April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month…

is more prevalent than I can ever recall. More victims are finding a path to voice their trauma and, truly, that in itself is a victory.

Still, the numbers haven’t shifted, the tide has barely ebbed. Knowledge is powerful…when it is implemented. So, what is holding us back from reducing these crimes more substantially in our county and culture?

I’ve heard the argument that people are too sensitive and now everything has become sexual assault or harassment. I’ve heard that victims should learn to protect themselves. I hear anger towards the defenseless and defense for the aggravator.

I’ve come to believe there is an overarching reason for this, a very human reason: “The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness,” Judith Herman, M.D.

Not only are survivors’ stories difficult in content but often in the retelling itself. The effects we know trauma causes include an array of chaotic and unprocessed data—the very template of what formulates disbelief in society.

What I mean is that we tend to judge based on clarity and conciseness of recounted events—a traumatized person’s brain and body are often in direct opposition to this. I believe we, in general, wish for less violence in our communities and likely throughout the world.

The closer the atrocity however, the more I see that innate defense called denial. “Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims,” J. Herman, M.D.

But those retellings are often convoluted, confused – imperfect. Those flaws give us something to latch on to – to question.

I think perhaps the biggest impediment to societal change is fear. There is the ugly kind of fear, bred from the threat to lose entitlement, to be limited in oppression. Then there is a biased fear – seated in desire to be other, to be outside the possibility of becoming a victim.

For many of us, I think these are mostly unconscious fears. Is not telling a nasty joke some crippling dig at your sense of humor based on political correctness overdrive? Or is there a chance that upbringing and surroundings have ingrained the idea that it’s ok into your thinking patterns?

Do you really believe you are so different from a victim that you will always escape that stigma? Are you truly stronger, more resilient, smarter – invincible in your perceived status? Or do you only wish it?

We are filtered messages from birth to death and those help shape our innermost workings. We do have independent thought, we do have choice, but if we deny that we can be influenced we are indoctrinated already.

If we do not bring the private world in front of the public world in instances of trauma than the flaws that govern us will remain intact. If we continue to think in the constructs we always have, we will be what we’ve always been.

That’s the point of this message: I am pushing us all towards self-reflection toward modified understanding, toward a world where we address our fears and our faults and work for change.

This is the reason we advocate for victims, endorse education and focus on understanding and compassion above all else. I don’t have the ultimate answers, I never will – but I know it can’t hurt to think about and I believe it can heal when we talk about it.