Most survivors struggle in isolation and shame. Not always and not forever, thankfully, but too often. Today, I’m thinking of how much more often I hear people talk about ACEs.

However, for survivors of abuse and trauma, in interpersonal relationships, I’m not sure how much has changed. Some things have changed, a lot, but not enough.

I still get private letters, notes, messages and comments from people who choose not to go public. Some fear, that to speak up about the past, or about living with traumatic stress, might mean the loss of job, family, church and whatever safety and community those provide.

Even now.

I can’t say they are wrong or that there is no stigma or danger in “coming out” as a survivor. The choice, to be open in the present about what one is living or has lived through, is always individual but they are not inconsequential.

It’s maddening to me. It’s sad.

I worry too that “adverse childhood experiences” is remote sounding, and abstract, not steeped enough in the lives and stories of survivors, but referred to, in third-person by professionals.

I wonder if and when we will have conferences where most at the podium, share, at least for a moment in first person where people acknowledge that we are all impacted by the adversity in the world and are responsible for the care and tending of each other.

Still though, there’s so much silence.

It makes life harder for survivors and leaves many with what can feel like choosing only between bad or worse. It is hard to hear from people who say that they don’t know if the seams of their world will hold if they share. It’s hard to know they may be right, speaking up might forever change their lives and not in ways that are all or mostly good, at least not at first and maybe not ever.

Speaking up can be hard whether abuse or violence was done recently or decades ago – or both. Most, who have to live with adversity and trauma caused by interpersonal relationships will never share in first person, at least not publicly.

Times have changed, are changing and need to change much more.

There have been and always will be those who speak up and come forward. More and more are doing it now, publicly, online and sometimes with some community support.

However, it’s often a dangerous, difficult, or absolutely crushing.

We know, from history and experience, when power is challenged in families, schools, businesses, courts, hospitals and social systems, by those with less power, the response is remarkably consistent… Responses are rarely kind or supportive. Systems don’t usually welcome scrutiny or being made of shortcomings. They are resilient in the way they bounce back to how they were not in how they shape shift, share power or become reformed or renewed.

Personally, it’s rarely hugs, warm embraces, apologies, or “never again” assurances people get. It’s rarely, “Thanks for speaking up,” “I wish I had known,” or “What can I do?” It’s not even, “This is hard but let’s make things legal, moral or just.”

Talk to survivors and find out how many have been met with open arms, affirming eyes, and vows of support.

Or even just being listened to.

It’s not how it generally works.

Most of us have been met with anger, scrutiny, questions or rejection. The cost of speaking up, coming forward and trying to protect others has often meant being hurt, vilified and re-traumatized not believed.

Survivors are often punished rather than protected.

Silence is often active, potent, and intense.

Silence is not quiet. Silencing is loud as fuck and impossible to miss.

It’s usually a huge lawn mower rowing over one wild dandelion daring to take hold, spread and stay around.

Silence crushes, breaks, wrecks and keeps a fuck ton of people from coming forward and speaking out. Even now. Even since #MeToo.

#MeToo is important but not new.

We have quotes from Audre Lorde, like the one pictured, about silence, encouraging us not participate in our silence even when we are not guaranteed justice.

We are reminded that of course, always, there is a price to pay for being silent and being silenced and sometimes we reach a point and some combination of safety, privilege, desperation, and insistence where we insist on being visible, recoil at being “tolerated,” or embraced conditionally. Lorde was an outspoken poet, lesbian, cancer survivor, and Black feminist who was out and open close to half a century ago.

She wrote about intersectionality before we had that word. She was not eagerly welcomed by the women’s movement, all feminists, the entire Black or LBGQT community though she advocated in and as all of herself. She asked us all to welcome, learn, and grow from all of our differences with each other and not to simply focus only on the parts of ourselves we share. She was interested in creating a world where all are able to share safety, power, and empowerment.

Speaking up isn’t only about sharing specific examples of violence or adversity but of challenging a world that is so often silent on the pain and suffering others are often in. That’s why it’s called breaking the silence. It doesn’t usually get issued by invitation or people gathering to listen, learn and lean in as to how things might be different.

But it’s too bad because most of us could benefit from change. Our own personal, family and social change, and having more space to discuss and approach those things collectively as well as individually. Survivors are sometimes said to be attention seeking but I’m suspicious of that claim since the attention survivors get is often not good.

Survivors speak up to benefit others survivors. We speak up to let each other know, as the hashtag says, #MeToo (i.e. you aren’t alone, you aren’t crazy, you aren’t making crap up).

We speak up despite not being heard because we know that we are losing our peers who are fighting for life, survival and sometimes losing to fear, stigma, depression, addiction, self-loathing and shame. We speak up, when able, because we know we waited on the words and voices of others when we did not yet have our own.

“The function of freedom is to free someone else.”              Toni Morrison

For me, the power of #MeToo is how we’ve been able to use social media. We’ve been able to bypass traditional publications and to form community directly and in large numbers.

But also, I keep thinking about who and what I have not listened to.

As a white woman, I have silenced people of color and I have not acknowledged how much racial bias exists in the world. I’ve often limped race, class, and gender into one sentence, suggested all structural oppression, all bias is the same.

Those of us who have not experienced racism, injustice, police brutality and other oppressions are often unwilling to even listen to people who have – and that is how silencing happens.

If we are lucky enough to find safety, solidarity, solace enough we can’t just only speak up and out about what impacts or has hurt us but we must also to listen to how we have hurt and silenced others.

We can’t forget that even among survivors of violence not all of us share identical experiences. must never forget that it was a black woman and activist and survivor who started the #MeToo movement. Tarana Burke’s campaign was for children, teens, and people of color and few of us knew about it or her until the same hashtag was used by mostly white celebrity women.

We have to use what we know about the way the world works to make the world work better for everyone.

We have to speak to each other and also listen.

I know I have not listened enough. I’ll be at a conference for a few days getting more educated and learning more about racial equity. I may be offline for a bit but will take notes and share what I learn. When I get irritated with some who don’t hear, get, care about survivors and our issues, I need to think less about the fault I find with others. I need to think more about the me who needs to wake up, grow, and change, the me who has not listened, heard, supported or fought enough for rights that I already have and take for granted – that not all do.

Discerning, as I age, the difference between active listening and silence.

Community, conversation, listening helps create change. Silence, silencing, shutting down protects things staying the same.

Day 21 of 30 days after Oprah. Link to Day 20 and all prior days. Days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. This post is 17, 18, 19 & 20 combined.