Speak, Darling Speak: An Open Letter For All The #MeToo Stories

I’ve been reading the #metoo posts rolling in, and my brain has been reeling with the faces of women who I used to serve with who showed up with black eyes after being raped, but refused to call it in because at one point in the night they flirted with him. I see the faces of men I used to serve at Joey Tomatoes in Sherwood park in a little black dress — the ones who would try to slip a hand onto my inner thigh as we talked. I remember the time walking down Whyte Avenue in Edmonton where a hand jumped out from a crowd of people and grabbed a friends crotch who was wearing a skirt.

Santa Teresa, a community I love in Costa Rica has had some periods of intense rapings the last few years — enough to break the heart and discourage every inch of pura vida from my soul.

I surfed with a man this last winter and we had a beautiful conversation about his kids and wife on the beach, and later when I saw him at a yoga class, he was completely shaken — some man had tried to lure his daughter into the bushes while he surfed.

A girl went missing a few weeks later and my heart sunk — she was fine but the memory lingered.

Memories of women being pulled off the dance floor at full moon parties and raped in the bushes.

There was a woman pulled screaming off the dance floor at Pretty Poison in Canggu when I was in Bali, the guy there told me everyone froze. Why the fuck do we freeze? Move, move, move. Act, act, act.

Boyfriends held down while their women is raped in front of their eyes on the beach — taking the protective and masculine power of the man being held down, and ripping it away, disempowering him for he cannot act. This dynamic also kills the hope from the women that maybe he will escape and help her while her body and freedom and power is ripped away.

I don’t feel safe in Santa Teresa anymore. There are faces and good people that I love who live there, but there is so much darkness blanketing it.

I’ve been on a boat in Indonesia and had men photograph and film me, try and separate me and my friend as we got off the boat, grabbing my hand as I throw them off again and again while they try put me in some unnamed van.

I’ve been walking on a deserted beach in Greece to cross paths with a man I can’t even look at his energy is so warped, only to turn around a 100 metres later and see him with his pants dropped to the sand, dick out as he jacks off directly behind me as I walk away. I threw rocks at him. I cried. I went to find help — two groups of people laughed. The cops that came grabbed some random man and didn’t give a fuck when I said it wasn’t him — I swore I would never return to Greece. My heat was broken and discouraged.

I am heart broken and enraged reading the stories and knowing the stories that I do.

Sexual harassment, abuse and rape is the probably the most discouraging human action in my books.

It makes me see red for I wish every human to walk with power in their footsteps in this world.

Part of me hasn’t wanted to participate in it because it also feels like pouring energy into a whole lot of pain and darkness and guck, however I know that empathy and compassion are the antidote to shame and so many victims have yet to have spoken.

Speak, darling, speaking.

And I hope these stories helps a part of our wounded suffering world breathe.

I hope that our sons read these stories and walk differently on this earth.

I hope our daughters read these stories and are sure enough to firmly say, “No” and if that “No” isn’t respected, I hope they hold those who wrong or harass them with fierce accountability–slicing the underbelly of their predators so they may only ever limp in this world.

I am grateful for the men who are there.

I am grateful for the men who stay up all night comforting women who have been raped–holding space for the unimaginable.

For those men who stick up and protect and defend.

I am grateful it is safe enough to tell our stories and my story into broad daylight, even if it is through this phone.

I am grateful that although having some minor run ins, that my power hasn’t been attempted to be stolen from me–and I sincerely wish to cut the dicks and hands off any human who has ever touched the body of a woman that isn’t theirs.

I also understand that men are also raped, and that when including prison stats–men being raped might actually be greater than women.

I thank anyone who speaks out and holds their predators accountable–you are the change.

You are creating change so that they don’t walk the streets while people only whisper rapist and hand them their change.

Please continue to speak up and be the change.

It’s dark, and heavy and it needs the light of awareness and empathy to ripple into change.