We are going to make you uncomfortable.
Our truth is going to shake your illusion.
Our words and our message are going to raise questions you don’t want to ask,
never mind answer.
Our vulnerability transforms to strength as you listen, read and understand.
Our rawness will surprise you.
And I’m no longer sorry.
Survivors can make people uneasy. Trigger a resistance based in discomfort and uncertainty.
That’s a good thing. Not something to run from as I always did. Scared of causing someone that itchy feeling, feeling guilty for unsettling them with my truth. Scared of the rejection in their eyes.
Conversations about difficult topics are vital to make this life safer for ourselves and others, in all the tomorrows.
Conversations about painful realities are vital for healing, to heal ourselves and to enable healing in others, in communities and society as a whole.
Avoiding the discomfort caused by being honest protects perpetrators and keeps survivors unreachable and unheard.
No more.
This is not about sympathy or pity. This is not about attention or acclaim. This is not about shocking or sensationalising. This is not about drama or storylines. This is not about reward or punishment.
This is truth.
How can others see the world we know unless we show them? How can people address the gaps in safeguarding and protection unless we tell them where they are? How can people accept the realities in others lives unless we address it?
So I’m going to make people uncomfortable and I’m learning to find peace in that reality.
I will act in truth and compassion, rawness with grace.
Lead them gently but deliberately through my world. Hiding nothing. Letting them feel and understand through that feeling. Painting a picture of something new to them, colourful and from the heart.
Our intention is not to shock for the sake of it. Our aim is not to create alarm with no solution.
Their discomfort at hearing and processing our truth is incomparable to the pain we endured.
Their discomfort at having comfy illusions challenged is incomparable to the shattering of safety we endured.
I feel that burn of shame, that piercing guilt as I reveal my truth. I sit with the doubt every time. The fear of past reception being repeated.
I feel bad for any pain or frustration I may cause the listener, the reader, the witness of my truth.
But I can’t let that stop me.
We are going to make you uncomfortable.
Balancing rawness and care, reality with duality.
Pain with purpose and fear with hope.
And I’m no longer sorry. Not in the way I once was.