Raising Boys as an SA Survivor (trigger warning)

I have been thinking a lot about my role as the mom of two boys. To be honest, I cried when I found out I was having a second boy. I always pictured myself having at least one daughter and I didn’t know anything about raising boys. I grew up with a sister and my mom had 7 sisters. I also am a girly girl. I hate sports. I hate bugs. I do not like wrestling. I felt like I was being set up for failure.

The number one reason I was also afraid to raise boys was when I was 23 I did my Masters Research in Ecuador. I went alone and after 4 months backpacking in Europe at age 21, I felt invincible. I did have some close calls in Europe, but I felt like I had a protective bubble around me making me safe to travel alone. I sure was wrong. First the father of the family I stayed with at my first research project, trapped me on multiple occasions trying to make advances. The first time he took me on his motorbike to a second house he owned in town and dropped his pants, trying to force me to pleasure him. I ran out of the house and screamed for help at the street level. No one came to my rescue. He gave up that time and drove me back.

Then he persistently visited my cabin in the woods on the property in the evenings and pounded on the door. One night he told his wife he had to check my cabin for rodents and he cornered me and held me down. I had to remain at that project for four more days and I luckily was joined by other volunteers finally and hid myself with them. I am grateful to the German guy who protected me until I could leave the project. That man told me on my way out on the last day, that he was mad at me for turning away from him and he would just do the same to more girls that come to his project. I messaged the woman in charge of placing volunteers with this project about what happened to me and she was annoyed and said was tired of girls making these claims and to leave her alone.

I wish I could say that was the only time this happened. At my last project placement that summer, I was the only girl at a project in the Cloud Forest with 8 or so men. Almost all of them tried to corner me by the bathrooms, showers, in my room, and several sexually assaulted me. On the weekend off in town, one of the young men offered to take me to dinner in town. I don’t know why I thought I could trust him. He picked me up on his motorbike and he immediately headed for the hills instead of the town. He took me up to this squeezy motel in the hills run by a very creepy man. He checked us into a room that was full of water on the floor and disgusting. I asked him to please take me back to town. He refused. He wanted me to swim in the gross pool. I said I don’t have a bathing suit. So he threw me a large t-shirt and forced me to put it on. He then pushed me into the pool and then jumped in and almost drowned me.

We then changed and he forced me to have sex. We went to the main lobby and the man and him laughed and joked about the boys many conquests at this motel. The boy was only 17. They forced me to eat spaghetti then I was brought back to the room where I endured hours of abuse. I prayed for death that night, thinking I would probably never see anyone I loved again. Death felt better than this experience. In the morning, he luckily decided he was done with me and drove me back to the owner of the project’s house. I never said a word. I don’t know why, but I didn’t think they would believe me since they joked about how I must have had a fun night.

For months after that I received random messages from the kids friends calling me a slut. I carried this experience in my gut. I stuffed it down and pretended it didn’t happen. I returned to grad school and finished my thesis and graduated. It wasn’t until over a year later that I sought therapy for what happened. I never shared this full story with anyone. I shared pieces of it, but couldn’t face the full reality of what happened to me. I wrote a book in 2014 after traveling with my sister to Australia and SE Asia and in the forward I shared the story about the father who raped me. That trip with my sister started off horrible on an abusive farm in the outback, but ended in Thailand on a Buddhist Monastery, where I faced my demons and past and let myself heal.

Now I am raising two boys and I want to make sure they never ever hurt anyone the way I was hurt. I want them to also protect and stand up for anyone who is being mistreated even by their own friends. My boys are 6 and 3 and I am trying to figure out how to have these conversations about consent. I think about the mothers of the Cornell 57 and wonder what they are thinking right now. Are they mad/disappointed in their sons and themselves? Are they in denial? Or are they worst case scenario defending their sons?

I think we can love our boys to death, but we have to be willing to hold them accountable for their actions. We cannot let even small indiscretions slide. We owe it to all the girl moms out there, to raise our sons better. We need to raise men who would see that message in the WhatsApp and immediately burst into that room and shut it down. In college, I almost experienced a gang mentality at a party where I was the last girl there during a snow storm and all the men were salivating and starting to corner me and grope me. Luckily, one male friend swooped in and rushed me out of that party. He got me home safely and I will always be grateful to him. I want my boys to be like him. I want my boys to see a situation that is wrong and protect the girl and not their friends. I also hope they won’t even associate themselves with friends who would do such a thing.

We need to end the boys would be boys mentality. We need boys who would stand up for what is right. We need boys who respect women. As moms we cannot defend this behavior or stand by our boys when they sexually assault women. We cannot claim that girls/women would make false claims just to tarnish our sons’ names. It has been proven that only happens 1-2% of the time. I know first hand it takes a lot of courage to come forward and report an assault. I didn’t even have the courage to come forward and when I did tell a woman in charge she shut me down.

I love my sons to death and I would fight for them if an injustice was done to them, but I would feel like the biggest failure in the world if they committed the crime of sexual assault. I would not stand by them if they did. I am hoping to teach them now that consent means saying a very clear yes when not under any influence. I would never try to explain away the accusation by saying well she was intoxicated or she was dressed like she wanted it. None of that is acceptable. Even if it were my sons, I would believe the women first. I really hope that it never ever comes to that though. I hope that my lessons for my sons are very clear and they not only don’t rape, they protect all women and girls in their lives from assault.

I will raise my sons to be like the college friend who rescued me from that party. I will raise my sons to choose friends who would do the same. I hope all of the moms here will stand with me in agreeing that we need to raise better men. I also hope that dads will not just put this work on the moms. My husband actively tells my sons to respect me, to not touch me without consent, and that we are equals. We need the men out there to be good examples. We need role models that are showing boys that boys will respect girls, take no and a wavering yes as a no, and that they will protect women from predators.

I am sorry to all the girl moms that are grappling with this real fear right now about sending your girls out into the world. I know my mom was anxious about me traveling alone and I wanted to believe I was safe. I wasn’t and I want a world where all girls are safe.

Let’s burn this system down and rebuild a new one together!

Stop Ignoring Your Check Engine Light

So many times as moms we drive around ignoring the lights flashing in our cars and our bodies telling us something is wrong. We tell ourselves we don’t have time for sickness right now, or to rest, or take care of ourselves. This is dangerous!

This is why more women die of heart disease than men and it is called a silent killer, but honestly we probably do feel the signs, but we are accustomed to ignoring them. When that check engine light pops on, how often do you ignore it? Do you push yourself through the flu to take care of everyone around you and ignore your own check engine light telling you to rest? I know that I do! The only time I really rest is when I am literally knocked down and even then I can’t help, but feel guilty for not keeping up with my role as mom, wife, and employee.

We have to stop doing this though. As my mom always said to me, you will be no good to anyone if you are dead. That sounds bleak, but sadly so many mothers ignore all the signs that they need to get medical help before it is too late. Your kids are better off if you take care of yourself and don’t push yourself to the brink of death. We need to give ourselves permission to take our bodies and minds in for routine and emergency services, when our engines are no longer functioning.

When men get sick what do they do? They collapse in anguish, crying that they couldn’t possibly do anything. They retreat to bed and ask that everyone drop everything to take care of them. We make fun of them for this, but also, they are given the time to recover by society and we are not. We need to demand the same affordance of rest and recuperation as our partners are afforded. No more pushing through the flu to cook dinner, take care of the kids, do pick up and drop off, go to the office. This is not an acceptable way to live.

I believe collectively, our check engine lights are yelling at us. All moms and even women in general are in a crisis. We are so dedicated to everyone but ourselves. We need to prioritize ourselves now, even if no one else will, because we are worthless if we can’t keep ourselves healthy. We need to fill our own cups first. Put our masks on first. There is a reason these sayings and actual guidelines exist for our own safety and others. If we are running on fumes, everyone around us can tell that our performance is below average, especially our kids. We are also teaching our kids and especially daughters that we need to be martyrs at the expense of our own wellness. This is not OKAY!

So, please, please, check your engine! Make sure it is running okay. Get the rest you need and go to the doctor if your body is showing signs of deeper problems. Your family will thank you later, when you are still around for all the big milestones and not 6 feet under with a gravestone that says “I’m fine"