When I was little and watching Disney princess movies, I so distinctly remember wanting the stories to be entirely conflict-free. I didn’t want a parent to die, an evil stepmother, a tense quest to battle the dragons – I just wanted to watch the day in the life of the princess. Watch her wake up, make pancakes, get a head massage, play with her dogs, ride her horses.
Just happiness. Screw adversity. Lucy Coleman says that reclaiming her agency and setting herself on a path of healing has restored her empowerment.
Then life happened, and I went what the actual f--k? I started to learn the value of storytelling, and being seen on screen. The power of its connection in making our suffering feel not so agonisingly lonely. Beyond my innocent pancake days, as an adult storyteller I felt compelled by the writerly pull to step into the lava – the core of our suffering, and what can become the potential core of our transcendence.
But I want to make it clear, sexual violence should never be linked to lofty statements of “things happen for a reason” and “there is a silver lining to everything”. Sexual assault is implicitly wrong, criminal and a heinous act of egregious male entitlement that destroys life. But it happened to me.
It’s a trauma I will never transcend from. A trauma that shattered a decade of my life when I should have been forming healthy attachments. PTSD I continue to navigate.
It was in 2019, after I had written the very first draft of my TV show Exposur.