YaVaughnie-Wilkins's video: YaVaughnie Wilkins: Reading from my Prayer Closet LetThereBeLight

One good thing to come out of Ronan Farrow’s exposure of Harvey Weinstein’s horrendous assaults on women are the voices of the countless women and men coming forward with secrets they have been intimidated into keeping for what must seem to them a lifetime. Intimidation at the hands of another person who holds some level of power over them, or by self-imposed shame…or, more than likely, both. Since these stories of sexual assault and abuse have come to light, I have contemplated shedding some of my own stories. Not necessarily to shame the perpetrators, as I now live a life of forgiveness, but more to shed the weight of the memories from my shoulders and clear the corner of my brain that has housed these memories for many years. Although some level of intimidation contributed to my own silence, I believe my silence really comes from contemplations that perhaps I did something to cause the unwanted experiences. As I recount the details leading up to and during my own encounters, I have come to realize that although I may have thought of myself as having been a tough, take-no-shit adult (which is in deep contrast to my youth, when I was shy and meek), I believe there is something in my personality that unknowingly invited certain men to prey on my vulnerabilities that no doubt took root as a direct result of the sexual abuse I endured as a 4 year old child. The first experience I would like to share occurred