#SheSaid

The film She Said, which depicts the work of journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey to break the story of Harvey Weinstein's sexual misconduct allegations, will be released in Canada later this week, on November 18.

It is not necessarily easy to put words to emotion, to describe a horror experienced, but it can be made possible if someone is willing to listen.

My post today is a tribute of sorts to the women who have spoken out, indeed, to all women everywhere who speak their truth into this world, who have the courage to say what happened. #mfgp

Why not say what happened?

Well. A thousand reasons.

You don’t want to hear. You don’t want to know. You cannot listen. You will not listen.

But it happened. To me.

Blood and wounds and rape and fear and loss and theft and hurt and pain. It all happened. If not to me, then to someone. To some woman. 

It happened.

Listen or not, I say it happened.

But words bring shame. Words build walls. Words can wound and maim and kill — the spirit if not the body.

Just like what happened, words cannot be unsaid. Horrors cannot be un-lived. Endured, yes. Survived, yes. Spoken into history. Into containment.

To speak is to choose the words, to own the experience. The good, the bad. We pledge our troth. We share our pain.

That is why we say what happened.

We met. We fell in love. We married. With body and with words, we speak that story. The wonder of it.

That is why we say what happened.

We met. You wounded me. I escaped. With body. And with words — my words, I speak that story. The horror of it.

That is why I say what happened.

The only reason we say what happened is for you to hear. To listen. To speak, in turn.

Listen. Hear. Then speak.

To share.

To open.

To live.

That is the reason to say what happened.

Words cannot change the past, but we can, maybe, shape the future with the words we speak today. It starts with one woman who shows the way, reaches out, lends a hand, gives her voice...and begins to speak, to find herself, to find her way. That is the reason to say what happened. 

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Photo by Christina Langford-Miller on Unsplash