Transcriber: Ellen Maloney Reviewer: Denise RQ
I was sitting in a parking lot, fiddling with something,
a hot day, my window open,
feeling free for a moment to enjoy the warm air.
As I went to buckle my seatbelt,
I felt the right side of my face hit the passenger side of my car.
How'd I get to the passenger side?
I remember the sting in my face, and a pain in my shoulder.
Panic filled my body as I realized that it was him driving.
I was trying to escape him, and here he was,
laughing at my stupidity, shouting obscenities at me.
The hair standing up on my arms,
my fingernails finding their way to the door and digging in.
I plead for him to let me go, but it wasn't worth it.
As he sped towards the rural logging roads,
I worried that this was the moment
that he would finally make good on his promise to kill me.
I saw the steel of his gun in his lap,
but that wasn't where the real fear came from.
When I looked in his eyes, there was pure darkness;
there was no humanity there.
I opened the window and attempted to scream.
I don't know to this day if the screams were audible,
but I screamed with every piece of my being.
But it wasn't that time.
It wasn't the time
he pushed me from a window or the years of punching me.
No.
The most profound and earth-shattering moment was the first time he hit me.
In that moment, I realized that life would never be the same.
You see, as survivors of domestic violence or really any kind of trauma,
there's always that moment
where you just know things won't be the same.
I often wonder, however, if that pain has also enabled me to do better,
to be better,
because as your innocence is being stripped,
you're also becoming powerful.
You become a member of a group that has truly survived.
I am brave, and vulnerable, and resilient, and there are many others like me.
19 years ago, I escaped an abusive relationship.
I fled a man who beat and dehumanized me.
I remember clearly, making up injuries, stories about my injuries, being beaten,
and struggling to maintain a belief that I mattered as a human being.
Leaving was hard, but admitting what had happened was harder.
Because I wouldn't admit what had happened,
people didn't understand what I was doing.
I left, and became homeless, and lived out in my car for about a year.
Even in preparing for this talk,
when I told my mom that I wanted to talk about my victimization and homelessness,
she said, "You didn't have to be homeless, Felice.
You could have lived with us."
After all of these years, I hadn't shared with her
that I couldn't live with them because I feared
he would make good on his promise to murder my sister if I did.
So I quietly lived in my car, in my shame,
and then lived in my shame for years after.
You might wonder what I did once I escaped.
Well, if you follow my model,
you stuff your shame in a suitcase and pretend it doesn't exist.
I threw my shame into my career,
and worked on developing my life professionally.
I pretended it wasn't there.
I worked hard and after a few steps,
I became an associate superintendent at this very facility.
Time and again in a conversation, someone would describe me as "tough",
or "strong", or "someone you can't hurt".
See, that's what I wanted;
for people to be able to see me as strong and tough, as someone they couldn't hurt.
But that's not the truth.
That's only a fraction of who I am.
When you can't even admit to your own past,
make good with it and move forward,
how can others possibly connect to the authentic you?
They can't, they didn't, and I felt alone.
I felt like I was on an island of perfect people,
and I was the one pretending to be like the rest of the people.
But that's not the truth.
I'm not unique.
One in four women in the United States has been involved in domestic violence.
One in three has been sexually assaulted.
As for the men, let's just say
that we know they are dramatically under-represented in statistics,
but there are many men who are survivors as well.
Everyone has a suitcase.
It might be carry-on,
or the kind that costs you an extra 50 bucks and puts your back out.
Regardless, when we reveal our authentic selves,
we create a trusting world;
a world where it feels safe to unpack our suitcase.
We help victims become survivors,
and our community can respond to our needs in a profound way.
Domestic violence is not a small problem.
This year alone in the United States,
an estimated 2.3 million people will be physically assaulted
by an intimate partner.
The community of survivors of domestic violence numbers
are in the millions in this country.
96% of incarcerated women have been impacted by trauma in their lives.
Yeah, 96%.
Through years of hard work, education,
and unveiling my trauma one layer at a time,
I came to see strength where I had previously seen weakness.
Still however, I did not share my story for fear of being judged,
and because I worried that I'd no longer be seen as strong.
I didn't think my story would ever matter to anyone.
In fall of 2014, at this very facility,
almost in this spot, I shared my secrets.
My shame, revealed to a roomful of 200 people, my trauma.
I was a wreck before that speech, and up until minutes before,
- kind of like today -
I worried that I couldn't go through with that.
I talked myself into speaking, saying only this to myself,
"If this impacts even one person in the room, it's worth it."
So I did it.
My heart beating out of my chest.
Finally, at one point, about five minutes in,
I think I opened my eyes, looked around,
there were tears in the eyes of many of the offenders in the room,
stunned looks on the faces of staff and volunteers.
In the back of the room, an officer looked down,
trying very hard not to make eye contact with me in an attempt to not cry.
That was my first moment of authenticity about my past.
I spoke that day, and today,
in an attempt to do the one thing that I know would have helped me.
I was once asked,
"What could someone have done for you, Felice, when you were in crisis?"
The answer was, and remains,
that what I needed was a lack of judgment, and no timeline.
I was a work in progress,
not to be held to the timeline of someone else's accomplishment.
I didn't want to be someone's "trauma recovery story".
It doesn't work that way.
The trauma lives in my body.
To this day, I'm hyper-vigilant in parking lots,
and in preparing for this talk,
often felt paralyzed and sick to my stomach.
That's not something that goes away overnight, or maybe, ever.
I wish I would have known years ago that there were others like me.
What happened after my speech that day
was the ones like me came out of the woodwork.
People came to me and in private conversations shared
that they too had been subjected to abuse that they didn't, or hadn't shared before.
See, it's that "you're like me" moment;
a moment of connection, of empathy, of acknowledgment, of a shared experience,
that's why they shared.
We devote our time and careers to helping others,
and have these amazing stories of the obstacles we've overcome
that we can use to share and inspire others if only we would share.
But we don't want to talk about the hard stuff because it's hard.
We fear that by being authentic, we'll somehow be exploited or manipulated.
It's not true.
The day I shared I feared that I would somehow lose
either personal or professional credibility,
and that my career and life trajectory would change significantly.
We ask offenders to put
their entire shame history, their worst moments, into a file,
so that we can make decisions about them.
Think about that.
Think about your worst moment, telling me,
and then I'm not going to share a thing with you.
There's so many people that need those of us
that are further in our journey to be open to create a world
where a young girl doesn't feel the need to build a separate persona,
or push her secrets into a suitcase that will inevitably break open.
I saw in my story that others found hope,
and I find hope in their stories.
What I finally realized
was that the darkness that had filled my life
was a critical part of who I am.
It's only when darkness and light come together
to create the full depth of a human experience,
the full fabric of human life.
What I realized was that denying the dark parts of my history,
I was suppressing a part of me that mattered,
and a part that fuels me to do this work.
So as you sit there today,
I would like you to think about the hard stuff you're not talking about.
What conversation could you start to help build community?
To help someone feel safe, or unafraid, or simply like they belong?
If we all start to talk about the stuff we're afraid to talk about,
we can build community, and acceptance.
I'm rewriting my story.
To the woman here, to the staff, visitors, and to anyone who's been victimized,
I want to tell you this
- and more specifically, to my abuser, this one's for you -
we are not your victims, I am not your damsel in distress.
This is my story, and I'm the effing hero in this story.
(Applause)