I love Tarlie as my little cousin-sister. When she died, the person I was before went away, too. Every day, I’m learning how to live without someone whom I shouldn’t have to live without. That grief is worsened by the knowledge that her last days were inhumanely painful.
Many child abuse survivors grapple with how to translate our childhood experiences into our new families. What does it mean for us and our children that we come from the people who have often hurt us most?
When I was 15, I attended a writing workshop with a girl who had been sexually abused by a family member, trauma that she explored in her poetry. She said she was offended when people told her: “I’m really sorry that happened to you.” She felt like they were saying they wanted to change her, so she’d reply: “Don’t be. It made me who I am today.”
Reprinted in the Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, and Salt Lake Tribune.
As a descendant of slaveholders and Confederate soldiers, I want to tell the truth about the evil that my ancestors and the Confederacy perpetrated, the repercussions their crimes have today, and how I and other white people still benefit from discrimination against people of color.