Caterina’s Story, Part 1: Collective Healing

There's something unbelievably powerful about being with a group of women who SEE you.⁠

Who GET you.⁠

Because they are JUST LIKE YOU.⁠

All of your primal instincts and fears of feeling unsafe melt-away and you are left bare, vulnerable, and raw without any of the discomforts you feel as a woman in a man's world.⁠

This is what I experienced at the OWL Retreat last weekend.⁠

It shook my soul.⁠

At first, I was skeptical. As we sat around the bra-burning fire, I watched them all chatter away, pass joints, and laugh loudly under the night sky.⁠

I was certain that they didn't see me.⁠

That I would need to burn the physical remnants of my sexual assault and abuse, alone.⁠

I knew I needed silence.⁠

A sacred space to allow my emotions to pour out freely as I burned what was left of him and 'we'.⁠

I mistakenly assumed that they wouldn't want to bear witness. But they told me I was wrong.⁠

Without even a second to consider otherwise, these women who I had only known for hours showed up and let me weep as I recounted my trauma. ⁠

And I knew at that moment, that my trust in nature and the Universe, and in my good friend Momma Owl, would not lead me astray.⁠

I began by sharing my story. How I'd gotten there. What had been done to me.⁠

They were quiet in voice, but I could feel the love and fierce protectiveness radiating from their souls.⁠

I began with a broken underwire bra that had cut me once. Then another that had lace so stiff it left marks. Then I threw in a pair of spanks. FUCK SPANKS.⁠

Next, I tossed in a tiny g-string from my eating disorder days, and I realized as I spoke that my eating disorder had been in response to the patriarchy. To believing I would be unloved by men if I was not thin. Damn, was I wrong, I told them as I laughed and cried in relief.⁠

Then I pulled out his kinky "toy" box. A 2 x 3 foot, red, Rubbermaid crate of kinky tools he'd used to abuse and enslave me. To deprive me of the pleasure, safety, and joy we are all born entitled to. ⁠

I began with his favorite rubber floggers, an especially cruel type of whip, and threw them into the fire first.

The flames raged and smoke billowed in response. Still, there was quiet.

I held each of his implements of torture in my hand, letting my hurt, and the last morsels of his dark energy that I carried, pour into it, before tossing them into the flames.

At some point, I don't remember when, my new group of soul sisters began to cheer me on. It was what I imagined a moonlight witches’ circle would be. Witches, as in any women who misbehave.

But I wasn't upset that the silence was gone because I knew then that we were journeying together in body and soul. That they were there with me and with every new tool tossed into the fire, each of us was a little safer, a little more alive, and he, more and more dead.

The truth is that I burned not only my trauma in that fire but also the trauma of every woman before me who he had put through hell. And perhaps even a bit of the trauma of each of the women who held me.

Later that night, alone in my tent in the woods, I wrote a letter of forgiveness to him. I told him that although he did not deserve to be forgiven, I deserved to live. To move on. I told him that I didn't hate him anymore, because I don't. But that I'd do everything in my power to make sure he went to jail if ever another of his victims came forward. It's funny how many women it takes to convict one man of rape.

I slept like the dead and awoke at noon the next day to my soul sisters gathered outside my tent in a meditation circle.

Later that night, I read my letter of forgiveness to them before burning it in the fire. Before I was reborn.

Again, they listened intently and cheered me on. Then we frolicked around like wild women in the forest, until the wee hours of the morning.

Happy. Free. Safe. ALIVE.