To the Masculine - With Love, Kali. #metoo

This is my vow:

5 Facts about Sexual Abuse:

1. In India 'Four child victims every hour' of sexual abuse according to the National Crime Records Bureau’s report, published in 2017.

2. In the US - 1 in every 3 girls, 1 in every 4 boys, 3 in every 5 transgenders are abused by the age of 18.

3. Almost always the offender is a male. The victim is likely to be a boy or girl that the offender knows.

4. 85% of child abuse takes place with a family member or friend in the home.

5. Memories of pre-verbal childhood sexual abuse are stored in the body, and therefore victims can struggle to give narrative accounts or recall visual memories of the abuse.

6. Suppression, Dissociation, and Recovered memory are all symptoms of PTSD from pre-verbal sexual abuse.

Sources & Research Data: India Stats | US Stats | Recovered Memories of Sexual Abuse | The Body Keeps Score

My Story

In my life, countless times wounded people, friends, relatives, lovers, family, misguidedly have used our familiarity, our closeness, our trust to hurt me and my body. My innocent mind never quite learned to distinguish between fear and love. Terror and pleasure. Pain and support. These things are intertwined so deeply in my psyche that it is taking life slowing me down to the pace of nothingness, to make my deepest wounds visible to my eyes.

It is really strange to suddenly find a gaping wound on your own body. You question if it is really there, you think perhaps you are crazy, mad, delusional because for so long you could not see a gaping fucking wound on your own body! Which has been bleeding everywhere- you see the stains in so many things labeled as your neurosis. How did I not see it? This disbelief is so heavy to hold. It also brings in self-hate, like I was supposed to know how to protect myself as a 2-year-old. But the most tragic thing is, this involuntary neglect makes the pain stay.

For what we cannot see, we cannot acknowledge and what we do not acknowledge cannot heal.

I was sexually abused by a family relative when I was 2 years old. I left my body when it happened, meaning I passed out. I have no visual memory or narrative memory, only implicit memories in my body - like being blindfolded and paralyzed while experiencing my body, my yoni being violated. It is confusing, disorienting, terrifying. At the age of 6-7, I was sexually molested by a friend, this time a girl who was maybe 4 years older to me.

I have experienced the cycle of traumatic violence moving from man to child, child to other younger children. From perpetrator to victim, victim to the perpetrator. A wounded masculine, wounding the feminine and creating the wounded feminine.

Symptoms of this trauma are strewn all over my life. Getting any treatment where I need to lay on my back becomes overwhelmingly terrifying, causing unusual panic. My body does not know how to relax and is always on high alert. Whenever I experience intense worry, I pass out. Sex has never felt safe. I feel guilty about feeling aroused. Any image or story of sexual violence evokes a pain that can only be described as my insides being on fire.

I have been on fire for all my life. An invisible fire. But, thank god, now I see the fire. This fire is the pure undiluted rage of the divine feminine. I am enraged that my body’s sovereignty was violated even before I knew I was in a woman’s body. I am enraged this happens to way too many women, men, and transgender people all over the world. I am acknowledging this rage on my blog because I want to acknowledge this for every person who has been through violence, and more so in a culture that says ‘it’s normal’ - it is so common. I want to heal with love this gaping wound in our collective consciousness.

I am also acknowledging this publicly because I am vowing to nurture this rage within me for all of us. Not tame it. Not control it. Not heal it. But nurture it. To channel its power to such an extent that every human that is and will ever walk on this planet WILL LEARN TO RESPECT the sacred boundary of the feminine - a human body.

I also chose to take this vow naked. This is my act of reclaiming my body's beauty and pristineness. For 33 years of my life, I have held guilt, hate, and shame for having a woman's body, but no more. My body is sacred. My sexuality is sacred. I am naked and wild. I am Kali. The untamed divine feminine embodies all of me. Every cell of mine is fucking magnificent. And in this act of reclamation, may your power be reclaimed as well. And so it is.