Look At Her.

On the questions we ask survivors, the silence we create, and the healing we deserve.

People notice the acts of a survivor before they ever consider what she survived.

As a survivor, you are either too promiscuous or too rigid. You either don't wear enough clothes, or you dress to hide something. You're either too loud or too reserved. Too trusting or too guarded. Too emotional or too detached.

There is always something to criticize. Some decision to dissect. Some detail to question.

But why is it so difficult to consider what made her that way?

Why are we so quick to find blame to place on a woman who is already fighting to survive the darkest places of her own mind?

Before you ask her why she didn't fight, ask yourself why she couldn't.

Before you ask her why she didn't leave, ask yourself what was at stake.

Everybody wants to know why she waited so long to speak up, but nobody asks who she first told.

Look at her.

Not as another one.

Not as a statistic, a headline, or another story to debate over a dinner table.

Look at her as a survivor.

And before you decide what she should have done differently, let me tell you what survival looked like for me.

Why did you keep going back, Ashleigh?

Because I had to choose the lesser of two evils.

I could stay home and watch the woman raising me get drunk before 9:00 a.m. I could endure the screaming, the spitting, the hitting, the punching, the slamming, the kicking. I could listen to threats of being sent to juvie. I could be told that my family didn't love me.

Or I could go to a house in the woods with a man I had been manipulated into believing had my best interests at heart.

I was a child trying to find somewhere that felt safer than the place I was supposed to call home.

That house in the woods.

I can still smell it.

The crisp air. The mold. The gunpowder. The moonshine.

When I was there, I could spend all day outside. Playing in the creek. Climbing rocks. Driving golf carts through the woods.

Alone.

And, in those moments, feeling safe.

I only had to worry about bad weather and bedtime.

Imagine being a child who measures safety by the absence of one kind of suffering, never realizing that another kind is happening right in front of her.

I didn't have the language to understand what was happening to me. I didn't understand manipulation, grooming, or the ways a person could make harm look like affection.

I was a child.

And children should not have to become experts in survival just to get through their childhood.

Why didn't you tell someone?

I did.

I told the woman I called “Mommy” for many years.

I can still picture the living room, clouded with cigarette smoke. She was wearing her gray American teddy bear shirt and green-and-pink-striped Tinker Bell pajama bottoms. She was drinking beer out of my tall plastic pumpkin cup.

I was nine years old.

I sat across from her and said, “Mommy, Kevin touched my pp.”

She laughed.

For those of you who knew her, you can probably hear that laugh now.

I sat there, looking at her. A little girl, confused about what had just happened and what I was supposed to do next.

I got up to return to my room.

And then she said, “You can't lie about things like that. Kevin loves you. He's been real good to you. You could ruin his life.”

I was nine.

I had found the courage to tell someone. I had done the thing people would later ask me why I hadn't done.

And I was taught that telling the truth was more dangerous than keeping it to myself.

I was taught to consider his life before anyone considered mine.

Through years of molestation, manipulation, and grooming, I never said another word.

Not until I was about fourteen.

By then, I was told there wasn't enough evidence.

And just like that, a little girl who had tried to speak was left carrying the weight of what happened to her, along with the silence of the people who should have protected her.

A nine-year-old girl was silenced.

Let me be clear.

It did not matter to him what I was wearing.

It did not matter to him how little I bathed.

It did not matter that I said no.

It did not matter that I was a little girl.

None of those things made what happened my fault.

Nothing I wore, said, did, misunderstood, or failed to understand gave anyone permission to violate me.

“Are you sure that's what happened?”

I can still smell the house.

I can still smell the laundry.

I can still smell him.

There are things that remain long after the people and places themselves are gone. Memories that arrive without permission. Details that stay lodged somewhere deep inside you, even when you spend years trying to convince yourself that what happened belongs to another lifetime.

I am repulsed by white men. I have panic attacks when I see a white truck. I don't like overalls.

That little girl, from seven to thirteen, remembers.

My body remembers.

And while I have spent years trying to understand the ways my childhood shaped me, I have also spent years questioning myself.

That is what people fail to understand about trauma. It doesn't always end when the event ends. Sometimes it follows you into adulthood, into relationships, into the way you trust, the way you love, the way you respond to danger, and the way you see yourself.

Sometimes the questions you were asked by others become the questions you ask yourself.

Why didn't I do more?

Why didn't I run?

Why did I trust him?

How could I let this happen again?

When I was assaulted again in my early twenties, those questions returned.

How could I put myself in this position?

How could I be so naive?

Why didn't I fight harder?

Why didn't I run?

Why did I trust another man to protect me?

I had survived something as a child, and somehow I had grown into an adult who believed she should have known how to prevent it from happening again.

That is the cruelty of self-blame. It convinces you that if you can identify the right mistake, you can finally make sense of what happened. It makes you believe that somewhere in the details of your behavior lies an answer that will make the pain easier to carry.

But the responsibility was never mine.

And it was never yours.

The little girl you see here was scared, alone, and confused. She had no clear understanding of safety or love. She felt unclean. She felt crazy. She tried so hard to convince herself that it never happened.

But her body always remembered.

To this day, I have never fully spoken about my childhood sexual assault. Not in full. Rarely in detail.

And if I'm honest, there are still parts of me that blame myself. Parts that wonder whether I should have done something differently. Whether I could have said something sooner, fought harder, or made a different decision.

But I was seven.

Eight.

Nine.

Ten.

Eleven.

Twelve.

Thirteen.

I was eighteen.

I was twenty-one.

I was a child, and then I was a young woman, trying to navigate a world that had already taught me to question myself before questioning the people who hurt me.

I needed protection.

I needed the people who said, “I had a feeling,” to speak up.

I needed someone to tell me that what happened was not my fault.

I needed permission to just be a child.

Not a child constantly calculating which environment might hurt less. Not a child carrying secrets she was too young to understand. Not a child fighting for her own safety and sanity at every turn.

Just a child.

And I wonder how many survivors are still waiting for someone to acknowledge what they needed and never received.

How many are still waiting to be believed?

How many have learned to tell their stories in a way that makes everyone else comfortable, carefully arranging every detail so no one can accuse them of remembering incorrectly?

How many have rehearsed their pain before speaking it aloud, afraid that one missing detail will turn them from a person deserving compassion into a person deserving suspicion?

Survivors are placed under extraordinary scrutiny.

Every detail must be precise, or they're lying.

Every timeline must be clear, or they're lying.

Every reaction must make sense to someone who has never lived through it, or suddenly the story becomes questionable.

But survival does not look the same for everyone.

Fear looks different for everyone. Manipulation looks different for everyone. Freezing looks different for everyone. Shame looks different for everyone.

And sometimes survival looks like returning to the place where you were hurt because the alternative feels even more dangerous.

Sometimes it looks like silence because the first time you spoke, you were punished for it.

Sometimes it looks like protecting the person who hurt you because someone taught you that their life mattered more than your truth.

Sometimes it looks like laughing, functioning, going to work, falling in love, and building a life while carrying memories you haven't yet figured out how to name.

You cannot measure the validity of someone's experience by how closely it resembles what you understand.

You cannot determine the truth of someone's pain by how well they tell their story.

And you cannot demand that a survivor relive every detail simply because you feel entitled to an explanation.

When you ask a survivor to defend every decision they did or did not make, you risk doing more than questioning their story.

You risk making them feel as though they are on trial all over again.

You make them question their worth. Their validity. Their own memories. Their right to call themselves survivors.

You place them in the position of defending themselves when they were never the ones responsible for the harm.

And so often, we think we are finally safe. We think we are finally being heard.

Then the questions return.

The doubt returns.

The burden of proving ourselves returns.

And once again, we are left defending decisions we made while trying to survive circumstances we never chose.

I know because I have done it to myself for years.

I have questioned the little girl I was. I have questioned the young woman I became. I have wondered whether my story would have been different if I had been louder, stronger, smarter, or less trusting.

But what kind of world asks a child to be smarter about abuse instead of asking adults to be safer for children?

What kind of world asks a survivor why she didn't stop it instead of asking why someone thought they had the right to do it?

What kind of world teaches a woman to question herself before she questions the person who harmed her?

And what kind of healing can we expect when survivors are still being asked to prove that they deserved protection in the first place?

I was Jane Doe.

I am Jane Doe.

And maybe you are, too.

Maybe you are the person who told someone and wasn't believed.

Maybe you are the person who never told anyone because you were afraid of what would happen if you did.

Maybe you are the person who has spent years minimizing what happened because someone convinced you it wasn't bad enough to matter.

Maybe you have spent so long protecting everyone else's comfort that you have forgotten you are allowed to acknowledge your own pain.

Maybe it is easier for you to fight for someone else than it is to stand up for the person you used to be.

Maybe you are still waiting for permission to call it what it was.

If that is you, I hope you hear me.

You do not have to tell your story perfectly for it to matter.

You do not have to remember every detail to deserve compassion.

You do not have to explain why you stayed, why you left, why you froze, why you returned, or why it took years to find the words.

You do not have to make your pain understandable to everyone else.

And you do not have to forgive anyone, confront anyone, or share your story publicly to begin healing.

Your healing belongs to you.

Not the person who hurt you.

Not their family.

Not your family.

Not the people who questioned you, dismissed you, or decided they knew your story better than you did.

You are allowed to reclaim your voice at your own pace. You are allowed to grieve the childhood you deserved. You are allowed to acknowledge the things that still hurt without treating that hurt as a failure to heal.

It is never too late to begin caring for the person you had to become to survive.

And if you are still blaming yourself, I hope one day you can look at the person you were with the compassion you would offer any other child.

I hope you can see her without asking what she should have done differently.

I hope you can see how hard she tried.

I hope you can recognize that she deserved protection even when she didn't know how to ask for it, even when she was silent, even when she went back, even when she was confused, even when the people around her failed her.

She deserved safety.

She deserved to be believed.

She deserved to be a child.

And so did you.

I cannot go back and give that little girl what she needed. I cannot change the people who failed to protect her. I cannot undo what happened or erase the years I spent believing that somehow, some part of it must have been my fault.

But I can stop asking her to defend herself.

I can stop holding her responsible for the things adults should have prevented.

I can stop confusing the ways she survived with the reasons she was hurt.

And I can finally begin to offer her what she needed all along.

Compassion.

Understanding.

Protection.

Love.

I was never an adult when it happened. I was a child.

I am no longer alone.

And I will never again be silent.

Look at her.

Not as another story to question.

Not as another woman to blame.

Not as another survivor who must prove she deserved better.

Look at her.

She survived.

She is still here.

And she deserved better all along.