“This as an offering, Not a prescription, not a must do, not the only way. It is an offering, period. Every survivor, every person has their own journey, their own process, their own timing, what works for one person may not work for another and what works at one moment of your life may not work at another. I am simply sharing my own experience which is the only thing I truly trust. There may be things I say that are difficult and hard to hear.

I have asked many women what justice would look like after they’ve been sexually abused or battered or incested or harassed. Some women rightfully demand punishment, prison time for their perpetrators, public exposure, loss of jobs, end of careers. Some women simply want their perpetrator to disappear forever. But many women I’ve spoken to say that in order to heal, in order to move on, what they want and need is for their perpetrator to acknowledge the truth of what he has done. They want their perpetrator to recognize them as a full and real human being– to acknowledge the harm he has caused and to feel remorse and heart break. They need to see their perpetrator has taken responsibility for his actions and done extensive work to understand what made him commit this violence. They need to know the depth of his reckoning will prevent him from ever committing violence again.

Our imagination is our most powerful weapon. We can conjure the dead. We can rewrite their stories. We can make them see us as they have never seen us. We can get them to reveal themselves and see themselves and we can transform the underlying narrative that has us caught in a cycle of violence, punishment more violence.”

– Eve Ensler