Jessica Simmons

Normally I don’t take part in these things, but @my.life.in.colour challenged me to participate and post a B&W photo of myself and I have loved scrolling through my feed and seeing everyone else’s so... #challengeaccepted #kadınaşiddetehayır #istanbulsözleşmesiyaşatır

One of the things I have struggled with in the past is feeling I don’t have a voice. Sometimes this manifests itself in a physical feeling - I was sexually abused as a kid and when it happened I had a physical feeling of someone holding my vocal chords... not choking me... and there was actually no hand on my throat but it was a physical feeling of not being able to talk, to advocate for myself, to stand up for myself. This physical feeling would reoccur throughout my life if someone I interacted with triggered something by the way they spoke to me and treated me... sometimes it was a teacher, sometimes a boss, sometimes it was men I encountered, but other times... a lot of times... it was a woman. Times when I would want to speak up, but I physically couldn’t. My voice, my advocacy, my thoughts, my designs, my talent were all being prohibited by this pressure on my vocal chords. I was choking on my own words.

I had to work hard, not to get my voice, I had one all along, but to confront and strip away the power that my abuse had over me to trigger this physical feeling. After many tears and frustrations, therapy, and the hardest internal work I have ever done, I’ve been able to free my voice. I haven’t had this physical feeling in a long time. There are still tears, but instead of tears of frustration and defeat I’ve cried tears of joy. To come away from a situation, to walk away from a person, and to be suddenly hit with the awareness that I just spoke up, that I advocated for myself, that I expressed my feelings and ideas despite the fact that they may contradict with someone else’s and in circumstances where in the past I was made to stay silent and sometimes take verbal abuse or passive aggressiveness.... This is a victory for me and something that I celebrate. (Continued below in comments)