By Hannah
The feeling came to me on an overnight bus between Milwaukee and Detroit during the fall of 2017. After living and working on a small farm in rural Wisconsin, I logged onto Facebook for the first time in over a week. I scrolled through stories upon stories with the hashtag “#metoo.” My heart got goosebumps, and any chance of sleep was gone.
Already a subscriber? Log in
You have read 5 articles this month.
For only $3 per month or $28 per year, you can read as much as you want!
A digital subscription includes unlimited access to current articles–and some exclusive digital content–released throughout each week, over thirty years of articles in our Dharma archive, as well as PDFs of all back issues.
By Hannah
The feeling came to me on an overnight bus between Milwaukee and Detroit during the fall of 2017. After living and working on a small farm in rural Wisconsin, I logged onto Facebook for the first time in over a week. I scrolled through stories upon stories with the hashtag “#metoo.” My heart got goosebumps, and any chance of sleep was gone. I wasn’t comforted, nor did I feel any solidarity with this wash of friends and acquaintances who’d experienced sexual harassment and assault.
I still felt isolated from my pain of being grabbed in places I hadn’t wanted to be by an adult I had trusted so deeply in my younger years about ten months before that night. After a few months of these actions, I told him, “This is not okay.” He said all the right things in response, but I still didn’t feel at ease. I thought he might do this to other women, as well. In the end, I felt it was my words—not his actions—that finally broke our relationship.
He seemed to expect me to keep up the role of a mentee and to continue the mentor role for me. I contemplated speaking about his actions publicly. However, I feared my words would take the blame for the natural consequences of his actions: mistrust, further isolation, and the breakup of the community in which he’s a central figure.
Luckily, I was on my way to see a dear friend in Detroit—someone who is deeply, emotionally intelligent and accepting. That week I breathed with her. I received reiki from her and slowly crafted my own #metoo post on Facebook. I wanted my post to have the power to attest to events as they were; I didn’t want to transfer more aggression into the world through my words. I wanted peace.
My post was as follows:
#metoo began here on FB, so I’ll contribute some inquiries it has sparked for me. This is a systemic problem we all have a responsibility to help heal.
Ways into that healing:
- How do we teach people to listen?
- How do we teach people to feel and articulate emotions?
- How do we teach people to pay attention to the shock and silence of their pain and discomfort?
- How do we protect our stories from the spectacle they might create, to ensure they are heard and generate new, conscious action?
- How do we break the narrative that if people objectify themselves, they’ll have power?
- When will both male and female-bodied people not be expected to “man-up” as a means to masculine privilege?
- How do we create a society in which people feel neither lonely nor disconnected?
I've been grateful for the solidarity of people who work to generate awareness of the ubiquity of sexual harassment and violence. I'm grateful for the existence and recirculation of these stories in the past days, as well.
As for my body, I’m slowly bringing the distress to the surface. This past year, I’ve suffered from severe tension in my neck and shoulders that physical therapists and chiropractors couldn’t correct, no matter how disciplined the therapy practices were. I eventually saw an acupuncturist, who helped the energy in my body to move around, and returned to meditation. I hadn’t only felt detached from others in my distress, as I first acknowledged it on that bus ride, but I had hidden it from myself. In doing so, it screamed against my body. Meditation has allowed me to breathe into it and let it go slowly.
I had the chance to practice at Plum Village during the summer of 2017. A monastic sister taught me to say, “I see you, pain” to the parts of me that hurt. This helped so much because then the pain was neither isolated nor part of me. By acknowledging it’s there, I can ask it to leave.
I hope this is supportive for anyone who may be going through a similar experience and offers insight to those who cannot relate first-hand. As I write it, my heart twinges a bit. I’m grateful to know my body and mind are well integrated, and hope they may remain so. May my words may be prompt, sharp in clarity, yet soft in effect, as I continue to grow.
Hannah, Courageous Path of the Heart, is a young woman who finds her home in many places, especially while running, exploring, reading, and listening.
