White walls & blue carpet, decorated with soft pink posters that share the words of Audre Lorde & Maya Angelou. The centre of the table was an offering of coloured pencils, paper, oranges & chocolate. Bergamot & white jasmine infused the air. Arriving one by one they gathered in a half moon. Faces turned toward me. Hands nervous & eyes lowered, glancing repeatedly toward the door, toward escape. Welcomes are unusual at the best of times. Rarely are they a moment when the welcomer & the welcomed feel comfortable. Rarely, does the word welcome invite a sense of being welcomed. The word is merely a container, an empty space, waiting for the body to breathe warmth & generosity into it. And yet, warmth & generosity can often sit like oil on water. A slippery iridescent film coating the reality of what is required to feel welcomed. What is required from the body. Certainly allowing oneself to feel welcomed is contingent on the body. The degree to which the body is able to maintain an experience of safety.
I scan the room, the faces of the 9 women sitting before me. I do not see safety. In safety’s place is courage, bravery, terror, resilience, exhaustion, defiance, anxiety, embarrassment, detachment. I do not see any one body resting into this bergamot infused place, do not see any one body that presents ease. Hands fidget toward the oranges & the chocolates. The kettle vibrates. Welcome, I say. Doing my best to breathe warmth & generosity into the blossom of this invitation. Welcome, I say. Knowing that most of the women sitting before me will feel anything but welcomed. I feel the 9 eyes staring back- hawk-like. 9 eyes waiting, scanning, vigilant for the moment that indicates their escape.
Kcrasac is a place that supports women through rape & sexual assault. A place that helps women to journey back to the desert lands so they can gather the bones of their exiled selves. Kcrasac is a place that supports women in the long hard journey of acceptance.
I share with the women how it came to be that I’m here, sharing this course with them. I tell them the parts of my story that are appropriate to say. I tell them, I too have been raped. I too have gone & am going through the long-hard process of collecting the bones. What’s brought you here I ask. What is your name?
It’s the first time in my entire life, that I’ve sat in a room full of women who are brave enough to speak the words “I have been raped” aloud. The first time I have sat in a room full of women who have all experienced that horror & are willing to share the truths of that horror with others. Generations of oppression sizzle & crack, the meat of silence ruptures on the heat of our words. The heat of wrath is tempered only by the semantics of the conditioned feminine. There is only so much one can say in such a space. Only so much one can scream through the tight lipped vessels of white walls & jasmine. Wrath bubbles & spits. The frightened bodies that sat before me a moment ago have metamorphosed into animate beings, bodies dancing & gesticulating, eyes burning hot & lucid. Wrath reminds the spirit of her existence. Reminds the room she too is present. Wrath breathes life back into the body like a bellow to the fire. Each woman expanding & contracting. Opening & closing. Opening & closing. Opening & closing. 9 times. I sit before a half moon of Russian Dolls. We are masters in the art of concealment.
The weight of horror is heavy in the room. Lapping up around our ankles sludgey & thick. We bounce & sigh, we swing our arms round & out, drawing the belly of the moon. Release. Wrath is poised on the tips of our tongues. We want to scream but we will not. We want to let the snarling wilderness of our animal out into this space but what then? Where can such an animal live in a space so tamed? I hunger for the moor. The vast honey lilac of the Pennines, her strong ochred hands. I hunger for the land to hold us. To writhe naked. To feel the textures of moss & rain upon bare skin. I want to make love to that moor. To howl my injustice up to the moon. I want to suck & dig & bury my nose deep beneath the crust of mud.
Instead. I lead us into a meditation. Gather wrath back into Pandora's box. Nine women stand. Eyes closed. Holding the realms of the earth & the sky, holding the realms of the living & the dead.
We are the living & the dead.
We are the house of ghosts.
Sludgey waters begin to feel lighter. The meditation ends. Bodies slowly merge toward the kettle, hands fidget & nibble on chocolate digestives, the rolling boil of water punctuating the over-culture, soothing the sting of feral creatures yearning for justice.
Thank you for your words, and your work Hannah May. Beautiful and important in equal measure.