A Thank You to Survivors, One Year After #MeToo Brought Us Together

Survivors, thank you. Thank you for twelve months of collective strength and power, even in the face of constant retraumatization. Thank you for a movement of millions who are forever bound together in our disruption of injustice. Thank you.

Survivors who have shared your stories, thank you. Thank you for your words and your art and your music. For the collective poetry of millions of voices synthesizing our pain into power, thank you, if you shared with just one person or with the world. Thank you to those who shared stories you thought you could never share — stories of decades-old pain, of relived memories, of experiences for which you may have thought you were to blame. Thank you for recognizing that you are not.

Survivors who have not shared your stories, thank you. Thank you for holding space for the many who walk alongside you without knowing we share similar journeys. Thank you for the progress you have made in your own journey; the progress that you may celebrate in solitude; the progress that we cannot see but continually feel emanating from your kindred spirits.

Survivors who are angry, thank you. Thank you for being messy, noisy, nasty, and all the other words that refuse to reflect “respectability.” Thank you for shedding the shackles of so-called civility, for dismantling the dam that so often forces us to keep our rage inside. Thank you for being loud, for being fierce, for being furious.

Survivors who have cried and cry still, thank you. Thank you for your unremitting tears and for your trembling hands and quivering voices. Thank you for donning sadness on your face and for knowing that what some may see as weakness is truly strength.

Survivors who march and protest, thank you. Thank you for your signs, and for chartering buses filled with survivors and allies. Thank you for bringing your children, and teaching them what collective power looks and feels like. Thank you to survivors with disabilities and those who cannot march, but campaign for radical change around the world. Thank you for using your voices, if you can, even when it comes out in a whisper, or a rasp, or not at all.

To trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming survivors, thank you. Thank you for calling for a more inclusive movement. Thank you for illustrating that your identities are inextricable from your experiences. Thank you for celebrating and centering your identities, often in the face of ignorance and at great personal risk.

To male and masc survivors, thank you. Thank you for sharing a story that is so often sidelined.

To those who say #MeToo, out loud or in private, thank you.

Tarana Burke, thank you.

Anita Hill, thank you.

Thank you Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez, and Julie Swetnick, and the many girls and women whose testimonies, proclaimed or withheld, are now the foundation upon which we are united.

And:

Survivors who vote, thank you. Thank you for registering. Thank you for getting to the polls. Thank you for displaying that “I Voted” sticker with pride. Thank you for driving this movement that is committed to holding those in power accountable. Thank you for these crucial acts of support for our community.

Thank you for that community, built heart by heart throughout these last twelve months. This community that may have been caused by common heartaches, but thrives through profound strength and love. This community that started long before these last twelve months. Thank you for the twelve months before that, and the twelve before that, and for years upon years of work that turns pain into power. What we have built will not fall.

And thank you for the next twelve months. Thank you for what we, together, can build into a year of radical change. Thank you, survivors.