I woke this morning to #MeToo, another hashtag campaign.
My stomach flipped with #MeToo anxiety that once would have silenced me…But not this time.
I wanted to take a stand; I felt afraid, and yet, I wanted to show up for me, my daughter, and for all the girls and women in the world.
After years of deep, inner mental and emotional work, I chose a different path.
No more hiding, and letting fear and anxiety control my actions.
I took a deep, empowered breath, and posted.
Because if all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote “#MeToo,” we might actually wake the world up to the magnitude of the problem.
#MeToo Anxiety
I traveled back in time and from elementary school, through middle and high school, college, and work, I had experienced some form of either sexual harassment or assault.
I never shared.
I figured it was my fault or I had screwed up in some way,
I assumed that I hadn’t dressed right, acted right, or had somehow deserved it because I made a bad decision, said something stupid, drank too much, or got myself into a shitty situation.
I felt too much shame to say anything.
The magnitude of sexual harassment or assault of women by men and boys is clear, and has been for years; this isn’t new news.
And yet, the voices of women are still not heard.
Yet, the actions of our society are deafening.
Our experiences of assault and harassment by men and boys are still swept under the rug, dismissed, judged, and labeled as whining, dramatizing, and indulging histrionics.
It’s 2017 and after all the awareness, campaigns, and movements, we continue to disrespect, objectify, use, abuse, grope, and mangle the bodies of women and girls.
Will We?
Will we let #MeToo be just another hashtag campaign that comes and goes?
Or, will we make this one count by having the deeper, more difficult conversations that will remove the veil and reveal how out of alignment we are?
Conversations that put it all out on the table that we, as a society, continue to hire, elect, pay, promote, advance, and idolize men who DO NOT treat women and girls with reverence, or at the very least, with respect.
Or, will we, once again, allow the energy of this movement to fade into the sunset, as we’ve done many times before.
Will we women get right with each other and start caring for and treating women, our sisters, with reverence?
Will we teach our girls to treat each other with reverence to where we stop promoting movies like “Mean Girls” and their unacceptable displays of females?
It pains me to envision how much money was/is made from movies showing girls and women treating each other badly.
Today, as I type this, I regret every allowing my daughter to watch any of them…I was part of the problem.
I took a stand a few weeks ago to make my mental and emotional health a priority.
Well, this week, I’m taking another stand by committing to having the hard and difficult conversations toward ending male violence against women.
I’ll begin that deeper, difficult conversation with me, and what I’ve tolerated, allowed, bypassed, and denied.
Will you?
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