El shares a searing, powerful personal essay with us.
All in Essays
Favouritism
Jacqueline is back with a new poem titled ‘Favouritism’
Ouroborous
“What I'm really interested in is the idiosyncratic shape of trauma. How memory creates hoops to jump through or the way conversations with friends become choral during the act of sharing. One story is never just that – an isolated incident – but a stone thrown in a pond that ripples outwards. Different shaped stones splash into the same pond, which isn’t a pond, but a pool, then a lake, then a delta that meets the sea.”
In the Shadow of Trauma
The piece explores the parallels between silencing and disbelieving victims of sexual violence and sick women through Charlie’s own experiences. By jumping back through time to some of her most vivid trauma’s, she reflects on how she was discredited and seen as an unreliable witness to her own illness and assault, contemplating the effect this had and still has on how she interacts with others, particularly within a medical setting.
Survivor No. 000727
Ollie takes us through the story of the aftermath of her abuse, explaining how she “had to adapt and learn how to survive with the vicious ghost of his actions.”
I have nothing to say
Hannah writes of all the things she wants to say - to us, to the men in her life, to her friends, to her partner…
The Callus of Coping: Extract from 'The Way We Survive: Notes on Rape Culture' by Catriona Morton
Catriona Morton, founder and editor-in-chief of Life Continues after, shares an extract about coping and resilience from their recent book The Way We Survive: Notes on Rape Culture - available online or from your local bookshop.
We're Okay, Right?
Ledicia shares with us the words she wants to say to the person who assaulted her.
Art by Rhea Hanlon.
Remembering Trauma
This anonymous contributor shares with us a powerful, insightful prose on the concept of recovered traumatic memories that can never be completely confirmed or denied. They ultimately bring us to a fluid, open and comforting conclusion of validation and peace.
Art by Marianne Claire Bailon - @deadandrad
To The Ex-Boyfriend Who Raped Me
Tina writes a letter to her ex-boyfriend, recounting the ‘conquests’ of her sex life since him. What she comes to realise is not the liberation of fun sex, but something darker, drawing her back to try to regain control.
Art by Rhea Hanlon.
Janet's Letter
I am here for me. I have a voice now. I don’t need anyone to rescue me. I have people that accept me and care for me and love me, and who I accept and care for and love. I sometimes forget all of that, but I have tools to help me remember. You aren’t the last word in my life. You aren’t even any words in my life anymore. You are just a ghost and you can’t hurt me anymore.
Speak out and seek support
Sophie shares with us what happened to her three years ago. She reminds us “ just because you went home with someone it does not mean that is consent and I cannot stress enough how important it is to reach out if you need help and have experienced something similar.”
Letter to my Rapist
Taylor shares with us an open letter to her rapist about how their life was affected after the rape.
Child on child sexual trauma
An anonymous contributor shares with us their story of childhood sexual trauma at the hands of another child. “I still, 30 years later can't fit the word abuse to this experience. Because it doesn't seem justified. Yet I know I experience the same symptoms of many people who were sexually abused as children by an adult.”
To my former self: Heidi's Story
Heidi writes a letter which says all the things she would have said to her younger self.
The Reality of Mundane Nightmares
In mundane nightmares my body recognises such dreamscapes as ‘normal’ - because they are normal in our world. But, these dreams should not be normal, no matter my body may try convince me so. They are ugly and they are violent; they feel normal only in this nightmarish reality of being a survivor surrounded in an ongoing rape culture.
Johanna Hedva: Sick Woman Theory
Hedva, a genderfluid person who chronic illness has ‘come to’ (their words), intricately and beautifully puts into words what every person living with chronic illness, pain or trauma (especially those who are political/ activists) has needed to hear their whole lives. They lay out the need for SWT as an act of destroying all oppressive structures of society, and they push for a centring of all ‘Sick Women’ in all of our spaces (both physical and ideological).