Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement

Unkindness is a serial killer. Death in the flesh sometimes seems like a less excruciating way to succumb than the slow and steady venom unleashed by mean-spirited, cruel words and actions that poison you over time. I guess that’s why I can’t stand the old children’s rhyme: sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Every time I hear it, I think to myself: that’s a lie. You can dodge a rock, but you can’t unhear a word. You can’t undo the intentional damage that some words have on your mind, body, and spirit. Especially a word like ugly.

Maybe community creates courage. What if courage creates community? Maybe empathy creates courage. How can you express empathy towards others if you can't empathize with your own self? Is the core of healing empathy and courage?

If unkindness is indeed a serial killer, then my revelation is that I was my own murderer. I had taught myself to bend to my own unkindness first, so that I would be able to withstand the unkindness of others. I will not bend anymore.

There is no question that self-hate severely limits one’s capacity to love fully and wholeheartedly. Capacity and desire are not the same thing, especially in discussions of love.

Never let anyone touch your private parts, they’d say. But I wasn’t told why I had to protect my private parts, just that it was imperative that I did. Because of this, when I thought of my experience, I didn’t hold my abusers accountable—I held myself to blame. In my mind, they didn’t abuse me. I broke the rules. I was the one who did something wrong.

There are few things more painful than watching the folks you love actively not love you back. Especially when they aren’t outwardly unkind or distant or they’ve spoken words that sounded like love and have provided support that could be construed as love without an understanding of the kind of love you need and deserve.

Unkindness is a serial killer.

I had set out to reinvent myself, but it turned out that I didn’t have to start from scratch. I just had to dust myself off, because the best parts were already there.

After all, I didn’t see my story as my gift, only as my shame.

Kaia was as much my caretaker as I was theirs.

I believed that she felt like a Phenomenal Woman as she delivered each line with an audacity and authenticity I had never seen before. I felt like I knew the kind of pain she had to be holding because it was the same pain I held every single day. Where had her shame gone? How had it not seeped into her cells, and if it had, how did she get it out? And if all of it - the pain, shame, and fear - were still there, where did she find space for this thing I saw in her face and heard in her voice? What was this softness? Where did the joy come from?

Kaia could relax for a few hours while I attempted to retwist or style their loc’d hair. I

Death in the flesh sometimes seems like a less excruciating way to succumb than the slow and steady venom unleashed by mean-spirited, cruel words and actions that poison you over time. I guess that’s why I can’t stand the old children’s rhyme: sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.