gaslighting

For the past week, I have been largely absent from GoCybernaut.

I wish I could tell you that I had taken a holiday, disappeared into a wonderful book, or gone wandering somewhere beautiful.

I didn’t.

Something happened in my personal life that frightened me, hurt me and profoundly disrupted my sense of safety.

I am not going to identify anyone involved. I am not going to name where I live, and I am not going to use this space to publicly argue the details of an ongoing situation.

But I am going to talk about what it feels like to be a woman who says, “A man put his hands on me. I was frightened. I was hurt. Please listen to me.”

And then to feel that her voice is being minimized.

When the incident ends, but the consequences don’t

There is the moment when something happens to you.

And then there is everything that comes afterward.

The bruises.

The pain.

The photographs.

The sleepless nights.

The sudden fear of places that were completely ordinary a week earlier.

The startle when something unexpected happens.

The difficulty concentrating.

The strange experience of looking at something you loved doing only days before and discovering that you cannot bring yourself to do it.

And then there is the exhausting work of trying to be heard.

I have spent much of this past week documenting, reporting, asking questions and seeking appropriate help.

I have also experienced what it feels like when responses seem to minimize what happened, when messages seeking help receive no response, and when you begin to wonder how many times a woman has to say “This mattered” before somebody listens.

That can become another kind of wound.

One woman’s voice

This Sunday morning I listened to the service from Canterbury Cathedral.

The readings and sermon arrived in my life at an extraordinary moment.

In Isaiah came the call to maintain justice and do what is right.

Then came the story from Matthew’s Gospel of the Canaanite woman.

She needs help desperately.

She encounters boundaries.

She encounters resistance.

And she persists.

She speaks.

She asks again.

She refuses to disappear.

The sermon spoke about women across centuries whose voices have struggled to be heard. It spoke about boundaries and exclusion, courage and persistence, and about looking beyond our familiar horizons toward the voices society overlooks.

And somewhere during that service I realized something.

I need my voice back.

Persistence does not mean putting yourself in danger

I want to be very clear about this, particularly for any woman reading this while facing frightening circumstances of her own.

Using your voice does not mean confronting someone who frightens you.

It does not mean winning an argument.

It does not mean putting yourself into an unsafe situation to prove that you are brave.

I am choosing not to approach the people involved in my own circumstances. When possible, I avoid contact.

My persistence will take another form.

I can document.

I can write.

I can use appropriate reporting channels.

I can ask for help.

I can continue seeking answers.

I can surround myself with people I trust.

And when one door seems closed, I can look for another appropriate and safe place to knock.

There are many ways to say:

Please hear me.

Women already have voices

We sometimes hear people talk about “giving women a voice.”

But women already have voices.

The question is whether anyone is listening.

When a woman says someone has crossed a physical boundary, listen.

When she says she is frightened, listen.

When she says something has changed her ability to feel safe in her own surroundings, listen.

Don’t immediately explain someone else’s behaviour to her.

Don’t make her feel that she has somehow become the problem because she continues asking for help.

Don’t require perfect words from someone who may be frightened, overwhelmed or traumatized.

And don’t mistake persistence for troublemaking.

Sometimes persistence is what remains when everything else has failed.

Justice is not vengeance

I want justice.

I don’t mean revenge.

I don’t want confrontation.

I don’t want anyone harmed.

I want what happened to be taken seriously.

I want appropriate people to listen.

I want safety.

I want accountability where accountability is warranted.

And I want to know that another woman who finds herself saying, “Please listen to me,” will encounter people willing to hear her.

That is a very different thing from vengeance.

What was taken

This experience has already taken things from me.

For a while, it took my sense of safety.

It disrupted my sleep.

It affected my body.

It consumed my thoughts.

And perhaps most painfully, it reached into the part of my life where I create.

GoCybernaut exists because I wanted to build a soft place to land.

A place for discovery.

Interesting journeys.

Creativity.

Celebrations.

Music.

Travel.

Moments of curiosity.

A little refuge from endless scrolling and the relentless noise of the internet.

Before this happened, creating those things brought me tremendous joy.

This week I could barely look at my computer.

And that is when I realized there was another boundary I needed to defend.

You do not get to take my joy too.

Reclaiming what belongs to me

So there will be no regular CyberVibe from me this week.

Instead, there is this.

This is me returning.

Perhaps slowly.

Perhaps still frightened.

Certainly not unchanged.

But returning.

I am going to work on the things I normally do. I will prepare upcoming celebrations. I will work on SEO. I will find interesting places and journeys. I will create things designed to make someone’s day a little brighter.

I will continue seeking appropriate answers and justice in my personal circumstances.

But I will also create.

Because those things can coexist.

I can be frightened and brave.

I can be hurt and hopeful.

I can seek justice and still seek beauty.

I can document something terrible and then open a book about a railway journey somewhere wonderful.

And I can refuse to allow the people or circumstances that frightened me to become the authors of everything that comes afterward.

To the woman who needs to hear this

Maybe somewhere, another woman is reading this while wondering whether she should speak.

Maybe she already has, and somebody dismissed her.

Maybe she has been told she misunderstood.

Maybe she worries that asking again will make her troublesome.

Maybe she is exhausted.

I cannot tell you what is safest in your particular circumstances. Seek appropriate professional help and support, and please do not put yourself in danger simply to make yourself heard.

But I can tell you what I needed to hear this morning:

Your voice still belongs to you.

Use it safely.

Use it truthfully.

Document what you can.

Find people you trust.

Ask for help.

If an appropriate door remains unanswered, seek another appropriate door.

Persistence does not require you to stand face-to-face with someone who frightens you.

Sometimes courage is simply refusing to disappear.

The Canaanite woman persisted because something mattered too deeply for her to remain silent.

Her story has travelled across centuries.

This morning, it reached me.

And after a week in which I have felt frightened, diminished, and unheard, I am taking three words forward with me:

Persistence.
Faith.
Vision.

I will continue seeking justice.

I will continue protecting myself.

I will continue speaking.

But I am also going to reclaim something else.

My joy.

There are still stories to tell.

There are still journeys to discover.

There are still people looking for a soft place to land.

And I am still here.