back the night. This year’s Take Back The Night theme is Healing Through Storytelling. We chose this theme after a couple weeks of discussion on what we really wanted to focus on and what TBTN meant to us. Through the Collective meetings, we agreed that it was important for us to highlight the process of healing. Not everyone’s process is the same, but TBTN is about creating a community of support and beginning healing through sharing our stories. In light of this year’s theme, I’m extending an open invitation to share your story with us through guest writing a blog post, anonymously sharing your story for the TBTN speak out, or sharing a message with survivors. If you are interested, please contact me at [email protected]. Storytelling is a common tradition to many different cultures and societies that goes back millennia. Storytelling, through oral tradition, predates written history. It’s shown through cave or rock art, pottery painting, fairy tales, books, movies, and more. Humans have used stories to share history, personal narratives, to preserve culture, and instill moral or ethical values. We use stories to connect with each other, to share experiences, and to teach. In fact, one of the roots of TBTN is consciousness raising groups. Consciousness raising is a form of activism that was popular in the United States in the 60s as a way to find common experiences and raise awareness of issues. Domestic violence and sexual assault activism grew out of groups of women who would meet and share what was going on in their lives. These groups aimed to find the causes of oppression of women and to understand what was going on in women’s lives. Consciousness raising groups became tools for organizing. Through sharing experiences, many women found that they were not alone. They shared their experiences with domestic violence, sexual assault, what expectations and roles they were expected to fit, and how they didn’t fit. These consciousness raising groups directly challenged that women’s issues were personal issues. They challenged the idea that domestic violence was a private problem. These groups popularized the theory that personal problems are political problems; and popularized the phrase “the personal is political.” These meetings pushed the theory that the only solution to domestic violence and women’s oppression is collective action. Not only is storytelling a form of political action, it is also a way to heal. Many survivors of trauma use storytelling as a way to make sense of their experiences. Storytelling is often the first step in trying to heal. A survivor of trauma may find telling their story is a way to process. It’s a way to figure out why and to connect with other survivors. Telling and sharing stories are ways to heal. For example, the popular series Chicken Soup for the Soul is based in the idea that sharing stories is a way to change the world. Storytelling is important. It’s the first step in healing from trauma and violence and things that are incredibly hard to process. And it’s the first step to political action. With our stories we can help ourselves, help each other, and help the world. If you’d like to share your story on this blog, please contact me at [email protected]. |
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