Silence Might Help You Cope, But It’s Not How You Survive

Silence might initially save you, but speaking out creates a pathway to survival.

Carrie Knowles

E. Jean Carroll was highly criticized for waiting more than 20 years to bring charges against Donald Trump for sexual assault. Her defense: fear.

She was also criticized for not screaming and calling for help. Her reply: Some women scream, some don’t; but, either way, the threat of further violence on the part of the attacker, or the ordeal a woman often faces bringing charges against a physically or politically powerful man, keeps women silent.

Anita Hill waited 10 years before disclosing Clarence Thomas’ inappropriate sexual advances and behavior in the workplace.

Christine Blasey Ford waited more than 30 years before she went public with Brett Kavanaugh’s teenage partying that resulted in him holding his hand over her mouth so she couldn’t scream while he attempted to assault her. She was 15 when it happened; he was 17.

Why did they wait?

If you have never been molested, abducted, raped or sexually harassed in the workplace, you might wonder why these women waited to come forward. Likewise, you might believe that they are only now coming forward for their own public or personal gain.

On the other hand, if you have had experiences similar to what these women experienced, you’d know.

You don’t tell because you are afraid.

You don’t tell because you feel defiled/dirty.

You don’t tell because you feel like you did something wrong.

You feel shame.

As time goes on, you work hard to believe that what happened to you is something you can forget and put behind you as you go forward with your life.

But, there’s really only one way forward.

You have to find your voice

Stephanie Clare Smith was 14 years old when her mother took a six-week camping vacation out West with her boyfriend, leaving Stephanie to live on her own in an empty apartment in New Orleans. This was before cell phones. Stephanie never knew where her mother was during this time and had no way to reach her. Her mother rarely called to check on her.

Stephanie waited more than 45 years to speak out and tell her story about being abducted and raped during that summer.

Stephanie didn’t scream. The man had a knife. He told her if she screamed or went to the police, he’d kill her.

In her recent memoir, Everywhere the Undrowned, she said she made herself small and unthreatening when the man raped her. She was desperate to survive because she didn’t know if he killed her whether anyone would ever discover what happened to her or find her body. She was afraid that, if she lived and went to the police, not only might the rapist come after her again, but the police would discover she had been abandoned by her mother and social services would take her into custody and place her in a foster home.

Not screaming probably saved her life.

Stephanie, like E. Jean Carroll, Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford is a survivor. All four of these women survived their assaults, then found their voices and spoke out.

Afterwards, they were at last able to move on.

Everywhere the Undrowned

Stephanie Clare Smith’s lyrical stream-of-conscious memoir lets the reader experience her lonely nights of abandonment, the terror of her abduction and rape, and her hard-fought journey to find her voice 45 years later that finally set her free from her childhood trauma and gave her a way to help others.

Her elegant and moving memoir is a keen insight into why it takes so long for women to speak out: it takes years of living with the memory of trauma to understand how it continues to silence you and shape your life until you finally speak its name and claim power over it. Then, and only then, do you have the ability to truly reclaim your life, and move on.

Speaking out, no matter what the consequences or how many years later, is the key to surviving.

Drowning vs Surviving

Christine Blasey Ford’s recently published memoir, One Way Back, is a belated retort to Senator Chuck Grassley’s 414-page memo on her 2018 congressional testimony about Brett Kavanaugh.

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Blasey, a research psychologist and avid surfer, peppers her memoir with allusions to surfing and the battle to stay afloat against the tide rather than drown. In her book, she acknowledges the prolonged PTSD that she experienced after the assault and then again due to the congressional committee’s and the press’s treatment of her because she came forward to speak her truth.

She notes, however, in her memoir that the vicious and violent hate mail she received after her testimony was outweighed by the letters she received from fellow survivors.

As all these women know all too well, speaking out is not for sissies.

But silence is no way to survive and move on.