con dePPresion

a very powerful poem

I am OVER it!

I am over rape.

I am over rape culture, rape mentality, rape pages on Facebook.

I am over the thousands of people who signed those pages with their real names without shame.

I am over people demanding their right to rape pages, and calling it freedom of speech or justifying it as a joke.

I am over people not understanding that rape is not a joke and I am over being told I don't have a sense of humor, and women don't have a sense of humor, when most women I know (and I know a lot) are really fucking funny. We just don't think that uninvited penises up our anus, or our vagina is a laugh riot.

I am over how long it seems to take anyone to ever respond to rape.

I am over Facebook taking weeks to take down rape pages.

I am over the hundreds of thousands of women in Congo still waiting for the rapes to end and the rapists to be held accountable.

I am over the thousands of women in Bosnia, Burma, Pakistan, South Africa, Guatemala, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Afghanistan, Libya, you name a place, still waiting for justice.

I am over rape happening in broad daylight.

I am over the 207 clinics in Ecuador supported by the government that are capturing, raping, and torturing lesbians to make them straight.

I am over one in three women in the U.S military (Happy Veterans Day!) getting raped by their so-called "comrades."

I am over the forces that deny women who have been raped the right to have an abortion.

I am over the fact that after four women came forward with allegations that Herman Cain groped them and grabbed them and humiliated them, he is still running for the President of the United States.

And I'm over CNBC debate host Maria Bartiromo getting booed when she asked him about it. She was booed, not Herman Cain.

Which reminds me, I am so over the students at Penn State who protested the justice system instead of the alleged rapist pedophile of at least 8 boys, or his boss Joe Paterno, who did nothing to protect those children after knowing what was happening to them.

I am over rape victims becoming re-raped when they go public.

I am over starving Somalian women being raped at the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, and I am over women getting raped at Occupy Wall Street and being quiet about it because they were protecting a movement which is fighting to end the pillaging and raping of the economy and the earth, as if the rape of their bodies was something separate.

I am over women still being silent about rape, because they are made to believe it's their fault or they did something to make it happen.

I am over violence against women not being a #1 international priority when one out of three women will be raped or beaten in her lifetime -- the destruction and muting and undermining of women is the destruction of life itself.

No women, no future, duh.

I am over this rape culture where the privileged with political and physical and economic might, take what and who they want, when they want it, as much as they want, any time they want it.

I am over the endless resurrection of the careers of rapists and sexual exploiters -- film directors, world leaders, corporate executives, movie stars, athletes -- while the lives of the women they violated are permanently destroyed, often forcing them to live in social and emotional exile.

I am over the passivity of good men. Where the hell are you?

You live with us, make love with us, father us, befriend us, brother us, get nurtured and mothered and eternally supported by us, so why aren't you standing with us? Why aren't you driven to the point of madness and action by the rape and humiliation of us?

I am over years and years of being over rape.

And thinking about rape every day of my life since I was 5-years-old.

And getting sick from rape, and depressed from rape, and enraged by rape.

And reading my insanely crowded inbox of rape horror stories every hour of every single day.

I am over being polite about rape. It's been too long now, we have been too understanding.

We need to OCCUPYRAPE in every school, park, radio, TV station, household, office, factory, refugee camp, military base, back room, night club, alleyway, courtroom, UN office. We need people to truly try and imagine -- once and for all -- what it feels like to have your body invaded, your mind splintered, your soul shattered. We need to let our rage and our compassion connect us so we can change the paradigm of global rape.

There are approximately one billion women on the planet who have been violated.

ONE BILLION WOMEN.

The time is now. Prepare for the escalation.

Today it begins, moving toward February 14, 2013, when one billion women will rise to end rape.

Because we are over it.

Eve Ensler

Act like it!

So you plan to change the world huh? Well….what if you don’t?

I’m incredibly blessed to be part of a community of some of the most inspired, inspiring…..and downright fun people I have ever met. These are a group of people with clear missions, passionate visions, who really want to make a dent in the universe through whatever industry they have chosen to devote themselves to.

I’ve been part of many groups and communities but never quite like this one.  They are simply awe-inspiring.  I could marry them all.  If that was legal.  And if I didn’t have to live with them all…or do stuff married people do….well you get it: the point is I just love them to bits.

BUT…..just between you and I, there is one little thing that worries me sometimes.  I listen to these huge inspiring plans to change the world – some bigger than my peripheral vision will stretch – and I have no doubt many will do just as they plan to do.  And more. But here is what I can’t help thinking…………

…..what if you die tomorrow?

Now before you think I’m being dramatic or morbid just remember that every day I talk to and work with people who have lost someone they love.  And very often this is an unexpected death, a death ‘too early’, a death ‘before their time’.  A death of someone who didn’t get to do all they planned. So I tend to look at things a little differently and have a heightened awareness of the fact that it could end any day. For any one of us.

So if you have amazing plans to change the world, if every day you look in the mirror and tell yourself the difference you are making and going to make…..what happens if it all ends tomorrow and you don’t get to do it?  Would that mean you haven’t changed the world?  Would that mean you didn’t do what you were here to do?  Seriously, would you feel as proud of the achievements you’ve already made as you will be of the ones you plan to make?

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting for a second that you don’t make those big plans. By all means, make them even bigger!  That isn’t my point.  My point is that I worry that people say they are ‘going to’ change the world…..and that they don’t think they have already. And that breaks my heart.

How many people do you have to have helped before you’ve officially changed the world?  Have many books or articles have to have been written about you?  How many people have to know your name before you are considered a world-changer, a thought-leader, a star?

Want my answer?  One.  You only have to have changed one person’s life to have changed the world.  Don’t imagine that once you do a, b and c you will then have made an impact on this planet.  You have already done it.  You do it every single day of your existence.

There are people out there who, if asked who has made a difference in their life, who has touched them, helped them, taught them, loved them, would name you.  There are people who would not be where they are without you. There may even be people who would not exist had it not been for you (hands up all parents).

Every day of your life, like it or not, try or not, you have impacted the lives of others.  And the impact you have had on their lives will affect the impact they have on the lives of others…and so on.  I’ve learnt in the past year that some of the people who made the biggest impact in my life had no idea that they had.  And I bet you don’t either. I bet you underestimate just exactly how much you’ve changed the world already.  Well….stop it.

If your life flashed before your eyes or you were on your proverbial death-bed and reflecting on your life…who would you be thinking about? Richard Branson? Oprah? Steve Jobs?  Or would it be your mum, your best friend, a teacher that taught you to believe in yourself, the first guy or gal who you fell in love with, the person who stuck up for you, the person who helped you up the last time you fell down?

One of the lives that you’ve changed may well have been mine.  And to me that means that despite the fact that Oprah is my hero…she hasn’t had anywhere near the impact you have.  Not on my world.

So make your plans to change the world in huge ways….and go out and do that…I’m 100% behind you. But always remember the difference you have made already, the difference you make every single freakin’ day. So that no matter what happens in your life you know, with absolute certainty, that you have touched this planet.  In a massive way.  Because you truly have.

And hey, surely it’s easier to go out and change the world when you realise that actually…….you’ve been doing it all along.

Kristie

xx