At Be Nourished, we believe survivors.
We believe survivors’ stories. We believe survivors’ pain. All survivors. In all bodies. Body oppression takes many forms. Power is exerted and abused in many ways.
We are living in a time of collective retraumatization. We are experiencing a collective gaslighting, as we witness evading of truth, the discounting of experience on an international stage.
Sexual assault hotlines have seen an increase in calls by 200%. People, in their tired and triggered states, are not backing down. Something that was collectively silenced has been spoken into being. Stories keep coming. Truths continue to be told.
We believe and honor the truth of survivors whose stories don’t make it to the spotlight.
We believe and honor the truth of survivors whose stories never got told.
We believe and honor the truth of survivors who risked everything to speak their truth but were silenced anyways.
We believe and honor the truths of people of color, trans people, non-binary people, sex workers, disabled people. We believe and honor the truths of survivors whose stories have been discounted, discredited, or erased by systemic racism, by poverty, by sex trafficking, fatphobia, homophobia, transphobia, by bigotry in its many forms.
We believe and honor the stories of people whose bodies have been made into war-zones by innumerable systemic oppressions.
We believe and honor the stories of the ones who didn’t survive.
We honor what we each have come to carry in our bodies in our individual lives. We honor what we carry together as beings living and enduring together. We honor what we have survived, generation upon generation, absorbing and transforming traumas that reconfigure the cells in our bodies over millenia.
The stories you hold in your body matter.
They matter. We do not heal to become reinstated versions of our previous selves. We do not heal to learn strategies and to contain our wayward parts. We need not perform. We reclaim ourselves, with the collateral damage. And we learn to call the collateral damage what it is: the effects of patriarchy, systemic harm, injustice, power, misogyny, and bigotry.
You may carry a tremendous burden, but you are not a burden.
We can reclaim the stories that our bodies hold and find ourselves on a path to healing. You may never be the same but you can reclaim your truth. Whether you choose to speak it out loud to one person, or one hundred million or no one.
It is yours. It is true. It is real. It’s not your fault. And it matters.
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