Monthly Archives: March 2013

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Someone is Being Raped Right Now

A seven-year-old girl in the Congo, with braids and bright eyes who knows about the harshness of her land but has yet to experience it until now. A child bride who wears henna down her arm and color on her eyes but refuses sex with her 40-something husband because she doesn’t understand it and in result, is beaten. A woman, to pay off her family’s debt in Iran, is sold to another family and is abused every single day by her in-laws, sexually, physically, emotionally. A teenager who is sold into the sex trade in Cambodia and forced to please more than 10 men a day, often without any sort of protection, and will ultimately contract AIDS. On her way to school, just like any other 13-year-old, a girl in India is gang raped by men repeatedly until she nearly dies…and will never be able to have children. And a girl you may know, of any age in any state in the United States, is raped, sexually abused or prostituted. Usually by someone she knows. Usually by a romantic partner.

This may be a little much for your morning coffee but this is life for an incredible amount of women worldwide.

In the Congo, a woman is victimized every minute. Cambodia’s illegal sex trade generates $500 million a year. More than 55,000 women and children are sex slaves in Cambodia, 35 percent of which are younger than 18 years of age. If you go to Thailand or India — you can purchase a girl and essentially free her from slavery for as little as $100.

And yet, less than 1 percent of U.S. foreign aid is specifically targeted to women and girls. (Though the Violence Against Women Act did pass Congress and President Obama signed it yesterday, which is amazing.)

As a rape survivor myself, when I read alarming reports and statistics about violence against women, I’m completely flabbergasted. It often seems like a problem so big and so vast and so incomprehensible that its easy to turn away. To close out this blog window and play on Pinterest or Facebook instead.

And you’re right, that’s easier.

But there are things you can do, every single day with little effort, with little money that can dramatically change the life of a woman you’ve never met. And probably never will. Today is International Women’s Day and in honor of the day, I challenge you to do something to help. Every year, I pick a local charity in a place that’s extremely dangerous for women and I give a portion of my salary to help their efforts. It’s not a lot but I hope that somewhere, some wonderful girl who never had a chance — has one.

Below are some great organizations that are really working in a grassroots, hands-on way to make big changes. I hope you’ll celebrate every woman you know by contributing — or at the very least, read more about violence toward women across the globe. (Half the Sky is a great, eye-opening place to start.)

American Assistance for Cambodia
They fight trafficking and work to keep girls in school and out of the rings.

Apne Aap
They battle sex trafficking in India. They also welcome volunteers, anytime, to help and become teachers.

Averting Maternal Death & Disability 
Helping expecting moms get the care and consideration they deserve.

ECPAT
Network of groups fighting child prostitution in Southeast Asia.

Global Fund for Women
This organization provides capital for poor women around the world to start their own ventures.

Global Giving
Find a project — from disaster recovery education — that you’re passionate about.

Global Grassroots
Helps poor and trafficked women in Sudan.

Kiva
Microlending helps women in abusive marriages and relationships find a way to start their own trade business, make a living and change their husband’s culturally-accepted perception of a woman. Oftentimes when a wife starts earning an income, she has more power and balance.

New Light
This organization helps women and children prostitutes in India. They also welcome volunteers.

Pennies for Peace
Greg Mortenson’s organization that provides education for girls in Pakistan & Afghanistan.

Somaly Mam Foundation
A sex trafficking survivor herself, Somaly Mam started this organization and it fights sex slavery in Cambodia.

Women’s Dignity Project
Facilitates the repair of obstetric fistulas in Tanzania.

Worldwide Fistula Fund
They work to help moms in Niger.

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Feelings Know Best

My friend A has a sense of adventure that I admire as much as I fear.

She galivants around the world — by herself — hitch hiking and talking to strangers who quickly become stories in her never-ending journal of interesting conversations that seriously, no one else has. She is truly a curly-headed wonder woman who takes risks and creates a bucket list of things she actually ends up doing.

I consider her one of my strong-willed and fiercely independent companions — someone who praises me for having the balls to walk away from something wrong for me and then telling me an obscure fact about elephants a beat later. She’s not traditional but she does believe in traditions of great families, like the crazy one she comes from, and though she doesn’t care for those vulnerable pieces that make her beautifully gushy and maternal in all the right ways, I love it about her.

But she’s afraid of feelings. Actually, she says she’s not good at them.

And I’d have to agree. She has emotions — overpowering, vivid, passionate ones — that when she articulates them can sensationally take your breath away. But it’s a rarity when she lets it all out, when she makes herself tender enough to shed a layer of her sturdy walls — the ones meant to protect her and everyone she knows. Her emotions can overwhelm her in a way that she can’t process in the second the moment happens. And then the moment turns into a memory and then she has enough time to feel the feelings without avoiding them, and then that memory becomes a new fascinating, gripping tale she tells you.

The truth is, I wish I was like A. I wish I could think before I speak. I wish I was brave to tackle uncharted territory and I wish I was bad at feelings.

Because frankly, I’m almost too good at them.

Which is why Dr. Heart made it to this blog. Or why I developed faith in him before getting to honestly know him. In this case, I let the heart lead the head and the head found reasons to steer the heart away.

I hearted too soon.

As I often do, but this time, I went with my gut and the lessons I learned a little too hard from Mr. P and I got away from a negative nelly before he got the best of me. I also learned an important lesson about my own heart after prematurely naming someone a love doctor before truly getting to know his heart and seeing if it actually matched and beat along with mine.

I didn’t let feelings really develop before calling them emotions. They were, in all actuality, just thoughts. And while those are quite powerful demons when they want to be, when heart strings and brain waves work together, something wonderful happens. When they don’t, nothing really can ever work.

Those feelings, whatever they may be, they must be given time to foster.

Regardless if you’re good or bad at feelings, it you’re afraid of them or crave them, if you express them way too often or not at all — you have to have them.

And through relationships and anything else that’s tied closely to those pesky little butterflies that direct so many of our decisions, you have to feel your way to figure out which direction is best.

You have to try to fail, you have to cry to swell, you have to hope to cope, and you have to think you know, only to find out that you, well, don’t. 

I’m not sure what’s next for me and whatever mister I muster the courage to welcome into my life, my bed, my never, ever giving up soul — but if anything, I’m not worried. I can feel my way through and figure it all out with those feelings.

Just like I always have, just like A has, even if we verbalize them differently. Even if being bad or good at feelings doesn’t really mean anything — the most important thing about those annoying, constant and sometimes fascinating flutters, is that after every disappointment or struggle or relationship that never actually became such a thing after all… You still have them. You still let yourself feel them.

You let them figure it all out. After all, good or bad, they do know best.