“He took her life, stole her future”
I’m not sure what more there is to say about Sarah Everard’s murder. I’m hesitant to say anything besides offering condolences to the people that loved her, that continue to love her. I can only imagine what it must be like to see the face of a person you love in the paper under a headline with the words ‘rape’ and ‘murder’ in it.
The first time I heard her name, I’d just come out of a pretty serious surgery. I was in a lot of pain, on a lot of drugs and alone on the ward in a hospital busy treating covid patients. I logged onto the internet looking for a numbing scroll; wanting to run my thumb across a small screen beaming blue light into my retinas. I wanted to forget my pain. I saw her name, understood the basic facts of what had happened and put the phone down again.
I had the same feeling when I heard about the ‘Women of Honour’ documentary. I had to step away, pause, breathe. I felt I should listen, that I should honour these people's stories by giving them my full attention. But I also knew I couldn’t take it.
When you have experienced sexual violence, it changes the way you hear and process other people’s stories of sexual violence. When you are a woman living in a misogynistic world, trying to survive a patriarchal culture, it changes the amount of other people’s trauma you can absorb. So I stepped away. I got back in my body. I tried to live my life as normal because violence perpetrated by (mostly) men against (mostly) women is normal. It’s not right or fair or just but it is normal.
I can’t begin to convey how crushing it is to experience sexual violence and then to be prevented from sharing it or learning more about the topic because hearing other people’s stories is enough to trigger my body’s nervous system. Survivors, like me, suffer in isolation because there aren’t services available and whatever self-directed reading I’d like to do is limited by my body’s response. I am stuck, trapped by forces internal and external.
I have so much more to say about this, but that’s all I can manage for today.
The one thing I’d glad I did was read Sarah Everard’s mother’s statement in full. Amidst all the thousands of words written about “the case”, they are the most important. I hope to return to the ‘Women of Honour’ documentary at some point but right now, my only goal is survival.
Recommendations:
Making St Brigid’s day a Bank Holiday makes a lot of sense. Here’s what helped persuade me. Also, the suggestion that we import the American Thanksgiving - a racist commemoration of a genocide - is a truly awful idea.
Michaela Coel’s Emmy speech (I am a big fan of silence!)
Is it laziness? (No)
Gotta read this.
