April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and almost a year after my assault, I am finally ready to share what healing has looked like. There will be no who, what, when, where, or why. I am instead choosing to talk about the months of learning to find my voice again, and as a pivotal coping mechanism taught me: I have a voice. My voice is powerful. My voice can change the world.
As I began sharing with those around me what had happened, I was met with varying responses. A rabbi who was left speechless all of ten minutes before Shabbat services began, a CEO who gently checked in on me, and many, many people who just didn’t know the right thing to say or way to say it. Unfortunately the good intentions of many around me came out in the wrong ways. As they tried to gauge exactly what happened, they inadvertently were putting my assault on a 1-10 scale of “badness”.
“But you weren’t raped, right?”
“Well, at least they got him.”
“You’re so lucky you were able to get away.”
“I mean, at least he hasn’t bothered you since.”
The discomfort people felt with hearing of such a heavy experience lead to a natural desire to make it all better. What it meant, however, was that I was inadvertently being pushed towards invalidating my own experience. Was my experience really that bad, was it really assault if even just one of their points were true? Yes, it was and it is, but acknowledging their remarks made them feel better. Their discomfort faded, but along with it went validation of the trauma I had experienced. It was as if what had or hadn’t happened since the assault made everything okay again, when in reality daily life became filled with fear, panic, and the complete erasure of who I once was.
People were so upset and uncomfortable upon hearing what had transpired, and I know that comes from a place of compassion. For the many who just needed everything to be okay, I seemed to have forced down my own upset and discomfort to ease theirs. I hated seeing people I care about feeling these hard things and I slid down the hole of invalidation so far that I stopped telling almost everyone about the events that followed. Court hearings, personal emotions, all of it. If I didn’t share it, others couldn’t be made uncomfortable by it and I didn’t have to battle my feelings with others’, or with the social constructs surrounding sexual assault.
I took the time to quietly and privately work on validating my feelings and the reality of my circumstances. I forced myself to call it what it was: sexual assault. I sat with the labels of victim and survivor and decided that I just don’t know how to relate to either of them. When the shock began to fade, I began to identify where the emotional pain was coming from and how it was manifesting. The internal dialogue was constant, yet I had no words to actually say what I was feeling.
“How are you doing?”
My chosen family tried reaching me many times and I just didn’t respond. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t know how to. Do I tell them how badly I want to crawl out of my own skin? Do I tell them that I’m still crying myself to sleep and scared of every person that passes me on the street? Do I tell them that parts of me, physically and emotionally, are still numb? Do I even want to open that door of conversation… Those four words made me freeze.
I eventually learned how to put on a smile, whether it was genuine or not. I deciphered who I could answer honestly and who got the socially-acceptable “I’m doing well, how are you?”. I quickly learned that the latter was a far more frequent response. It was so much easier to just move along the conversation than to sit with the complexity of my feelings. The reality was that I struggled to balance the immense pain of what I had experienced with the self-soothing mechanisms reminding me that I’m safe and okay. “You’re okay, you’re just scared out of your mind and sad all the time.” It felt like I was contradicting myself with so many feelings. It was endlessly confusing, so what do you say when someone asks how you’re doing?
If you ask me today how I’m doing, I still don’t know. I suppose it ebbs and flows, but the truest answer exists somewhere between learning how to manage the fear and celebrating the progress I’ve made.
“I have a voice. My voice is powerful. My voice can change the world.”
Anyone who knows me knows that I am Elana Arian’s #1 fan. She’s LGBTQ Jewish royalty. My entire Jewish experience has been spent singing her songs in shul, learning Hebrew from her melodies, and respecting her as a role model of what I want to achieve in life. After my assault, she became part of my healing journey, too. “Nachamu”, “Oseh Shalom”, and “Hashkiveinu” became regular songs of comfort, but “I Have A Voice” changed me in a way I never expected. It became my pre-court meditation, daily commute filler, and the biggest instrument in healing open wounds.
After the assault, I would return to an empty apartment each night and struggle to sit with my own thoughts. I would fidget and squirm until I burst into tears, crying until I fell asleep. One night in particular, when insomnia and sadness raged, I found myself repeating the bridge of “I Have A Voice”. Baruch atah, Adonai eloheinu, melech haolam, she’asanu b’tzelem elohim. This reference to Genesis reminds us that we are all made b’tzelem elohim, in the image of God, and that we are beautiful for it. I had been struggling so intensely with having a body I hated that I forgot what was within every essence of my being, both physical and emotional.
For the first time since what happened, I felt like more than the shell that was mistreated. I could finally see my heart again. Sacred and scared are spelled with the same letters. “I Have A Voice” taught me how to let them coexist. And thus began the journey towards loving myself again. As I open my eyes, give of myself, and fight for the truth, I also nurture the Divine that exists in me.
I still listen to “I Have A Voice” every day, and I got to meet Elana a few months ago. Though there is still a long way to go on the journey of self love, I don’t know where I’d be without sacred ancient words and modern melodies.
I stand with Israeli women.
Without discussing the entirety of the Israel-Hamas war, I will say that the reality and aftermath of October 7th were crushing as a Jewish woman who has experienced sexual assault. The global silence on the sexual violence towards Israeli women on October 7th made, and still makes, me inexplicably angry. The events and actions of that day have created a rage in me unlike anything I’ve felt before.
My thoughts on this are not about right or wrong, good or bad, terrorist or colonizer. That is far more than one writing response can provide. This is about the women and girls we say Mi Shebeirach for, and painstakingly, the women and girls we say Kaddish for. I witnessed the world stay silent, and in some ways deny, what happened to Israeli women. To Jewish women. How, then, was I supposed to speak up? If the world wouldn’t acknowledge or believe countless Jewish women, how could the world acknowledge or believe me, a singular Jewish woman?
I struggle to talk about the war. Not because I don’t have feelings and opinions about it, but because sometimes voicing either of those lands on deaf ears. What I do know is that every time I say “Am Yisrael Chai”, I am saying it for the women who have endured the unimaginable and yet press onward, whether in body, spirit, or memory.
Healing is a nonlinear process. As I sat with the ideas of humanity and divinity, forgiveness and punishment, identity and protective disguise, I had to accept the curves, pivots, and sharp turns my healing would take. Some areas were easier than others, and some have yet to be conquered.
Gradually, the pain has become something I can carry and am now morphing into something beautiful. Some may call it a phoenix rising from the ashes, but I can’t stand most cliches. I choose to look at it as very slowly pulling myself back into an identity bigger than the person he wronged. I’ve returned to writing. I started pulling out my violin and guitar again. I found a new hobby in photography. Each of these have become my way of embodying the pieces of God I see in both myself and the world around me.
And so we end where we began: April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. This year I am speaking up amidst global blindness to reality. This year I am speaking up despite the stigmas and discomfort surrounding sexual assault. This year I am saying “me too” and acknowledging the divinity I am created in the image of.
Humble Chutzpah 