In My Power

Music: Soft guitar music plays.

Survivors Speak on Healing:

“Healing is a ripple effect.” 

“La cultura cura. La comunidad da fuerza.”

“Speaking my truth feels powerful.”

“When I heal, my community heals with me.”

“No estoy sola.”

Carmen Voice Over Audio:

I didn’t say anything for a long time because I was scared that my mom wouldn’t believe me… or that telling her would destroy our family.
It was hard for me to accept the term victim, you know? Or survivor. I survived sexual violence but it doesn’t define me.
I am an artist, a sister, so much more than one word.

Maya Voice Over Audio:

No sabia con quien hablar porque no sabía el idioma…
Y si es algo muy personal y difícil de hablar.
Soy sobreviviente de violencia sexual pero soy mucho más que eso. 
Soy madre, soy inmigrante, soy hija, soy una esposa, si no por ellos.

Lupe Voice Over Audio:

For a long time I didn’t understand what happened to me.

It’s taken years and a wonderful therapist for me to start coming to terms with it. To understand that my healing doesn’t follow a straight line.

I am a teacher, I am a scholar. I’m still not sure I would call myself a survivor, but we are all survivors of history. Of colonialism. Of a system that wasn’t created to protect us, but to pit us against one another.

Frida Voice Over Audio: 

I was taught from a young age  “this is what it means to be a man, and this is what it means to be a woman.”

And if you don’t fit into either of those categories, you aren’t entitled to safety. 

Until we can look at the root, at a culture of machismo, none of us can be free.

I am tender, I contain multitudes, I am a strong, ever-expanding, trans [woman/person]. The abuse I survived does not define me.
What defines me is how far I’ve come, and who I’m becoming with the support of my community.

Lucía Audio:

“Rarely if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.”

Maya Audio:

No fue hasta que escuché a alguien más compartir su historia, que sentí que podía compartir la mía.

Lupe Audio:

The counselor told me that I’m the one with the brakes and the gas pedal. And that everyone’s journey is different.

Frida Audio:

Healing is a lifelong process. And it’s something we do together. Day by day.

Carmen Audio:

It’s not always easy. It can be exhausting. For us, and for the people who support us.

Lupe Audio:

[That’s why] We remember that rest is our birthright.

Frida Audio:

We are building spaces of joy so that our own imaginations aren’t defined by the violence as we resist it..

Lucía Audio:

I am reclaiming my body. I am reclaiming my mind. I am reclaiming my life. 

All Voices: 

Mi cuerpo es mi cuerpo.

Carmen Audio: 

You are sacred  / We are sacred

Maya Audio:

Somos poderosas.

Lupe Audio:

You are enough. / We are enough.

Frida Audio:

No estás sola.

All
We are all survivors.

Lucía:

“It is in our awakening that we accrue the collective power to bring into being a transformed world predicated on radical, unapologetic love.”