November 11, 2022 • 43 mins
Host Oya L Sherrills outlines the New Survivors movement and shares her four-part guide on how she's surviving rape culture.
About Oya:
Oya L Sherrills is a survivor, a lived experience leader in her field, an advocate, and an organizer. Author of "Musings of a Rascal", she works to create a culture where healing practices are centered and valued. Oya likes to pave paths that connect past and future ancestors in efforts to prioritize peace and community-driven solutions that break cycles of violence and address trauma. She's creative, she's a mama, and she's for the trees.
Links:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Content morning. This episode will discuss a lot of heavy
topics such as sexual assault, suicide, abortion, and homicide. Please
be kind to yourself, prepare yourself with before and or
after care, and remember if you are a loved one
is going through it, you can call the National Sexual
(00:22):
Assault Hotline at one eight hundred six five six hope
that's hundred six five six four six seven three, or
dial eight for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Thank you.
(00:49):
Join us to explore the stories, policies, and practices. This
is so welcome, welcome, welcome, good people. My name is
(01:09):
Oya L. Sharells, and I'm your host. This is Survivor's Hill,
a project of My Heart's Next Up initiative. Whoop whoop.
Shout out to all the wonderful people that have made
this opportunity possible. This is episode one of Survivor's Hill,
and this is a short guide to how I'm surviving
(01:31):
rape culture. But before we jump right in, let's go
over some key terms. When I say Survivor's Hill, what
is that? Is that a declaration? And demand? A wish? Well,
it's all of those things, but you also might ask
do all Survivor's hell and the short answer to that
is no. But that's the tragedy I hope to address.
(01:54):
In fact, a report released in says that only nine
of survivors of crime between and two thousand and nine
received victims compensation from victims services. Now, there have been
some great strides in the past eleven to twelve years,
and we still have a long distance to ensure that
(02:15):
those most harmed and least helped have access to support services.
There's a report that's called the Gifford's Report. And when
I'm saying Giffords, yes, I'm talking about as in Gabby Giffords,
the brave politician who survived a vicious act of gun
violence and lived to advocate for more gun reform. The
(02:35):
Gifford's Report is entitled America at a Crossroads, and it's
a great tool that I'll be referencing. It'll help to
ground us in the political landscape of what I'm calling
the new Survivor's movement. And what do I mean by
new survivors? Do I mean like new age? I'll say
(02:55):
for some of us, Um, do I mean new as
then in you as in Nubian survivors. Partly, but more completely,
I'm signaling to the New Survivor's Movement that over the
past decade has challenged tough on crime policies that have
led to mass incarceration in the name of survivors of color,
(03:20):
and especially survivors of color that have seldom ever even
had a voice in the process. So this New Survivor's
Movement is multicultural, multidimensional, and multifaceted. But I'm going to
come back to this. When you hear the terms survivors
of crime, you might ask what prints Well, the New
Survivor's Movement seeks support for survivors of all crimes, which
(03:44):
includes sexualized violence, homicide, human trafficking, kidnapping, stalking, but also
we take a look at environmental crimes and historical injustice
as well. This podcast will touch on many of these issues.
And then some you all all might wonder what do
I mean when I say rape culture. Here, I'm defining
(04:05):
rape culture as the pervasive attitudes and practices that underline
how we as a nation deal with sexualized violence. All
of this points to the very foundations of this country
and what it's been built upon and how it's been
built upon violent sexual acts and rape. Unfortunately, this fact
(04:27):
continues to show up in the way that we do culture.
It's proliferated through our media, through our music, and through
our institutions. So let me take you all into this
intimate moment with me, pull you in close and get personal,
because if you didn't know, the personal is still political.
(04:52):
And I'm out here surviving, and chances are you're out
here surviving rape culture too. So here's my short guide
to how I'm surviving. It's a short guide that consists
of four steps. Step one telling my story, Step two
centering healing, Step three advocacy, and step four pushback. Step
(05:20):
one telling my story. For the past twelve years of
my life, my work has been in the field of advocacy, healing,
and organizing. I've had the impulse to protect the vulnerable,
service those in need, and challenge systems of domination. Since
I was a kid, I had some venerable role models. Unfortunately,
(05:41):
at the age of fourteen, I hadn't really cultivated the
awareness to know when I was vulnerable and that I
needed help. So when we were on a family outing
and a handsome older guy slides me his number in
my youthful folly, I get flattered, cited, I accept, and
(06:01):
I call him I think sometimes a sense of danger
can become deadened when as a young girl you get
used to certain quote unquote facts about the world. Some
of these messages that I got were black girl, white world,
black girl, man's world. I remember being introduced to these
(06:25):
ideas domination is inevitable, and that might makes right. These
are the ideas that I understood as a kid to
be a reality, a reality that meant that I could
expect to be dominated by this world. So in the
moments that I was a kid and I received unwanted
touches or forced violently to participate in kissing and touching games,
(06:48):
mostly with other kids my age, I learned to accept
that as a consequence of being a little black girl.
And the reason I learned to accept that is that
when I wanted to speak about it, I was aimed.
So by the age of fourteen, I had already been
initiated into many of the practices of rape culture. I
had already experienced molestation, I experienced unwanted sexual touches, some
(07:13):
four sexual touches. I experienced cat calling just moving from
school to home and back. And yet I still clung
to this idea of purity. Probably borrowed from my great
grandmother's religion, and that purity I placed squarely in my virginity,
like many of us do. These are things that I
(07:35):
did not feel I could necessarily discuss with a lot
of people, and so I wrote about these ideas in
a book of poems and letters and prose that I
carried around with me everywhere. And since I was well
versed in the modes of rape culture, I had some
rules around it. What me and my peers would call
older men who prayed on that dead and sense of
(07:59):
danger in your girls, we call them vultures, the same
way that society calls older women who date younger man cougars.
We had our own terms, and so when we saw
these older men looking for young girls, they were called vultures.
And we each had our own set of rules about vultures, like,
for instance, I had a rule that I would always
(08:21):
tell the truth about my age, so that even if
I did entertain a vulture, they would know full well
that they were talking to a young girl and that
they were making that choice for their lives. And so
that was the case in this situation. When this older
guy gave me his number, and I gave him a call.
I let him know very plainly, I'm fourteen. He told
(08:44):
me that he was twenty one and that he had
just been released from jail, and the reason he was
released from jail was for pimpin Now, any other person
would have hung up the phone immediately, but at fourteen,
I don't think I really had a concept of what
it actually meant to be pimping in a criminal justice
(09:08):
sense or any kind of real sense. I got my
concepts of what it meant to be a pimp from
popular culture, like most of us, and according to popular culture,
a pimp was the thing to be right. I had
that teenage know it all is um coupled with naivete.
(09:28):
And so when I would sit on the phone with
this grown ass man and he would tell me that
he was interested in my poetry, and he admired my intellect,
and he wanted to play chess, I was intrigued. So
one day my sisters and I convinced my dad to
allow us to go on the train to the movies
by ourselves. It was a cover for us to meet
up with these guys. However, when we got to where
(09:50):
we were going, the decision was made to actually split up,
and this made me very nervous. However, nobody would give
so I went with this guy alone to his house
and we actually did start by playing chess, but at
some point things took a turn when he decided that
(10:12):
I really came there to be raped. There was no
amount of protests that I could give that would convince
him otherwise, And there are still things that disturb me
about that day, like the fact that he took a
polaroid of me, and that he actually had a collection
(10:34):
of polaroids that he added my picture too. Now, all
of all of the girls and the pictures were clothed,
but they looked just as young as I did. I
remember begging him that if he was going to assault me,
that at the very least he wear a condom, and
(10:54):
he complied with that. But that was also one of
the details that would later be the reason that I
kept my mouth shut, and that I actually shamed myself
into silence because I questioned myself whether anyone would believe
me or care. Anyways, while this man was on top
(11:16):
of me, I thought about all of the wrong moves
I had made to get into that position, and even
after he put the condom on, I remember crying to him,
begging him, reminding him that he didn't have to do
this to me. I remember telling him I'm not ready
and please, please just don't. And I remember him holding
(11:39):
me down and telling me, oh, no, no, no, no,
you want this. And after it was over, he said,
oh wow, you really were Verdon and I broke out
into sobs. He told me to clean myself up, and
I did so. I went to the shower and I
met up with my sisters. But before we got on
the train, he pulled me real close to him and
(12:00):
he grabbed my book of poetry. That book meant a
lot to me, and he told me he was keeping
it as collateral, that it meant that I would have
to come back to him later on, and so I
would tell one person. I would tell my best friend
at the time, not that I was raped, but that
someone had taken my book of poetry and I had
(12:22):
to get it back. So she agreed to ditch school
with me one day and go on the train to
meet him at the movie theater. I remember he brought
a friend along with him. We went to go see
Matrix Reloaded, and it was like an out of body
experience because I was just sitting there, waiting and waiting. Finally,
(12:42):
when after the movie we went over to the train platform,
I asked him if he had indeed brought my book
of poetry, and he said yeah. He pulled it out
and he said, you know, I really did read some
of it, and I read the part where you made
a vow to yourself to be a virgin until you
(13:03):
were eighteen, and it did make me feel bad a little.
At that moment, the train was pulling up and I
looked at my friend. I grabbed my journal from this
man's hand and I just fucking ran and my friend,
she had asked no questions either, She just ran with me.
We ran, and we jumped on the train. We ran
(13:24):
down a few cars, and once we stopped to catch
our breath, she was like, what happened? And that's when
I told her he raped me. Listen, good people. It
wasn't even the first time that I was in danger
of being entered into the world of human trafficking, and
sad to say, wouldn't be the last time I was raped.
(13:44):
Fast forward about ten months. I'm fifteen, and quite abruptly,
my foundations are shaking to the core and hold that
thought we'll be right back after a word from nust Answers.
(14:10):
My brother is murdered. Terrell Charell's was eighteen years old.
He had been home from Humbldt University for Christmas break
and he went to a party and was gunned down.
And in the weeks and days that led up to
his death, we actually had been having conversations about rape culture,
(14:30):
even though that's not what we called it. He told
me about the things he was learning in school, and
he also told me he thought Humble would be a
great place for me, because he said I was a
black hippie and Humbled State was Hippie heaven. I didn't
know how to process the grief. I was having a
nightmare consistently every night. I was having nightmares of his
(14:54):
blood soaked clothes and shoes in my closet. I didn't
want to sleep, so I went to school, sleep deprived
and in a state of shock. There were no school
officials offering any kind of support, no grief counseling, no
victims services, no nothing but the sense of loss. I
(15:15):
did have a family and a community to lean into.
The community was centered around my family's work in Watts
South Central peacemaking work to address the very same violence
that claimed my brother's life. A part of that community
was a young female street artist who sat with me
one day and asked me what I planned to do
(15:36):
with my grief. I replied, drinking and fucking. She warned me, hey,
be careful with that, but I wasn't. I found out
my dad's healing journey was to take him out of
the country on a sabbatical, which meant that I would
be returning to live in the Bay Area with my mom.
I quickly made good on my ill thought out thou
(15:58):
to myself, and by the time I was on a
plane to the Bay I was pregnant, but I didn't know.
So what happens when grief goes unaddressed and it's compounded
with unhealthy habits of self loathing, self soothing through sex,
and self medicating with alcohol spiral. I was fifteen, pregnant, depressed,
(16:22):
and full of unprocessed pain. And I'm telling you, it's
like a vortex is created when you're in that, a
vortex that just calls more misery to you, to anyone
paying attention. I was wounded, bleeding out, and like right
on queue in flies the vulture. He was a Bart
(16:47):
security guard, wearing his uniform and all. He chatted me
and a schoolmate up while we wrote the train home.
I wasn't interested, so I gave him a fake number
and I started home. It was raining that day, and
it was dark already. I was walking alone, and I
kept looking back because I had the feeling of being
(17:08):
watched by and seeing anybody. I felt like a sigh
of relief when I finally reached my mom's apartments, which
were gated. I hurried in, but behind me I didn't
hear the gate clothes, and to my surprise, there's the
Bart vulture. This danger I felt in my blood, like
(17:31):
my heart quickened, but I played it off. He did too, saying,
oh hi, I just wanted to make sure that you
got home safe. I led him around the apartment complex,
knowing intuitively it would be much too risky for me
just to go straight home. He kept asking at every door,
is this when yours? Is this? When yours? A couple
(17:53):
of flights up from where I actually lived. I led
him and leaned up against the wall, talking to who
him stalling, I could visibly see him getting I raped.
Finally I heard my mom entering on the floor below,
and I ran down to meet her at the door,
and my mom gave this guy the supreme side eyes
(18:14):
and he just greeted her as he made his way down.
Who was that, she asked me, and I told her
it was just some wordo who had followed me. She
was just like, make sure the doors locked in. She
says something about my stepfather. Well, that month, when my
moon didn't come, I was further knocked into despair. I
(18:34):
had suspected something was going on in my body, but
now it was confirmed. All the shame and pain made
me want to die. Point blank. I thought that I
was pregnant, but now I knew. What I didn't know
was that I was being stopped, that the bart vulture
was following me daily on my school routes. The way
(18:57):
I found out was that I was like to school
one morning and I was by myself. He pulled up
alongside me in his car and told me to get in.
He said, please, don't make this hard. I was so
depressed and energy depleted that I didn't and didn't try
to fight. I just got in. He drove us like
(19:19):
forty five minutes out to his actual apartment. I mostly
just sat there quietly while he played video games. When
I finally did speak, it was to tell him that
people would be looking for me soon. Ominously, he replied,
they won't find you. I told him I had to
use the bathroom, which he allowed me to do, and
(19:40):
to my surprise, another dude walks into the apartment. He
automatically had a nervous look on his face, and I
started to tell him, Hey, I'm not supposed to be here.
I'm only fifteen, supposed to be in school. I don't
even know where we're at right now. And dude, it's like,
it's not my business. I don't have anything to do
with that, and he quickly goes into his room and
(20:03):
shuts the door. Somewhere in the back of the apartment,
the bart Vulture just sits staring at the TV all
glassy eyed. And at this point I realized that I
really gotta go, so I make a move towards the
door and he jumps up. At the same time, he
grabs me by my hair pulls me into the room.
He throws me on the bed and begins to strangle me,
(20:24):
but I managed to kick him off. We fight for
another few minutes and eventually I get exhausted and I
just scream at him, fine kill me then, to which
he promptly places a pillow over my face, suffocating me.
At first, I tried to wriggle myself free, but eventually
(20:45):
I just stopped moving and I held my own breath.
When I fell, him loosen his grip in order to
try and slide down my pants. I pushed the pillow
off of my face and took a breath of life,
and I told him that I was going to start screaming,
and he said scream. I was like, your roommate is
gonna hear me, and he said, my roommate will help me,
(21:07):
and then he pulled my card. He was like, you
said he wanted to die, so I'm gonna kill you.
Dude starts hitting himself in the face, speaking gibberish. I'm terrified,
and then he asked me again, do you want to die?
And I reply yes, and so he asked why do
you want to die? And I had no understanding of
(21:28):
survivor's remorse, or even depression and anxiety, or how sleep
deprivation might support in making terrible decisions. I had no
understanding of how grief could be at the root of
my pain. So what I told him was I wanted
to die because I was pregnant, and that admission just
(21:49):
seemed to take every ounce out of me. And so
from that point he did rape me, and I just
lay there, numb, still quiet, and when it was over,
he was hitting himself in the face and talking to himself.
And when I was first recounting this story to myself,
I didn't really recall what he was saying. It just
(22:12):
was a memory of gibberish in my mind. But I
looked back at my journal to be reminded what were
some of the things that he was saying. And he
was saying things like I know you're her, and I
love you, I love you, I know you're her. Really
just strange things that didn't seem to fit the moment
(22:34):
at all. So while he had his mental breakdown, I
grabbed my pants and I ran down the hall to
the roommate and I banged on his door until he
came out, and when I saw a little break in
his indifference, I told him, Hey, dude, your friend is crazy.
He just raped me. I just need to get out
of here, and I need you can call me a taxi.
(22:54):
I just need your help to get out of here.
And he was like, you know what, I'll take you.
I'll take you wherever you want to go. Just let's go.
Let's go right now. Put on your pants. We gotta
go now. And the bart Vulture never left the room.
I just heard him crying and talking to himself. His
roommate drove me forty five minutes back towards my side
of town, and the whole time he's making excuses for
(23:17):
the guy. He's saying things like his friend might be
undiagnosed schizophrenic or bipolar, and that if I could just
understand that he just lost someone very important to him.
And I'm just silent the whole time, and this guy
is just making excuses and even apologizing for the Vulture.
(23:38):
But once I'm getting out the car, he tells me, Hey,
you don't want to say anything to the police or anything,
because remember, we do know where you live. But I
wasn't going to talk to anybody about this. I thought
too low of myself at the time to think anyone
would care not to mention. I had just seen that
with my brother, whose case is still cold seventeen years later,
(24:02):
so I wasn't going to talk to the police about anything.
In fact, I didn't want to talk to anybody about
anything anymore. I went home that night, and the next
day I didn't go to school. I told my mom
that I wasn't feeling well, and later on in the evening,
I rummaged through her things. I found every pill I
could find. Then I grabbed half a fifth of Hennessy
(24:25):
and I swallowed it all down, hoping that I wouldn't
wake up the next morning. But I did. I was boozy,
maybe even a little hunk over, and disoriented from the
effects of the many pills. But I was alive. I
had survived my suicide attempt, and I was incredibly sad
about it. On the Day of the Dead Via they
(24:52):
looks more those Back in eighteen seventy seven, Chiron was discovered.
What is Chiron? A ball of star dust and cosmic ice,
a comet or a minor planet. It's not really the
astronomy of the object that I'm interested in, but it's
the astrology that has been quite useful for me. See,
(25:14):
Chiron carries with it the mythology of a Greek centaur
who was unlike his tribe. The rest of his folks
were rowdy and unruly, and they were constantly causing me heim,
going from village to village, pillaging folks, and people were
getting tired of it. So they called on Chiron because
(25:34):
they felt like he was the only one who had
reason and wisdom amongst his people. He was already a teacher,
and they asked him to be a peacemaker, so he
tried to do that by going to his folks on
the battlefield, and then the chaos, he actually gets struck
by a poison arrow. So after being struck with that arrow,
(25:56):
he then embarks upon a healing journey in which he
attempts to hill himself of this eternal wound. He goes
through so many different herbs and try so many different techniques,
and as he's going through the motions of trying to
heal himself, he becomes an expert at healing. Why am
I talking about Chiron. I'm talking about Chiron because that
(26:19):
concept of the wounded healer has meant so much from
my own personal journey, and so it represents step two,
which is centering killing. So the chironic astrological meaning lends
back to this idea of the gift in the wound,
and that through the pursuit of self healing, you may
(26:40):
find an abundance of healing practices and techniques that not
only support your own healing journey, but can actually provide
support for the healing journey of others. Also, the concept
argues that it's not necessary for you to reach this
pinnacle of self healing for your journey to be valid,
(27:00):
or for your healing to be valid, because not about perfection,
it's about practice. So quick recap. Within one year I
had been stopped, I had been raped twice, and my
brother had been murdered. I become pregnant, and I had
(27:20):
a suicide attempt. How the hell on earth did I
pursue healing from here? Well? First, I confided in a
family friend that happened to be a therapist that I
was pregnant, and she provided me with an invaluable healing practice.
(27:41):
It was to converse with myself, asking myself, am I
ready to bring a child into this world? I knew
I wasn't. Then I was to converse with the spirit
that was asking to enter through me and let it
know that it was loved and yet it was not
(28:04):
time for it to come. Once I had these conversations
and I felt good with my decision. It wasn't long
before my mom knew and other folks in the family knew,
and my mom actually became an amazing support system for me.
She helped me to make provisions to have the abortion,
(28:27):
and once that happened, I felt empowered, like I had
a little of my life back, but I was still
being stopped. The bart Vulger actually approached the girl I
was initially with on the train when I met him,
and he told her that I was pregnant with his
kid and that he was coming for me. Pretty distraught,
(28:51):
I confided in a male classmate that this grown dude
was following me on my school routes. So the su
who I believe in youth leadership, youth development, and that
you've have a role in public safety. Because this young
man took what I confided in him and recruited four
(29:12):
other young men, young black and brown teens, to escort
me to and from school each day for the rest
of the school year, and I never saw the bart
Vulture again. This was healing for me, and finally my
(29:33):
chiron astrological placement is in the ninth House. A quick
dive into astrology. A natal chart is the snapshot of
the sky from Earth's perspective at the time of your birth.
The sky includes the entire zodiac, the whole twelve signs
that you're already familiar with, plus planets, asteroids, moons, and stars,
(29:55):
and it's divided up into twelve equal parts. That's what
we call houses. Each house represents a zodiac sign according
to its position in the sky at the time of
your birth. These particulars are noted to create certain patterns
in your life, path, behaviors, and psychological developments. So the
(30:19):
sun is very far away, but it can impact serotonin
in our brains, and the moon can push and pull
our ocean currents. And it's been documented time and time
and again that a full moon creates increases in crime, accidents,
and er visits. All that to say it is possible
(30:42):
that we are universally connected through the cycles of these
heavenly bodies. But the bigger point is that utilizing a
natal chart can help you explore in depth your attitudes
about the themes the planets and houses placements represent. So again,
Chiron is in my nightth house. Now I know everybody
(31:05):
isn't on board with the youthfulness of astrology, but for
me it provides a much needed point of reference for
self inquiry and self reflection. So where Chiron shows up
in your natal chart is it indicates where you receive
your deepest found but also how you are healed and
(31:25):
can offer healing to others. Like I said, my caron
placement ninth House, and so in the culmination of my
tenth grade year, I received an invitation from my father
on his sabbatical to join him alongside a group of
other youth and mentors from my home back and wants.
(31:47):
This invitation was a trip to Russia. The ninth House
in astrology represents long distance trips. It was my first
time flying that far. I had a CD player with
one seed like Chiron. The music I was discovering was
first released in nineteen seventy and as I glided over
(32:09):
the Atlantic in the clouds, I cried listening to Bob
Marley tell me, don't worry about thing, because every little
thing gonna be all right. We spent less than three
weeks in Russia during the white nights. The white knights
is when the sun rides along the horizon and never
(32:32):
goes down. This time was life affirming for me. We
were there for an international peace conference where folks from
war torn communities worldwide discussed strategies to reduce harm and
increase the quality of life for people's. It gave me
(32:52):
inspiration and it provided another healing opportunity that would push
me to seize lie for years to come. So I
invite you all to pull up your natal charts. There's
a lot of technology that's online that you can use
to do that, and I invite you to find chiron
(33:15):
in your astrological charts and see if those themes resonate
with you. We're gonna take a short break to hear
from our sponsors. Now that I've shared my story and
the healing opportunities that supported my growth, I want you
(33:39):
all to understand that what I've been through, too many
have gone through, and rape culture shouldn't just be survived,
it should be dismantled. One model that I'd like to
uplift comes from the Sasha Center in Detroit, by way
of Kalima Johnson, who has been helping black women feel sacred, saved,
(34:02):
and revered for many years. They produced a model called
the Black Woman's Triangulation of rape, and I want to
lift that up because everything that they show in this
model is reflected in what I went through. Like for instance,
at the bottom of the model are the systemic barriers
the denying of resources. As I stated, I was never
(34:24):
offered any resources, and not only that, there were none
to be offered at the time. Even though we lived
in was considered a high crime community where one in
three young women report being sexually assaulted and one in
six young men report being sexually assaulted, we didn't have
(34:47):
any grief counselors that at high school in Watson. We
didn't have anybody to tell us about victim services either.
We had all kinds of systemic barriers. In fact, there
were very few adults who paid attention at all to
our emotional well being or even considered it to be
a part of what was necessary to be addressed in education,
(35:08):
which has definitely changed over the years. Now you definitely
do find social emotional learning in place. But those were
systematic barriers. But they also looked like the school to
prison pipeline that we can have so many youth who
experience all these kinds of trauma, and if we look
(35:29):
back at the Giverage report, They said that acts of
violence spread through a community much like a virus. Exposure
to violence puts people at great risk of future violence.
And that's what I experienced, and it's not in a
vacuum from the fact that of gon homicides are perpetrated
against black men. The next tier is cultural appropriation objectification.
(35:56):
This is the next tier in the Sashia model, and
here we're talking about the sexualization of our cultural expressions, music,
media industry. All of that is reflected in the second tier.
And that's really important because when I talk about like
that deadened sense of danger or that numb numbness to danger,
(36:16):
part of that is the music and the movies that
we watched and listen to, and that made it okay
and cool for young girls to be talking to older men.
But also the music that was telling me that pimp
was something good in the black community, and it wasn't.
It was a dangerous thing for women to be involved
with pimps. And so these are the things that we
(36:37):
need to consider um when we're making music and if
we want to move towards a culture of healing, Like
what are the mantras that that we're providing to the
people like, what are we really saying and teaching our
children and allowing to be talked to our children? Is
its supporting rape culture? If it is, like, maybe rethink it. Also,
(37:00):
I can talk about the stereotyping and the sexualization, because
there's this idea that you know that young black girls,
black women are over sexualized. And I remember the first
guy who took advantage of me. He was so sure
that I wanted him to do it, and he didn't
(37:21):
even believe that I was a virgin because of the
idea of how um, young black girls are sexualized. So
this is just like partly some of the ways that
you know, culture views black women and girls, and it
goes into the devaluing and dehumanizing. All of this is
a part of the black woman's triangulization of rape and
(37:44):
all of it is about rape culture. And when you
look at the policies and funding the victim blaming that happens,
it's really easy to assume that a fourteen year old,
fifteen year old girl could easily believe that no one
would understand what she was going through, that they want
to believe her, that they would blame her for the
choices that she made, that led to someone taking advantage
(38:06):
of her and therefore shame her into silence before she
even has a chance to reach out for help. And
I should also point out that when I did tell
my best friend at the time that I had been raped,
her response was her too. That's a shout out to
(38:29):
to Toronto Burke. Because we have to we have to
call folks who are reckoning. We are dealing with a
big social issue here, and of course what I would
want to put forth in this New Survivor's Movement is
that we have to call folks who are reckoning. And
(38:50):
there has been a lot of movement, but we have
so far to go, especially when we have models like
the Sasha model and many people who are doing the
work on the ground and all across the nation, and
these small nonprofit organizations they rarely get their flowers, they
rarely get sustainable funding. So these are the things that
(39:10):
we have to advocate for, because if we're not advocating
for these things, then we are continuing to allow rape
culture to live and thrive in our future and the
future of our children. So the New Survivor's Movement features
centering survivors and centering killing. And yes we can do
(39:31):
both at the same time. Absolutely, just think in terms
of like Avin diagram, because what we do is we
seek to put the public back into public safety. The
New Survivor's movement includes communities that have historically been left
out of the definition of victims of crime, and it
focuses on humanizing survivors. It offers smart criminal justice reform
(39:54):
to restore communities and individuals, and it and rejects maths
and cress race as a solution to crime reduction. It
doesn't lean on law enforcements designation of who is the
survivor of crime, and it seeks to extend healing services
and resources to all those who self identify survivors. So
anybody saying that they need help can and should be helped.
(40:18):
And lastly, again, in addition to advocating for policies or
con funding to support the needs of survivors, we have
to push back against those policies that are meant to
extend rape culture, like, for instance, the Supreme Court decision
to reverge reverse wede, any kind of anti abortion laws
(40:42):
those extend rape culture. And you might be asking, okay,
so how do anti abortion laws connect to rape culture? Well,
you know, what I will tell you. Any legislation, as
a matter of fact, that takes away your right to consent,
which is your right to say yes or no about
what happens in your body, uphold trape culture. And I
(41:07):
am standing on the shouldiers of my ancestors who were dragged, kidnapped,
and then raped for four hundred years, and they had
legislation that said that the white men that were in
control of them could control how, where, when, yes or
no if they had babies. So this is something this
(41:29):
is something that's generational, and it points to a trauma
that is intergenerational. And I'm saying this to all those
legislators and to anybody who was confused about how anti
abortion legislation connects to rape culture, that if you're telling
a woman that she doesn't have the right to shape
(41:52):
her own destiny, that upholds rape culture. Like, for instance,
I know full well that that I not had an
abortion at the time, that the depression of my predicament
would have caused me to attempt suicide again. So I
felt that it was important for me to have the
(42:13):
opportunity to honor my soul, my psyche, and my mental
health by having access to a save abortion. It saved
my life. I was blessed to have the women in
my life that I did that supported me through my
decision in a way that was healing for me. Laws
that prevent access to services like this do not belong
(42:37):
in a free country. You need to keep your laws
of my body. Okay. Disclaimer My views, beliefs, and opinions
are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views
of my guests, resource organizations, or sources shared. Yeah, you've
(43:13):
been listening in with Oya El sharels of the Survivor's
Hill podcast. Join us next time as we sit down
with Seri's Castle for episode two. I'm surviving Killer Cox
last thing. Every day we survive is a new chance
(43:33):
to see killing. Peace to your journey. Good people, a
ship
Content morning. This episode will discuss a lot of heavy
topics such as sexual assault, suicide, abortion, and homicide. Please
be kind to yourself, prepare yourself with before and or
after care, and remember if you are a loved one
is going through it, you can call the National Sexual
(00:22):
Assault Hotline at one eight hundred six five six hope
that's hundred six five six four six seven three, or
dial eight for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Thank you.
(00:49):
Join us to explore the stories, policies, and practices. This
is so welcome, welcome, welcome, good people. My name is
(01:09):
Oya L. Sharells, and I'm your host. This is Survivor's Hill,
a project of My Heart's Next Up initiative. Whoop whoop.
Shout out to all the wonderful people that have made
this opportunity possible. This is episode one of Survivor's Hill,
and this is a short guide to how I'm surviving
(01:31):
rape culture. But before we jump right in, let's go
over some key terms. When I say Survivor's Hill, what
is that? Is that a declaration? And demand? A wish? Well,
it's all of those things, but you also might ask
do all Survivor's hell and the short answer to that
is no. But that's the tragedy I hope to address.
(01:54):
In fact, a report released in says that only nine
of survivors of crime between and two thousand and nine
received victims compensation from victims services. Now, there have been
some great strides in the past eleven to twelve years,
and we still have a long distance to ensure that
(02:15):
those most harmed and least helped have access to support services.
There's a report that's called the Gifford's Report. And when
I'm saying Giffords, yes, I'm talking about as in Gabby Giffords,
the brave politician who survived a vicious act of gun
violence and lived to advocate for more gun reform. The
(02:35):
Gifford's Report is entitled America at a Crossroads, and it's
a great tool that I'll be referencing. It'll help to
ground us in the political landscape of what I'm calling
the new Survivor's movement. And what do I mean by
new survivors? Do I mean like new age? I'll say
(02:55):
for some of us, Um, do I mean new as
then in you as in Nubian survivors. Partly, but more completely,
I'm signaling to the New Survivor's Movement that over the
past decade has challenged tough on crime policies that have
led to mass incarceration in the name of survivors of color,
(03:20):
and especially survivors of color that have seldom ever even
had a voice in the process. So this New Survivor's
Movement is multicultural, multidimensional, and multifaceted. But I'm going to
come back to this. When you hear the terms survivors
of crime, you might ask what prints Well, the New
Survivor's Movement seeks support for survivors of all crimes, which
(03:44):
includes sexualized violence, homicide, human trafficking, kidnapping, stalking, but also
we take a look at environmental crimes and historical injustice
as well. This podcast will touch on many of these issues.
And then some you all all might wonder what do
I mean when I say rape culture. Here, I'm defining
(04:05):
rape culture as the pervasive attitudes and practices that underline
how we as a nation deal with sexualized violence. All
of this points to the very foundations of this country
and what it's been built upon and how it's been
built upon violent sexual acts and rape. Unfortunately, this fact
(04:27):
continues to show up in the way that we do culture.
It's proliferated through our media, through our music, and through
our institutions. So let me take you all into this
intimate moment with me, pull you in close and get personal,
because if you didn't know, the personal is still political.
(04:52):
And I'm out here surviving, and chances are you're out
here surviving rape culture too. So here's my short guide
to how I'm surviving. It's a short guide that consists
of four steps. Step one telling my story, Step two
centering healing, Step three advocacy, and step four pushback. Step
(05:20):
one telling my story. For the past twelve years of
my life, my work has been in the field of advocacy, healing,
and organizing. I've had the impulse to protect the vulnerable,
service those in need, and challenge systems of domination. Since
I was a kid, I had some venerable role models. Unfortunately,
(05:41):
at the age of fourteen, I hadn't really cultivated the
awareness to know when I was vulnerable and that I
needed help. So when we were on a family outing
and a handsome older guy slides me his number in
my youthful folly, I get flattered, cited, I accept, and
(06:01):
I call him I think sometimes a sense of danger
can become deadened when as a young girl you get
used to certain quote unquote facts about the world. Some
of these messages that I got were black girl, white world,
black girl, man's world. I remember being introduced to these
(06:25):
ideas domination is inevitable, and that might makes right. These
are the ideas that I understood as a kid to
be a reality, a reality that meant that I could
expect to be dominated by this world. So in the
moments that I was a kid and I received unwanted
touches or forced violently to participate in kissing and touching games,
(06:48):
mostly with other kids my age, I learned to accept
that as a consequence of being a little black girl.
And the reason I learned to accept that is that
when I wanted to speak about it, I was aimed.
So by the age of fourteen, I had already been
initiated into many of the practices of rape culture. I
had already experienced molestation, I experienced unwanted sexual touches, some
(07:13):
four sexual touches. I experienced cat calling just moving from
school to home and back. And yet I still clung
to this idea of purity. Probably borrowed from my great
grandmother's religion, and that purity I placed squarely in my virginity,
like many of us do. These are things that I
(07:35):
did not feel I could necessarily discuss with a lot
of people, and so I wrote about these ideas in
a book of poems and letters and prose that I
carried around with me everywhere. And since I was well
versed in the modes of rape culture, I had some
rules around it. What me and my peers would call
older men who prayed on that dead and sense of
(07:59):
danger in your girls, we call them vultures, the same
way that society calls older women who date younger man cougars.
We had our own terms, and so when we saw
these older men looking for young girls, they were called vultures.
And we each had our own set of rules about vultures, like,
for instance, I had a rule that I would always
(08:21):
tell the truth about my age, so that even if
I did entertain a vulture, they would know full well
that they were talking to a young girl and that
they were making that choice for their lives. And so
that was the case in this situation. When this older
guy gave me his number, and I gave him a call.
I let him know very plainly, I'm fourteen. He told
(08:44):
me that he was twenty one and that he had
just been released from jail, and the reason he was
released from jail was for pimpin Now, any other person
would have hung up the phone immediately, but at fourteen,
I don't think I really had a concept of what
it actually meant to be pimping in a criminal justice
(09:08):
sense or any kind of real sense. I got my
concepts of what it meant to be a pimp from
popular culture, like most of us, and according to popular culture,
a pimp was the thing to be right. I had
that teenage know it all is um coupled with naivete.
(09:28):
And so when I would sit on the phone with
this grown ass man and he would tell me that
he was interested in my poetry, and he admired my intellect,
and he wanted to play chess, I was intrigued. So
one day my sisters and I convinced my dad to
allow us to go on the train to the movies
by ourselves. It was a cover for us to meet
up with these guys. However, when we got to where
(09:50):
we were going, the decision was made to actually split up,
and this made me very nervous. However, nobody would give
so I went with this guy alone to his house
and we actually did start by playing chess, but at
some point things took a turn when he decided that
(10:12):
I really came there to be raped. There was no
amount of protests that I could give that would convince
him otherwise, And there are still things that disturb me
about that day, like the fact that he took a
polaroid of me, and that he actually had a collection
(10:34):
of polaroids that he added my picture too. Now, all
of all of the girls and the pictures were clothed,
but they looked just as young as I did. I
remember begging him that if he was going to assault me,
that at the very least he wear a condom, and
(10:54):
he complied with that. But that was also one of
the details that would later be the reason that I
kept my mouth shut, and that I actually shamed myself
into silence because I questioned myself whether anyone would believe
me or care. Anyways, while this man was on top
(11:16):
of me, I thought about all of the wrong moves
I had made to get into that position, and even
after he put the condom on, I remember crying to him,
begging him, reminding him that he didn't have to do
this to me. I remember telling him I'm not ready
and please, please just don't. And I remember him holding
(11:39):
me down and telling me, oh, no, no, no, no,
you want this. And after it was over, he said,
oh wow, you really were Verdon and I broke out
into sobs. He told me to clean myself up, and
I did so. I went to the shower and I
met up with my sisters. But before we got on
the train, he pulled me real close to him and
(12:00):
he grabbed my book of poetry. That book meant a
lot to me, and he told me he was keeping
it as collateral, that it meant that I would have
to come back to him later on, and so I
would tell one person. I would tell my best friend
at the time, not that I was raped, but that
someone had taken my book of poetry and I had
(12:22):
to get it back. So she agreed to ditch school
with me one day and go on the train to
meet him at the movie theater. I remember he brought
a friend along with him. We went to go see
Matrix Reloaded, and it was like an out of body
experience because I was just sitting there, waiting and waiting. Finally,
(12:42):
when after the movie we went over to the train platform,
I asked him if he had indeed brought my book
of poetry, and he said yeah. He pulled it out
and he said, you know, I really did read some
of it, and I read the part where you made
a vow to yourself to be a virgin until you
(13:03):
were eighteen, and it did make me feel bad a little.
At that moment, the train was pulling up and I
looked at my friend. I grabbed my journal from this
man's hand and I just fucking ran and my friend,
she had asked no questions either, She just ran with me.
We ran, and we jumped on the train. We ran
(13:24):
down a few cars, and once we stopped to catch
our breath, she was like, what happened? And that's when
I told her he raped me. Listen, good people. It
wasn't even the first time that I was in danger
of being entered into the world of human trafficking, and
sad to say, wouldn't be the last time I was raped.
(13:44):
Fast forward about ten months. I'm fifteen, and quite abruptly,
my foundations are shaking to the core and hold that
thought we'll be right back after a word from nust Answers.
(14:10):
My brother is murdered. Terrell Charell's was eighteen years old.
He had been home from Humbldt University for Christmas break
and he went to a party and was gunned down.
And in the weeks and days that led up to
his death, we actually had been having conversations about rape culture,
(14:30):
even though that's not what we called it. He told
me about the things he was learning in school, and
he also told me he thought Humble would be a
great place for me, because he said I was a
black hippie and Humbled State was Hippie heaven. I didn't
know how to process the grief. I was having a
nightmare consistently every night. I was having nightmares of his
(14:54):
blood soaked clothes and shoes in my closet. I didn't
want to sleep, so I went to school, sleep deprived
and in a state of shock. There were no school
officials offering any kind of support, no grief counseling, no
victims services, no nothing but the sense of loss. I
(15:15):
did have a family and a community to lean into.
The community was centered around my family's work in Watts
South Central peacemaking work to address the very same violence
that claimed my brother's life. A part of that community
was a young female street artist who sat with me
one day and asked me what I planned to do
(15:36):
with my grief. I replied, drinking and fucking. She warned me, hey,
be careful with that, but I wasn't. I found out
my dad's healing journey was to take him out of
the country on a sabbatical, which meant that I would
be returning to live in the Bay Area with my mom.
I quickly made good on my ill thought out thou
(15:58):
to myself, and by the time I was on a
plane to the Bay I was pregnant, but I didn't know.
So what happens when grief goes unaddressed and it's compounded
with unhealthy habits of self loathing, self soothing through sex,
and self medicating with alcohol spiral. I was fifteen, pregnant, depressed,
(16:22):
and full of unprocessed pain. And I'm telling you, it's
like a vortex is created when you're in that, a
vortex that just calls more misery to you, to anyone
paying attention. I was wounded, bleeding out, and like right
on queue in flies the vulture. He was a Bart
(16:47):
security guard, wearing his uniform and all. He chatted me
and a schoolmate up while we wrote the train home.
I wasn't interested, so I gave him a fake number
and I started home. It was raining that day, and
it was dark already. I was walking alone, and I
kept looking back because I had the feeling of being
(17:08):
watched by and seeing anybody. I felt like a sigh
of relief when I finally reached my mom's apartments, which
were gated. I hurried in, but behind me I didn't
hear the gate clothes, and to my surprise, there's the
Bart vulture. This danger I felt in my blood, like
(17:31):
my heart quickened, but I played it off. He did too, saying,
oh hi, I just wanted to make sure that you
got home safe. I led him around the apartment complex,
knowing intuitively it would be much too risky for me
just to go straight home. He kept asking at every door,
is this when yours? Is this? When yours? A couple
(17:53):
of flights up from where I actually lived. I led
him and leaned up against the wall, talking to who
him stalling, I could visibly see him getting I raped.
Finally I heard my mom entering on the floor below,
and I ran down to meet her at the door,
and my mom gave this guy the supreme side eyes
(18:14):
and he just greeted her as he made his way down.
Who was that, she asked me, and I told her
it was just some wordo who had followed me. She
was just like, make sure the doors locked in. She
says something about my stepfather. Well, that month, when my
moon didn't come, I was further knocked into despair. I
(18:34):
had suspected something was going on in my body, but
now it was confirmed. All the shame and pain made
me want to die. Point blank. I thought that I
was pregnant, but now I knew. What I didn't know
was that I was being stopped, that the bart vulture
was following me daily on my school routes. The way
(18:57):
I found out was that I was like to school
one morning and I was by myself. He pulled up
alongside me in his car and told me to get in.
He said, please, don't make this hard. I was so
depressed and energy depleted that I didn't and didn't try
to fight. I just got in. He drove us like
(19:19):
forty five minutes out to his actual apartment. I mostly
just sat there quietly while he played video games. When
I finally did speak, it was to tell him that
people would be looking for me soon. Ominously, he replied,
they won't find you. I told him I had to
use the bathroom, which he allowed me to do, and
(19:40):
to my surprise, another dude walks into the apartment. He
automatically had a nervous look on his face, and I
started to tell him, Hey, I'm not supposed to be here.
I'm only fifteen, supposed to be in school. I don't
even know where we're at right now. And dude, it's like,
it's not my business. I don't have anything to do
with that, and he quickly goes into his room and
(20:03):
shuts the door. Somewhere in the back of the apartment,
the bart Vulture just sits staring at the TV all
glassy eyed. And at this point I realized that I
really gotta go, so I make a move towards the
door and he jumps up. At the same time, he
grabs me by my hair pulls me into the room.
He throws me on the bed and begins to strangle me,
(20:24):
but I managed to kick him off. We fight for
another few minutes and eventually I get exhausted and I
just scream at him, fine kill me then, to which
he promptly places a pillow over my face, suffocating me.
At first, I tried to wriggle myself free, but eventually
(20:45):
I just stopped moving and I held my own breath.
When I fell, him loosen his grip in order to
try and slide down my pants. I pushed the pillow
off of my face and took a breath of life,
and I told him that I was going to start screaming,
and he said scream. I was like, your roommate is
gonna hear me, and he said, my roommate will help me,
(21:07):
and then he pulled my card. He was like, you
said he wanted to die, so I'm gonna kill you.
Dude starts hitting himself in the face, speaking gibberish. I'm terrified,
and then he asked me again, do you want to die?
And I reply yes, and so he asked why do
you want to die? And I had no understanding of
(21:28):
survivor's remorse, or even depression and anxiety, or how sleep
deprivation might support in making terrible decisions. I had no
understanding of how grief could be at the root of
my pain. So what I told him was I wanted
to die because I was pregnant, and that admission just
(21:49):
seemed to take every ounce out of me. And so
from that point he did rape me, and I just
lay there, numb, still quiet, and when it was over,
he was hitting himself in the face and talking to himself.
And when I was first recounting this story to myself,
I didn't really recall what he was saying. It just
(22:12):
was a memory of gibberish in my mind. But I
looked back at my journal to be reminded what were
some of the things that he was saying. And he
was saying things like I know you're her, and I
love you, I love you, I know you're her. Really
just strange things that didn't seem to fit the moment
(22:34):
at all. So while he had his mental breakdown, I
grabbed my pants and I ran down the hall to
the roommate and I banged on his door until he
came out, and when I saw a little break in
his indifference, I told him, Hey, dude, your friend is crazy.
He just raped me. I just need to get out
of here, and I need you can call me a taxi.
(22:54):
I just need your help to get out of here.
And he was like, you know what, I'll take you.
I'll take you wherever you want to go. Just let's go.
Let's go right now. Put on your pants. We gotta
go now. And the bart Vulture never left the room.
I just heard him crying and talking to himself. His
roommate drove me forty five minutes back towards my side
of town, and the whole time he's making excuses for
(23:17):
the guy. He's saying things like his friend might be
undiagnosed schizophrenic or bipolar, and that if I could just
understand that he just lost someone very important to him.
And I'm just silent the whole time, and this guy
is just making excuses and even apologizing for the Vulture.
(23:38):
But once I'm getting out the car, he tells me, Hey,
you don't want to say anything to the police or anything,
because remember, we do know where you live. But I
wasn't going to talk to anybody about this. I thought
too low of myself at the time to think anyone
would care not to mention. I had just seen that
with my brother, whose case is still cold seventeen years later,
(24:02):
so I wasn't going to talk to the police about anything.
In fact, I didn't want to talk to anybody about
anything anymore. I went home that night, and the next
day I didn't go to school. I told my mom
that I wasn't feeling well, and later on in the evening,
I rummaged through her things. I found every pill I
could find. Then I grabbed half a fifth of Hennessy
(24:25):
and I swallowed it all down, hoping that I wouldn't
wake up the next morning. But I did. I was boozy,
maybe even a little hunk over, and disoriented from the
effects of the many pills. But I was alive. I
had survived my suicide attempt, and I was incredibly sad
about it. On the Day of the Dead Via they
(24:52):
looks more those Back in eighteen seventy seven, Chiron was discovered.
What is Chiron? A ball of star dust and cosmic ice,
a comet or a minor planet. It's not really the
astronomy of the object that I'm interested in, but it's
the astrology that has been quite useful for me. See,
(25:14):
Chiron carries with it the mythology of a Greek centaur
who was unlike his tribe. The rest of his folks
were rowdy and unruly, and they were constantly causing me heim,
going from village to village, pillaging folks, and people were
getting tired of it. So they called on Chiron because
(25:34):
they felt like he was the only one who had
reason and wisdom amongst his people. He was already a teacher,
and they asked him to be a peacemaker, so he
tried to do that by going to his folks on
the battlefield, and then the chaos, he actually gets struck
by a poison arrow. So after being struck with that arrow,
(25:56):
he then embarks upon a healing journey in which he
attempts to hill himself of this eternal wound. He goes
through so many different herbs and try so many different techniques,
and as he's going through the motions of trying to
heal himself, he becomes an expert at healing. Why am
I talking about Chiron. I'm talking about Chiron because that
(26:19):
concept of the wounded healer has meant so much from
my own personal journey, and so it represents step two,
which is centering killing. So the chironic astrological meaning lends
back to this idea of the gift in the wound,
and that through the pursuit of self healing, you may
(26:40):
find an abundance of healing practices and techniques that not
only support your own healing journey, but can actually provide
support for the healing journey of others. Also, the concept
argues that it's not necessary for you to reach this
pinnacle of self healing for your journey to be valid,
(27:00):
or for your healing to be valid, because not about perfection,
it's about practice. So quick recap. Within one year I
had been stopped, I had been raped twice, and my
brother had been murdered. I become pregnant, and I had
(27:20):
a suicide attempt. How the hell on earth did I
pursue healing from here? Well? First, I confided in a
family friend that happened to be a therapist that I
was pregnant, and she provided me with an invaluable healing practice.
(27:41):
It was to converse with myself, asking myself, am I
ready to bring a child into this world? I knew
I wasn't. Then I was to converse with the spirit
that was asking to enter through me and let it
know that it was loved and yet it was not
(28:04):
time for it to come. Once I had these conversations
and I felt good with my decision. It wasn't long
before my mom knew and other folks in the family knew,
and my mom actually became an amazing support system for me.
She helped me to make provisions to have the abortion,
(28:27):
and once that happened, I felt empowered, like I had
a little of my life back, but I was still
being stopped. The bart Vulger actually approached the girl I
was initially with on the train when I met him,
and he told her that I was pregnant with his
kid and that he was coming for me. Pretty distraught,
(28:51):
I confided in a male classmate that this grown dude
was following me on my school routes. So the su
who I believe in youth leadership, youth development, and that
you've have a role in public safety. Because this young
man took what I confided in him and recruited four
(29:12):
other young men, young black and brown teens, to escort
me to and from school each day for the rest
of the school year, and I never saw the bart
Vulture again. This was healing for me, and finally my
(29:33):
chiron astrological placement is in the ninth House. A quick
dive into astrology. A natal chart is the snapshot of
the sky from Earth's perspective at the time of your birth.
The sky includes the entire zodiac, the whole twelve signs
that you're already familiar with, plus planets, asteroids, moons, and stars,
(29:55):
and it's divided up into twelve equal parts. That's what
we call houses. Each house represents a zodiac sign according
to its position in the sky at the time of
your birth. These particulars are noted to create certain patterns
in your life, path, behaviors, and psychological developments. So the
(30:19):
sun is very far away, but it can impact serotonin
in our brains, and the moon can push and pull
our ocean currents. And it's been documented time and time
and again that a full moon creates increases in crime, accidents,
and er visits. All that to say it is possible
(30:42):
that we are universally connected through the cycles of these
heavenly bodies. But the bigger point is that utilizing a
natal chart can help you explore in depth your attitudes
about the themes the planets and houses placements represent. So again,
Chiron is in my nightth house. Now I know everybody
(31:05):
isn't on board with the youthfulness of astrology, but for
me it provides a much needed point of reference for
self inquiry and self reflection. So where Chiron shows up
in your natal chart is it indicates where you receive
your deepest found but also how you are healed and
(31:25):
can offer healing to others. Like I said, my caron
placement ninth House, and so in the culmination of my
tenth grade year, I received an invitation from my father
on his sabbatical to join him alongside a group of
other youth and mentors from my home back and wants.
(31:47):
This invitation was a trip to Russia. The ninth House
in astrology represents long distance trips. It was my first
time flying that far. I had a CD player with
one seed like Chiron. The music I was discovering was
first released in nineteen seventy and as I glided over
(32:09):
the Atlantic in the clouds, I cried listening to Bob
Marley tell me, don't worry about thing, because every little
thing gonna be all right. We spent less than three
weeks in Russia during the white nights. The white knights
is when the sun rides along the horizon and never
(32:32):
goes down. This time was life affirming for me. We
were there for an international peace conference where folks from
war torn communities worldwide discussed strategies to reduce harm and
increase the quality of life for people's. It gave me
(32:52):
inspiration and it provided another healing opportunity that would push
me to seize lie for years to come. So I
invite you all to pull up your natal charts. There's
a lot of technology that's online that you can use
to do that, and I invite you to find chiron
(33:15):
in your astrological charts and see if those themes resonate
with you. We're gonna take a short break to hear
from our sponsors. Now that I've shared my story and
the healing opportunities that supported my growth, I want you
(33:39):
all to understand that what I've been through, too many
have gone through, and rape culture shouldn't just be survived,
it should be dismantled. One model that I'd like to
uplift comes from the Sasha Center in Detroit, by way
of Kalima Johnson, who has been helping black women feel sacred, saved,
(34:02):
and revered for many years. They produced a model called
the Black Woman's Triangulation of rape, and I want to
lift that up because everything that they show in this
model is reflected in what I went through. Like for instance,
at the bottom of the model are the systemic barriers
the denying of resources. As I stated, I was never
(34:24):
offered any resources, and not only that, there were none
to be offered at the time. Even though we lived
in was considered a high crime community where one in
three young women report being sexually assaulted and one in
six young men report being sexually assaulted, we didn't have
(34:47):
any grief counselors that at high school in Watson. We
didn't have anybody to tell us about victim services either.
We had all kinds of systemic barriers. In fact, there
were very few adults who paid attention at all to
our emotional well being or even considered it to be
a part of what was necessary to be addressed in education,
(35:08):
which has definitely changed over the years. Now you definitely
do find social emotional learning in place. But those were
systematic barriers. But they also looked like the school to
prison pipeline that we can have so many youth who
experience all these kinds of trauma, and if we look
(35:29):
back at the Giverage report, They said that acts of
violence spread through a community much like a virus. Exposure
to violence puts people at great risk of future violence.
And that's what I experienced, and it's not in a
vacuum from the fact that of gon homicides are perpetrated
against black men. The next tier is cultural appropriation objectification.
(35:56):
This is the next tier in the Sashia model, and
here we're talking about the sexualization of our cultural expressions, music,
media industry. All of that is reflected in the second tier.
And that's really important because when I talk about like
that deadened sense of danger or that numb numbness to danger,
(36:16):
part of that is the music and the movies that
we watched and listen to, and that made it okay
and cool for young girls to be talking to older men.
But also the music that was telling me that pimp
was something good in the black community, and it wasn't.
It was a dangerous thing for women to be involved
with pimps. And so these are the things that we
(36:37):
need to consider um when we're making music and if
we want to move towards a culture of healing, Like
what are the mantras that that we're providing to the
people like, what are we really saying and teaching our
children and allowing to be talked to our children? Is
its supporting rape culture? If it is, like, maybe rethink it. Also,
(37:00):
I can talk about the stereotyping and the sexualization, because
there's this idea that you know that young black girls,
black women are over sexualized. And I remember the first
guy who took advantage of me. He was so sure
that I wanted him to do it, and he didn't
(37:21):
even believe that I was a virgin because of the
idea of how um, young black girls are sexualized. So
this is just like partly some of the ways that
you know, culture views black women and girls, and it
goes into the devaluing and dehumanizing. All of this is
a part of the black woman's triangulization of rape and
(37:44):
all of it is about rape culture. And when you
look at the policies and funding the victim blaming that happens,
it's really easy to assume that a fourteen year old,
fifteen year old girl could easily believe that no one
would understand what she was going through, that they want
to believe her, that they would blame her for the
choices that she made, that led to someone taking advantage
(38:06):
of her and therefore shame her into silence before she
even has a chance to reach out for help. And
I should also point out that when I did tell
my best friend at the time that I had been raped,
her response was her too. That's a shout out to
(38:29):
to Toronto Burke. Because we have to we have to
call folks who are reckoning. We are dealing with a
big social issue here, and of course what I would
want to put forth in this New Survivor's Movement is
that we have to call folks who are reckoning. And
(38:50):
there has been a lot of movement, but we have
so far to go, especially when we have models like
the Sasha model and many people who are doing the
work on the ground and all across the nation, and
these small nonprofit organizations they rarely get their flowers, they
rarely get sustainable funding. So these are the things that
(39:10):
we have to advocate for, because if we're not advocating
for these things, then we are continuing to allow rape
culture to live and thrive in our future and the
future of our children. So the New Survivor's Movement features
centering survivors and centering killing. And yes we can do
(39:31):
both at the same time. Absolutely, just think in terms
of like Avin diagram, because what we do is we
seek to put the public back into public safety. The
New Survivor's movement includes communities that have historically been left
out of the definition of victims of crime, and it
focuses on humanizing survivors. It offers smart criminal justice reform
(39:54):
to restore communities and individuals, and it and rejects maths
and cress race as a solution to crime reduction. It
doesn't lean on law enforcements designation of who is the
survivor of crime, and it seeks to extend healing services
and resources to all those who self identify survivors. So
anybody saying that they need help can and should be helped.
(40:18):
And lastly, again, in addition to advocating for policies or
con funding to support the needs of survivors, we have
to push back against those policies that are meant to
extend rape culture, like, for instance, the Supreme Court decision
to reverge reverse wede, any kind of anti abortion laws
(40:42):
those extend rape culture. And you might be asking, okay,
so how do anti abortion laws connect to rape culture? Well,
you know, what I will tell you. Any legislation, as
a matter of fact, that takes away your right to consent,
which is your right to say yes or no about
what happens in your body, uphold trape culture. And I
(41:07):
am standing on the shouldiers of my ancestors who were dragged, kidnapped,
and then raped for four hundred years, and they had
legislation that said that the white men that were in
control of them could control how, where, when, yes or
no if they had babies. So this is something this
(41:29):
is something that's generational, and it points to a trauma
that is intergenerational. And I'm saying this to all those
legislators and to anybody who was confused about how anti
abortion legislation connects to rape culture, that if you're telling
a woman that she doesn't have the right to shape
(41:52):
her own destiny, that upholds rape culture. Like, for instance,
I know full well that that I not had an
abortion at the time, that the depression of my predicament
would have caused me to attempt suicide again. So I
felt that it was important for me to have the
(42:13):
opportunity to honor my soul, my psyche, and my mental
health by having access to a save abortion. It saved
my life. I was blessed to have the women in
my life that I did that supported me through my
decision in a way that was healing for me. Laws
that prevent access to services like this do not belong
(42:37):
in a free country. You need to keep your laws
of my body. Okay. Disclaimer My views, beliefs, and opinions
are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views
of my guests, resource organizations, or sources shared. Yeah, you've
(43:13):
been listening in with Oya El sharels of the Survivor's
Hill podcast. Join us next time as we sit down
with Seri's Castle for episode two. I'm surviving Killer Cox
last thing. Every day we survive is a new chance
(43:33):
to see killing. Peace to your journey. Good people, a
ship
Host
Oya L. Sherrills
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!