From my shop in fashionable Georgetown, Washington DC, I took a break to walk into the public park on a Saturday afternoon. For a few minutes, no one else was present, and a man passed me and turned around and followed me. He grabbed me from behind with his arm pressing on my carotid artery until I passed out. With a blood curdling scream as if he was just out of the jungles of Viet Nam, he dragged me off the path into the ravine and raped me. Afterwords, he said, “Give me 5 minutes to get out of the park.”
I went back to my shop. A friend who was watching my shop said she was taking my 3 year old daughter home with her until the next day. I wanted to clean so I got in a hot tub. I was not thinking about preserving the evidence. I was thinking about preserving myself.
My ex-husband was due to visit me, and when he arrived, he took one look at me and said what he knew had happened. He wanted to go to the police. I didn’t. I finally agreed. The police arrived and on the way to the station, they commented at a girl walking in her nightgown, saying there would be another one. At the station, I asked for an artist. The rapist would be easy to pick up since he had a 6 inch scar down the right side of his face. They refused. I asked repeatedly, believing it was something that would help. They refused. A week later I heard from them. My file had been ‘lost’ in the transfer from the city police to the park police.
This changed my life in that I could not just walk away as if nothing had happened. It was as if I had been beaten up in the middle of a battlefield, and I had to stay and train, and train, and train, until no one could ever do that to me again. After years of ‘training’, being controlled and trafficked, I emerged. I became a Doctor of Oriental Medicine, a PhD with a double Masters, and I began to support others in all kinds of problems. But especially the women.
I met the lineage carrier of the unbroken HUNA lineage of the 3 ancient Sisterhoods, Nadia K. Eagles. And my real studies began and have not stopped.
I studied with Nadia and received Initiations, bit by bit working on what I have to do and how to do it. There is a line that runs just-left-of-center through my body that somehow attracts injury, and manifests every kind of physical problem. I watched your film, and I feel that I have always known that this would happen….. because it does take speaking in public. You got that right.
Now my purpose is to defend and protect, to transform suffering into strength, and to see misogyny and its structures taken down like something decayed whose time to die has finally arrived.
Bless you for your courage. Bless everyone who takes the stand they need to take to end gender stereotyping of dominance and submission and have the courage to live in Wholeness.
Thank You for your remarkable story.
Boys are at risk every day in every way. We know this because of all of the terrible and horrific things men do to the innocent and undefended or among themselves when ‘no one is looking.’
Boys need to be guided from their first days by women and men who have the kindness, gentleness and strength to show boys they have nothing to be afraid of. That they too will be strong, gentle and kind to themselves and therefore others, is what boys must know by example from men and women they see everyday whether its on the screen, on a computer or with someone they see for a minute of their lives.
Boys need to see goodness everywhere at all times.
Whether its the media, games, play time, teachers, education, story time, sharing, caring, nutrition, snacks, good meals given by caregivers, family, relatives, family friends, strangers or their pals everyone has a responsibility to ensure good health means plenty of loving attention to ensure no harm is done to boys of poor, middle income, upper income circumstances.
It is not up to institutions, governments, someone in charge or anybody, somebody else. It is our personal responsibility in every instance to show a great example of our ability to care, our need to be good and our willingness to protect boys all of their lives.
Reach out to boys and show them they do not have to be afraid because they are loved for who they are and not what anybody else wants from them.
Thank You.