Trauma & (in)Justice

Predators in power

When Donald Trump was elected in 2016, the national survivor hotline rang off the hook. Survivors were triggered. They were suffering. We all heard, clear as day, what he declared on a recorded line just a month prior. And yet, Americans voted him into power? It felt like the majority of Americans were throwing up a giant middle finger to any woman (or man) who had suffered sexual abuse, harassment, or assault. It felt like the ultimate validation of misogyny.

I felt tiny. Beyond insignificant, I felt unsafe, angry, devastated. It felt like the men were publicly saying that sexual assault was wrong but were privately winking at each other behind our backs. To know that people all around me—in the grocery store, airport, gym— had elected a sexual predator to lead the free world was a shock to my system.

Of course, I know it’s not that personal, and now that I’m not in the trauma response of those November 2016 days, I don’t feel it so personally. I know that some people care zero about their leader’s moral code, that they care more about their bank account or voting along party lines. I know that others like the old boys’ club and that they don’t want it to change.

I wrote about the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearing here and how this, too was a moment of reckoning. How can justice be so tilted? How can we hold these people up and appoint them to the highest offices of the land? How can we care so little about women? How can it matter so little if someone is a predator?

The other night I was watching the Lacy Peterson documentary on Netflix, and I was sitting with the fact that the number one cause of death for pregnant women is murder by an intimate partner. Isn’t it actually INSANE that women walk around with the knowledge that the most dangerous place in the world for them is their house? Even if we feel safe within our own homes and with our individual partners, these facts permeate our society, our sense of self-worth, and what it means to be a woman in the world. There is a current running through our culture reminding us that we aren’t safe. There is a level of danger that we have to somehow accept. If you are a woman, there’s a good chance you’ve been intimidated, harassed, or abused.

Trauma & Justice

This month, I want to talk about justice. About what it means to your sense of justice when you’ve been sexually abused or assaulted. What meaning have you made from going through something so incredibly unjust? How do you tolerate that sexual predators are heralded, applauded, and appointed to the highest ranks in our society? How do we handle all this?

I want to break some of this down for you. I don’t have a perfect answer or an easy fix, but I want to walk through this together so we can come to a place of peace within ourselves, while we continue to work to change the world.