Cesar Chavez. The main reason that stories like these take so egregiously long to be heard—and that survivors are therefore made to suffer obscenely—is that we’re afraid that telling them will discredit the social ideals that people behaving abusively have come to represent.

It’s been said before, but truly: the number one thing we need to understand about sexual violence is that its preferred cover is an image that is beyond reproach. Where religion is valued, esteemed religiosity is what cracks open the door. In communities of leftist political activism, being a driver of the movement does the same. Whatever a community regards as a character ideal—”nice,” “radical,” “measured,” “bold,” “intelligent,” “good with kids,” “revolutionary,” even “boundaried”—becomes its achilles heel because sexual violence is, first and foremost, opportunistic. Opportunity is greatest where resistance is least. There is no resistance when your community thinks you embody its ideals and when, in very many respects, you actually do. This goes for conservatives, progressives, Christians, athiests, artists, intellectuals, feminists, and liberationists alike.

Not all people who appear to embody a community’s ideals are secretly abusive. But, what must be emphasized is that being such a person and perpetrating sexual violence are not conceptually opposed. What seems like paradox is actually written into the nature of the violence at issue.

Of course, when a community’s exemplar behaves abusively, it is a betrayal. Betrayal will always rightly prompt a certain sort of shock, anger, grief, and so on. We retain our right to these feelings and to working through them.

What’s crucially important, though, is developing our ability to separate emotional, relational, or political shock from a more logical or conceptual kind. And also, to hold some space between a movement or ideal and its leaders or exemplars.

Otherwise, the cost of the movement becomes its members who are being abused. And there are always members who are being abused.

Always.

There are always leaders who are abusing. If the existence of such leaders, alone, invalidates the causes they have made themselves represent, every cause is doomed.

I can visualize someone in the back row hesitantly raising their hand.

“Sorry, aren’t you the one who argues rather frequently that art and artist can’t be neatly cleaved? John Howard Yoder and peace theology? David Haas and his hymns?”

Yes, guilty. And without remorse. Whenever a person of influence behaves abusively we need to review their influence and carefully inspect whether and where tendrils of their hitherto secret violence may, without our knowing, have been woven through what we’ve received from them. John Howard Yoder did a number on peace theology. And the ritual repetition of Haas’s hymns repeats, as well, the abusive power he wielded under the cover of their protection.

The work of Chavez should be revisited, now, with the costly lens survivors have offered to us as a primary tool of analysis. We will find something of his violence toward women in his thinking and his being, I’m sure of it. And we will need to root it out of whatever we carry forward.

What I mean when I say that it is important to hold space between a movement or ideal and its leaders or exemplars, is that we should never allow a single personality (or two or three or five) stand in for movements, ideas, and values that take entire communities to bring to life. Catholic Priests, abusive or not, are not the whole of Catholicism. John Howard Yoder did not invent peace. Rightly viewed, their power comes from the communities they represent, and those communities can take it back. Claim it. Own it. Define it. Enact it. Movements are systems. They are masses. Their values are collectively constructed and collectively enacted.

It is ok for a person who once operated as a leader and exemplar in the heart of the people to stop operating that way. It’s painful. But it’s ok.

This is my point. This is the crucial point.

We need to be nimble if we are to develop the kind of cultures that are capable of effectively resisting abuse. We need to be adaptable. We need one mind, innocent like a dove, that howls in pain when we learn we have been betrayed. And we need another, shrewd and quick, that pivots on a dime. We need to scream and mourn, knowing all the while, that we remain secure. The movement is its own good. The people are the point. We are a network of relations; we are not subject to a disembodied head. Some among us will betray. We need to know this truth in such a deep and sincere way that we allow the betrayal to be real when we come upon it. We allow ourselves to see it, feel it, grieve it. And we are ready to do exactly this, without denial or delay, because we have already accepted that betrayals are real, and because we have already cultivated confidence that we can survive them.

Our religions, our values, our movements: they can survive. Or rather, any part of them that works in service of genuine wellbeing can survive. And they survive best when we are quick to rally behind the people they have let down.

Dear readers, when I call this a fragment, I mean it. This thought is underdeveloped, but when you reach the end, you’ll understand why. New tethers can’t anchor the Earth.

I could not write after Sam died. If someone had forced my hand to the page, I might have mustered after a long while:

“Static.”

Maybe. Because that’s all there was.

When I directed attention to the contents of my mind I saw the clunky TV that was in my childhood living room in 2001, white ants battling it out with the black ones for eternity. I could hear them warring. Oh, how I heard them—SCHHHHHHH.

If I turned that attention to my body, the static froze and there was simply nothing.

So I held babies and washed dishes. But not rotely, as you might think. No, the warmth in my voice was sincere, and I marveled with my children at the caterpillars on the milkweed. I was present. But I was just that. I was now.

And now.

And now again each time a new now nowed. Never in the moment just past or those that might come.

Honestly, who needs meditation when a dead spouse will do? Having spent a couple of years dwelling in the coveted present, I have to say I think you’re all being duped. It’s quite small and thin. Paper would rip its seams. Not even the microscopes of math (integrals—and, my apologies for burdening you with calculus) can bring it into focus clearly.

Perhaps occasional visits to the land of now could be medicine for spirits stretched beyond their give into before and after. A little relief from the daily strain. A reminder that there is, in fact, a now, and a now, and a now newly again.

But when you are confined to sheer presence you are not freed from past and future, you are kept from them. You become as small and thin as the span of each now, which is to say that you are a fleeting, feathery thing, constantly falling out of existence and in again. You are so finely ground it becomes up for legitimate debate whether you are something that is really there, and whether the you that is there now has any continuity with the you here now again (and again). To be present, and only that, is to be untethered, unlinked, unheld, unknown.

Such a one cannot muse or reflect. Musing reaches forward and reflecting turns back. Now does not have a forward or back, which means that the one who is in the now is one who cannot write.

I could not write for three years. I did not.

Not a good look for a writer with a book on the way.

Plants and babies and monarchs are what kept me together. They corralled the nows of me into orderly succession. Really, I outsourced myself to their orderly successions.

Seed, sprout, shoot, bloom.

Egg, legs, vault, wings.

Skin, milk, knees, feet, love of my love of this love of mine.

Breath. Voice. Hair. Pitter-pats and soft, small hands. I see them persist across the edge of each now. They change, grow, and remain. I breathe them in. We go to the zoo. I had told Sam one morning after we knew his death loomed that I needed the children we didn’t yet have. I needed them, I said and I begged.

We were both startled. Afraid, to be honest. It was unlike me in both form and content. What is this? we asked.

The truth, we agreed. Frightening but clear. Landmines strewn about, we followed orders. Forward, march.

Plants, monarchs, and these squishy, brilliant children. They have kept my nows from splintering the years I could not write. Slowly, I think, they are knitting me back together with my past and tugging my hand into our futures.

I realize this, and I want to drop my hands from theirs. Fall to my knees, hide my face, and weep to be left to the present’s slicing blade (thinner, sheerer, integrals infinitesimally small). “No, Mama, come,” they say.

And I do.

This is post 4 in my series on Sexual Violence Basics. See other posts in this series here. And subscribe below for free to get new additions right to your inbox.

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In 2019, I wrote about a sexual assault I experienced on campus as a seminary student a decade prior.1 My school had handled it badly, and I had just completed a process of addressing that fact with its leaders. As a result, the (then) seminary president wrote a public apology that affirmed my account of the harm done, acknowledged the seminary’s failings, and apologized. I called this narrative restitution, and I’ve been using the idea in my work with survivors ever since.

It is not enough to say that human beings are relational, that we have relationships. We are relation. We are particular sets of relation between tissue and bone, between countless living cells, between our bodies and the earth, our bodies and other bodies, between past and present, what’s here and what’s beyond. We do not arrive in this world as fully formed, independent selves who then go out and choose our relationships. We come into being through an infinite set of them. We grow to develop some degree of independence because we are first and always relation.

Narrative has to do with speech. And speech, in its very mechanics, is a particular way of relating—a specific sequence of signifiers put into relation with one another and the objects to which they point in order to produce meaning. The components of a narrative—characters, objects, settings, timelines, gaps, actions, voice, sense, emotion—could be written in a list, and that list would not become a narrative until each part is put into a particular relation to the rest. Narrativizing, then, is a process of constructing relationships between the various components of a story.

Fundamentally, to be human is, in large part, to be a storyteller. Consciously or not, we develop our sense of reality through constructing stories. We tell ourselves stories about where we come from, what we’ve inherited, and how this inheritance meets up with our daily experience to shape who we become. We tell ourselves stories about our motivations, loves, regrets, and possibilities for the future. We learn and internalize stories about how the Earth was made, where life began, and the ultimate point/lessness of it all. When new scientific breakthroughs come along that challenge the stories we tell about the structure of reality itself, we feel unsettled. It’s not enough to know that the Earth revolves around the sun. Christian generations past needed desperately to understand what it meant for the story of humanity that our location in the cosmos was not, as previous told, the central point around which all else revolved.

When we hear the word ‘story’ we might first think ‘fiction,’ ‘farce,’ or ‘make-believe.’ But a story is truth-neutral. Stories can be conjured and stories can be observed. They can clarify and they can distort. We can read children’s stories or news stories—flip a coin to see which best follows the arc of reality. The point is that narrative is an important tool for helping individuals, communities, and whole societies make sense of the world around us and find common enough ground to share that world together. It’s not our only tool, but it is one that’s pervasive across human experience.

I am rehearsing all of this because I want to talk about narrative injury, which is extremely common in survivors’ experiences of sexual violence and its aftermath. In this instance, narrative injury is the traumatic impact of the limiting, distorting, or invalidating stories told to and about that survivor concerning their experience of sexual violence.

She’s got an axe to grind.

It’s all a misunderstanding.

Of course we support survivors, but the demands this one is making are completely unreasonable.

I heard she has borderline personality disorder—those people are manipulative and the only way to deal with them is by setting firm boundaries.

If he had made better choices to begin with, he wouldn’t be in this situation.

Narrative injury can also come in the form of a refusal to incorporate a survivor’s experience into the shared narrative of that survivor’s community.

… [silence] … [business as usual] …

Either way, a person who experiences sexual violence is cut out of the world of shared meaning they socially depend upon. The jagged edges of their experience rip against the cloth of social narrative, so it is excised.

When I say ‘socially depend upon’ I do mean for relationship, friendship, and emotional/mental wellbeing. But I also mean materially. Human beings are social creatures. Despite what western individualism claims, everything we do is facilitated through channels of sociality. When social connections come under strain, so do material securities—physical health, opportunities for education, housing, employment, childcare. I’ve watched survivors lose their homes because the one renting to them became suspect of their motives for speaking publicly about their abuse. I’ve seen survivors lose jobs because their boss’s friends were exhausted by that survivor’s legitimate needs. How do you imagine childcare drop off might go if the one providing care believed the dropper-offer to be spinning lies against a previously mutual friend?

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Injury to one’s internal sense of self matters, but narrative injury is not only that. It is an intimate injury that ripples out in shards instead of waves through every layer of a survivor’s resources for living well, or even at all.

This is why narrative restitution is real restitution, not fluff.

Here’s what I said about it in 2019:

Sexual violence turns reality inside out. This assault destroyed all of my knowledge about myself. I did not know if I had been raped or if I had become a monster. I had no resources whatsoever to weigh the legitimacy of Z’s version of reality against mine. And because (my school) responded to my disclosure in a way that silenced the part of me struggling to advocate for myself, increased my self-doubt, and enabled our community to go on thinking that Z was fit for religious scholarship and ministry, the world I have lived in these last ten years has been one organized by the version of reality that killed me. Existing in this world leaves me split down the middle.

That is why I asked (my school) to stand with me in my decision to publish my account of what happened when I was a student. That is why I asked (my school) to make its present acknowledgement of failure and apology to me public. These are acts that I have been describing as narrative restitution. Through them, public knowledge shifts. The narratives that structure my daily experience in the communities that (my school) and I share shift. Reality shifts. I no longer feel split between worlds.

Restitution is usually conceived in financial terms. It recognizes that violence has a material impact that puts people who are victimized or oppressed at serious and unjust disadvantage. The purpose of financial restitution is to redistribute material resources in such a way that the impact of that disadvantage is mitigated. In that way, restitution is about shifting power dynamics. But in the context of sexual violence, narrative is power. Narrative has a material impact.

By issuing public acknowledgement of (my school's) failures, by clearly and unequivocally apologizing to me through its official communications platform, and by publicly standing with me in the release of my narrative of sexual assault and institutional betrayal, (my school) has offered me narrative restitution.

If the purpose of financial restitution is to redistribute material resources in such a way that the impact of an unjust disadvantage is mitigated, narrative restitution is a redistribution of social power for the same ends by narrative means. Narrative restitution is a narrative righting of a narrative wrong. It is not, itself, material restitution, but it paves the way.

Perhaps, we might think of financial restitution (or other forms of directly material restitution) and narrative restitution as two sides of a flipped coin. After all, financial restitution indirectly paves the way for shifts in social narratives just like narrative restitution increases opportunity for material justice. In this way, material and narrative restitution dignify one another. Material restitution becomes dignified when it is accompanied by the development of a social narrative that affirms its warrant. Narrative restitution becomes dignified when it is accompanied by corresponding material change.

This is the answer to a set of questions commonly posed in response to survivors’ efforts to openly address past harms:

Why do we have to talk about this again? Why rehash it and dredge up such pain?

What difference does it make if we say we believe them publicly? We already told them privately that we do.

What good will come of admitting we did a poor job? Why can’t we just move forward? Why does this survivor insist on dragging our name through the mud?

Why? Because even though the instigating event of violence may be long past, the average survivor continues to experiencing narrative injury most moments of most days for months, years, and decades onward. Old wounds reopen and new ones form—constantly. That’s the nature of existing in a social body shaped by a story that has narrated a circle as a square. The edges of the one pronounced misshapen are constantly squeezed.

Narrative restitution brings release. It says,

“Ah, we see you. And we see that we have not been seeing you until now. And, look at that, you really are a circle and have been all this time. If we had given you a circle-shaped door through which to reach us, instead of a square one, your life would have been easier each and every day. We understand now that when it seemed like you were struggling with tasks we found simple, it wasn’t because of a defect within you but because we unknowingly made those tasks impossible for you. We’re sorry. We can’t fully make up for it, but we’d like to do better going forward. For a start, we’re going to build circular doors and circular windows and objects and utensils that fit in circular hands. And we do hope that we create the kind of space within us that will make life among us well and good for other circles should they come. Thank you, friend, for helping us see and helping us grow. It’s been painful to realize our mistake, but we are better for it. And we pray our willingness to self-correct will speak more truthfully about our present nature than the fact of previous wrongs we are working to outgrow.”

Narrative restitution is a necessary ingredient of justice in the longterm aftermath of sexual harm. It’s one that any individual and any group can offer, because it requires no material assets to provide. When nothing else can be made right, the narrative can. And so, it’s a notion everyone should strive to understand, and everyone should prepare to give, in preparation for the inevitable day when it will be our turn to reflect and realize we’ve been calling circles squares.

This is post 4 in my series on Sexual Violence Basics. See other posts in this series here. And subscribe below for free to get new additions right to your inbox.

Happy New Year, all. Me and mine started 2026 with a nice, heavy, bash over the head from our dear friend, Covid. And we’re currently attempting to avoid contact with all living beings in our vicinity, because according to maps from the CDC, every one of them has the flu.

Meanwhile, between coughs and sniffles, I’ve emptied the Notre Dame library of its books on death, and I’ve found a particle physicist willing to sip coffee across the table from me while I spew at him (not germs, I’ll be keeping those to myself) extremely elementary questions about superposition, entanglement, Schrodinger’s cat, and all things quantum. Because, why not take up a completely new-to-me field of inquiry just as I’ve established some level of competency in the one I’ve been pursuing for the previous decade?

Speaking of sexual violence, readers of this newsletter are in for some major whiplash of topic, genre, and style this year. I suspect you’ll be getting one part summaries of sexual violence basics as I’ve come to think of them, and one part extremely preliminary thoughts-in-process about what death is, where the dead go when they die, and how quantum mechanics might influence conceptualization of these and related matters that we are doomed to never fully know.

I’m continuing to write down sexual violence basics to make the information more accessible and as a form of prewriting for an eventual book on the subject. Those posts will likely feel like didactic snapshots with some food for thought swirled through. I’m experimenting with what it could mean to ground a full-bodied, foundational ethic (appropriate for guiding human action and relation broadly speaking) in wisdom gained from survivor-centered applied ethics (what we do in situations of acute harm). You will have to tell me how it’s going as you follow along.

I’m writing about death, materiality, and quanta, because the subject has gripped me, and I’ve not been able to let it go. I have lists of reasons why I have no business turning this direction. In fact, I read them to my therapist yesterday morning. She was unconvinced, and apparently neither am I, because when I tried to reason with the one inside me setting the course ahead, here’s what she said back to me and the crowd of naysayers I’ve imagined standing at my back:

"You say it’s foolishness to grasp for knowledge of that which is beyond this life. But I say, which of you would not cut a path through the thicket of a dark forest or march into a wall of flames if your beloved had been taken away from you, across the threshold? Imagine your child on the other side of a concrete wall extending infinitely up, down, right, and left. Would you not scrape your fingers bloody to the bone and grind your teeth to your gums, intent on gnawing a way through? And if someone who did not love your child told you that your effort was futile, would you think, “Oh yes, of course, what was I thinking?” Or would you brush their idiocy off your shoulders, along with the blood and dust accruing there, and stay focused? 

If the person in whom you have come alive was snatched away to some uninhabited and miniscule plot of land in the middle of the sea, would you stare into the waves from the shoreline, day after day, dejected because you do not know how to swim? Or would you spend every waking moment developing the skills of a sailor, a navigator, and a survivalist, resolved to step out one day into the wild, wet unknown, compass pointing home?

What is foolishness when the part of yourself you love most—the part of yourself that wasn’t you to start—is cut out of your flesh and dematerialized while you scream? Is it foolish to look for what was really there just a moment before? Or, is the fool the one who raises no rational qualms about a sudden replacement of the most exquisite something with an abrupt nothing-at-all?

Go on, girl. Don't just stand there. Move."

So there we have it. Matter resolved (pun welcome but not intended). We’re setting out on a mission that, to me, feels utterly futile, because love says so. And—it is so sickly trite to say (I’m already shaking my head at myself)—but I trust her more than fear. (Gag.)

Hugs to you and yours. Happy 2026.

(Tip: If you’re skimming, the part I care about most is at the end.)

Half the problem with addressing sexual violence is that, as a society, we don’t have clarity about what it is. Some of the fog is the result of principled disagreement; a good deal is sabotage. The latter, combined with the general dearth of education available on the subject, manifests in most individual minds as a cloud of simple imprecision. One person says, “He sexually assaulted her.” Another responds, “That’s absurd, all he did was kiss her.” “No, he cornered her, forced his tongue in her mouth, and made her terrified to be in the same room with him ever again." “It was just a kiss! We can’t treat him like a criminal for a kiss!”

As described, is this “kiss” sexual violence?

Yes, my friend, it is. But can we calmly and plainly explain why? Can we continue the conversation above in a way that builds shared clarity to serve as a foundation for ethical action? And wouldn’t it be amazing if our communities had already developed shared clarity before we were in the middle of a crisis so that we could skip the argument about definitions and preserve our collective energy for actually dealing with the problem?

We will have a very hard time doing anything about sexual violence as long as we continue to pour our energy into fighting fog with tennis rackets. This is the image I see in my mind’s eye when I think about the endless number of arguments going on at any given moment that sound exactly like the one I just staged. The flailing gets us no where. We need to lift the fog, and we do that with careful reflection and precise language (says the definitely-not-biased academic). In part, we do it with clear definitions.

I’ll share the one I’ve come to use and explain why I think it works. Here it is:1

Let me break that down. I’ll start with unjust harm and then move to sexual form of expression and sexual logic.

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Unjust Harm

Lots of folks have a hard time with the “violence” part of “sexual violence.” It’s a word historically reserved for the heinous among us. For many, it connotes overt, intentional hostility, physical aggression, and bodily harm. As a society, we also have no problem applying the term “violence” to property damage—shattered storefronts, defiled wives. Rape, of course, was long understood as a property crime against fathers and husbands, because it stole what rightfully belonged to them—the bodies of their daughters and wives—and degraded its value.

Throughout history, overt, intentional hostility, physical aggression, bodily harm, and property damage have been the kinds of violence most commonly experienced by men—particularly (though not only) men who were members of the dominant social class. In the modern West, that means men who were white. Men went to war. Men settled disputes amongst themselves with a right hook. Men stole other men’s wealth. Since elite men also had a corner on the market of crafting and spreading ideas, violence was conceptualized through what counted as violence to them. It was in their interest to exclude from its definition the kinds of harm they perpetrated against the women in their homes, at their workplaces, and on their battlefields and plantations.

Our inheritance of this gendered social history is what’s operative when, for example, we hear the kind of “kiss” I opened with categorized as “violence” and feel an uncomfortable sense of dissonance. “Yes,” one might say, “it was wrong, but it doesn’t quite rise to the level of violence, does it?”

Johan Galtung, a sociologist who spent his life researching ways to reduce violence, insisted that reconceptualizing the term was essential. Referencing the common interpretation of “violence” as reserved for situations of intentional, bodily harm, he said, “If this were all violence is about, and peace is seen as its negation, then too little is rejected when peace is held up as an ideal. Highly unacceptable social orders would still be compatible with peace. Hence, an extended concept of violence is indispensable…”2

For Galtung, that extended concept boils down to the difference between what’s possible and what’s actual. Any time a person or community’s potential for wellbeing is undercut by conditions that prevent that potential from being realized, violence has occurred.

It’s abstract, I know. The point, for us, is that our concept of violence needs to be expanded to include all forms of harm (physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, sexual, environmental, etc.) that diminish one’s potential for holistic wellbeing, whether or not that harm is imposed with intention. In this definition of violence, what counts as violence is determined by its impact, not its motive.

(What do I mean by holistic? I’m trying to get at a sense of wellbeing that has to do with broad human growth and flourishing, not reducible to an individual’s immediate feelings and preferences (although those aren’t to be dismissed either). My toddler loves sweets. They ask for a cookie every time they see one. When I say no, they feel disappointed, angry, and sad; they cry. Those feelings are real and they matter. But I would maintain that denying my child an excess of cookies remains in the interest of their holistic wellbeing—their broad potential for growth and flourishing.)

If you’re thinking, “This sounds nice and all, but I’m concerned about the consequences for people who cause harm unintentionally. Do we really think they should end up in prison for harms they didn’t mean to cause?”— Never fear! Because prisons are violent too, in our expanded definition of violence they’re not an ideal answer to the problem. When “violence” encompasses all unjust harm, it becomes clear that we need new ways of addressing it. Responses to violence should always be contextualized to the circumstances of harm and have the impact of transforming those circumstances toward realizing the potential for wellbeing that was lost when the harm occurred.

In my definition of “sexual violence” then, I describe violence as “harm” to signal that we’re talking about much more than overt, intentional, bodily injury. Sexual violence can be intentional or unintentional. It can operate at the level of individuals (i.e. rape) or collectives (i.e. rape culture). It can involve impact on the body, mind, spirit, or on social relationships, financial freedom, or legal rights.

What qualifies “harm” as “violence” is simply that it is unjust. Technically, this notion of injustice is already built into the way I’ve been discussing harm, but I include the qualifier because people who behave in sexually violent ways frequently claim that they are being harmed when they face reasonable consequences for their behavior. Someone who emotionally abuses their partner claims the accusation is itself abuse. A pastor who uses the power of their position to manipulate congregants into sex claims they are being harmed by having their credentials removed. And, sure, consequences like these may trigger emotional pain or material limitations (my child really does feel pain when denied a cookie), but justly and in service of promoting the collective possibility of wellbeing. In other words, I specify that sexual violence is unjust harm to guard against the concept being twisted against itself by the manipulations so common in abusive circumstances.

Back to the “kiss” I started with: If it did harm and did so unjustly, it’s violence. The person it was done to says they are terrified to be in the same room with the person who did it. That’s harm. The person it was done to was cornered and did not give consent. That’s unjust. 1 + 1 = sexual violence

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Sexual Form of Expression

Now that we’re clearer on what the definition means by interpreting “violence” as “unjust harm,” we can move on to what makes this harm “sexual.” Here’s a reminder of the definition:

By sexual form of expression I mean words, images, and acts imposed in a sexual manner, such as verbal propositioning, forced exposure to pornography, groping, quid pro quo, sexual assault, rape, and so on. Sexual violence that has a sexual form of expression is the kind that typically comes to mind when we think of sexual violence. It’s what makes headlines in the news.

Sexual Logic

But by sexual logic, I mean to include under the umbrella of sexual violence acts of unjust harm that have a sexual rationale even if they do not have a sexual form of expression.

For example, the physical assault of a trans person carried out as punishment for that person’s embodied indictment of heteropatriarchal sex and gender norms…

Or, in the systemic sense, the exclusion of queer people from church membership or leadership on the basis of oppressive judgments made about the nature of queer people’s sexual lives…

Or, the imposition of purity culture ideals on children and teens that form young people to become alienated from their sexual agency…

Or, the white supremacist hypersexualization of black people that leads both to increased sexual assault of black girls and women and increased state and extrajudicial violence against black men, women, and people of all genders…

In each of these cases, harm is imposed on the basis of a sexual logic that functions to maintain hierarchies of dominance and oppression between social groups: cis and trans, straight and gay, men and women, adults and children, white and everyone else.

This is actually the part of my definition of sexual violence that is most important to me, because this is what makes it possible for us to understand and begin to address sexual violence not as a regrettable series of isolated events, but as a massive system of coordinated power relations. If sexual violence is limited to violence that has a sexual form of expression, we’re doomed to an endless game of whack-a-mole. When we define sexual violence to include all the ways sexuality is leveraged against vulnerable populations to consolidate systems of dominating social power, we can track its movements, connect the dots, analyze, strategize, build coalitions, and mount a meaningful collective resistance.

That’s what I’m after. I want a world that has less sexual violence in it tomorrow than it does today. I want the numbers to actually trend down. I want us to end it. That takes sturdy ground, clear thinking, and a plan. A strong definition gets us a long way toward two out of three.

So, you care about sexual violence. You want to do right by survivors, and you want to impose meaningful accountability on perpetrators. You know these aren’t things court or carceral systems can be depended on to offer. And, you want to make sure your own community of belonging is prepared to do its part well if and when someone comes forward to disclose that they’ve experienced sexual violence from one of your members. You need to write a policy. Or you need to update the one that has been sitting for 30 years in the filing cabinet down the hall. Where do you start?

Right here! You’re in the right place. There is no one-size-fits-all policy. But there are sturdy principles and guidelines to help you find the path that is right for your community and chart it with confidence.

What follows is the advice I give to students who take my class on addressing sexual violence from an ethics of care and transformation. I developed it from both my academic research and my years of experience as a direct advocate for survivors interfacing with their schools, work places, faith communities, and more.

As you read on, please note: I’m an ethicist, not a lawyer. This resource is intended for educational purposes only. It is not legal advice and should not be interpreted as such. For ethical advice, I’ve got you. For legal advice, please consult a qualified attorney who has a demonstrated record of commitment to a survivor-centered ethical framework. (See also: the last section of this post titled, “Make your lawyers work for you.”)

Here we go.

1. Make your policies user-friendly

The point of having written policies on what to do in the event of serious harm is so that they can be used. In situations of crisis, confusion and anxiety run high. Policy documents need to be written in a way that allows anyone trying to use them to quickly and easily understand the options for how a community or institution’s processes for addressing reported harm will unfold.

Policy documents should be written with survivors navigating traumatic crises in mind as their primary audience. Survivors considering whether or not to report their experiences of harm need to be able to consult their community’s written policies as resources for making an informed decision. This means that in addition to being clear, comprehensive, and accurate, policy language must be trauma-informed and accessibly written. When survivors come to such policies, they are looking for answers to the question, “What will happen to me if I come forward?” Survivor-centered policies must prioritize answering that question fully and transparently.

Secondarily, policy documents must function as an instruction manual for those responsible for receiving and responding to reports of harm. Many who find themselves in this position are not experts in matters of abuse and violence. When they consult their community or institution’s policies, they are looking for answers to the question, “What do I do in response to the reports I have received?” Survivor-centered policies must answer that question clearly and comprehensively enough that, as complex circumstances unfold, those responsible for responding have concrete guidance for the range of action that is appropriate and/or required of them even if their level of training or expertise in matters of abuse and violence is low.

Likewise, it is important that anyone reported to have done serious harm should be able to read the policy and understand quickly and easily what will be done in response to the report made against them. Their rights, responsibilities, and limitations during the process should be clearly communicated.

However, if a policy accomplishes the goals of comprehensively and accessibly answering survivors’ questions and the questions of those responsible for responding to reports, it will likely also allow anyone who reads it (including advocates, community members, and those reported as having violated it) to quickly and easily understand how a community or institution will address reported harm. This is the standard to which survivor-centered policies should be held.

2. Make your policies public

Many people who experience serious harm in a community or institution leave before they are ready to make a report but may want to return and disclose their experiences years later. Others experience harm in connection with a given community or institution but are not, themselves, members. For these reasons, to ensure that people deciding whether to come forward have access to policy documents that explain what will happen to them if they do, such documents must be made publicly available and easy to find—ideally in an obvious location on a community or institution’s website. An outsider to the community should not have to interact with any member of the community to gain access to policy documents, because the mere act of requesting access could trigger suspicion and attendant consequences for the one considering whether or not to make a report.

3. Build your policies on principles of survivor-centered care

A survivor-centered policy for reporting and responding to experiences of serious harm should be guided by principles of survivor-centered care. The principles are described below in terms of their applicability to policy development, but you can ready more in a separate post I write about them here.

Survivor-centered: Guided by the priorities of dismantling systems that enable sexual violence, building systems that promote sexual wellbeing, seeking justice and empowerment for survivors, and holding survivors’ voices as authoritative in the process.

Trauma-informed: Guided by an understanding that trauma has occurred, able to anticipate and recognize trauma in its myriad forms, and built to promote recovery rather than retraumatization; minimizes prospects for retraumatization throughout reporting and response processes.

Let Survivors Lead: Developed with survivors’ input and direction; Creates space for the wishes of survivors’ using the policy to be heard and respected; Promotes survivors’ sense of control throughout the reporting and response processes.

Safety First: Provides access to independent resources survivors can use to seek and acquire safety. Identifies and protects the safety needs of the survivor throughout reporting and response processes.

Avoid Conflicts of Interest: Defines that which constitutes a conflict of interest and provides concrete mechanisms for such conflicts to be named and addressed; Ensures that conflicts of interest will be avoided throughout reporting and response processes.

Confidentiality, Not Secrecy: Protects confidentiality and avoids secrecy; Transparently and comprehensively explains any and all limits to confidentiality that a survivor may encounter in reporting and response processes.

Confidentiality protects a survivor’s safety and right to decide who knows about their experiences of sexual violence and what is done with that information.

Secrecy protects a perpetrator from accountability for their sexually violent actions, and/or an enabler, community, or institution’s interests in self-preservation at the cost of survivors’ wellbeing.

Commit to Transparency: States a commitment to transparency, describes what that commitment entails, and addresses the relationship between protecting confidentiality and practicing transparency.

A commitment to transparency should include, at least, 1) an imperative that survivors be granted access to all information relevant to their case, and 2) willingness to speak openly and publicly about the case when a survivor requests it.

Direct, Timely, Attuned Communication: Sets forth a clear and specific timeline for all report response processes; Requires those responsible for receiving and responding to reports to provide clear and direct updates on a schedule and in a manner that suits survivors’ needs; Requires those communicating with survivors to do so with trauma-informed sensitivity.

Self-Accountability and Outside Support: Identifies survivor-centered experts, external to the community or institution, who will be consulted throughout reporting and response processes to help support those responsible for receiving and responding to reports and ensure they are embodying the survivor-centered commitments of the community or institution.

Stay Off the Triangle: Demonstrates trauma-informed mindfulness that the roles of “victim,” “persecutor,” and “rescuer” can become distorted and misplaced in high-intensity processes involving experiences of serious harm; Includes safeguards that help to identify, prohibit, and correct this phenomenon when it happens.

4. Work with Survivors’ Chosen Advocates

Many who have experienced serious harm, particularly the harm of sexual violence, benefit from the accompaniment of an advocate as they navigate community and institutional reporting and response processes. Even the most trauma-informed and survivor-centered processes are often extremely taxing for survivors, having the potential to significantly damage survivors’ mental health, relationships, and capacity to fulfill professional obligations. Advocates can mitigate these risks by providing a safe relationship external to the community or institution in which ham occurred, by helping survivors understand and consider their options, and by taking on parts of the logistics of reporting and response processes that survivors find most distressing. At times, survivors will ask advocates to speak on their behalf and/or serve as an intermediary in communications with a community or institution. This is because the task of communication with parties who have power over the outcome of their report often becomes a trigger for a spike in traumatic symptoms, even when community or institutional representatives are communicating with trauma-informed sensitivity. Thus, it is essential that those responsible for receiving and responding to reports of serious harm are willing to work with a survivors’ chosen advocate in the manner in which a survivor requests. A survivor-centered policy should outline a community or institution’s commitment to doing so.

5. Offer Multiple Reporting Options

For a variety of reasons, it is important that people attempting to use your policy have multiple options for how they can make a report. Because it is possible that any single person designated to receive reports will have a conflict of interest with a given case, there should always be multiple people to whom a survivor can choose to disclose. Multiple options should also be provided for the manner in which a report can be made (i.e. verbally, written, using a template, through text message, etc.). A survivor-centered policy should also make it possible for survivors to report anonymously. While there are certain limits to what can be done in response to an anonymous report, creating the option is essential for survivors who do not feel safe coming forward with their identities to have an avenue for sharing their experiences. Doing so can be important both for survivors’ wellbeing and for the ultimate wellbeing and safety of the community in which harm occurred.

6. Offer Multiple Response Options

All survivors are different, and their needs vary. The goals of a survivor-centered response to reports of serious harm are to offer those harmed support that is effective, to create justice where injustice has occurred, and to prevent future harm. Since survivor-centered principles affirm that survivors themselves are in the best position to determine what is effective in meeting these goals, communities and institutions must develop policies that are flexible enough to hear, respect, and meet survivors’ varying needs. Some may want to anonymously inform a community or institution of their experience and nothing further. Some may want caring affirmation and supportive measures to help them meet their basic needs and feel safe, but have no interest in pursuing an investigation or establishing an accountability process for the perpetrator. Some may want a community or institution to take responsibility for its responsibility in a survivor’s experience of harm but still have no interest in initiating an investigation or accountability process that involves the individual(s) who directly harmed them. Some may want a community or institution to make changes that would prevent what happened to them from happening again. Some may want a community or institution to open a formal investigation, assign responsibility for the harm that occurred, take measures to hold the perpetrator accountable, and also make changes that would prevent what happened to them from happening to someone else in the future. Some may want any of the above to take place confidentially, and some may want a community or institution to take a public stand in solidarity. A survivor-centered policy should offer those making a reports of serious harm multiple options to for the kind of response they can request from a community or institution receiving their report.

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7. Protect Against Retaliation

Those who submit reports of serious harm are at risk of experiencing retaliation from anyone who is displeased with, critical of, or inconvenienced by the fact of the report and/or its contents. Retaliation takes many forms and generally refers to actions that have a disciplinary, exclusionary, or “chilling” effect on those who come forward to report serious harms. Survivor-centered policies should explicitly prohibit retaliation of any kind. In doing so, they should define that which constitutes retaliation, lay out a process for reporting retaliation, and describe how the community or institution plans to protect survivors in the event that retaliation occurs.

8. Minimize Retraumatization

Survivor-centered policies should take every opportunity to minimize the risk of retraumatization to those who have experienced serious harm. For example, all communications with survivors should be trauma-informed. Victim-blaming should be strictly prohibited. Those who have reported serious harm should never be asked to directly engage with the one(s) named as having perpetrated harm. Concerted efforts should be made to minimize the number of times a survivor is asked to recount their experiences. Survivors’ requests for trauma-related accommodations throughout the reporting and response process should be honored whenever possible. A survivor-centered policy should name the risk of retraumatization, name survivors’ rights for those risks to be minimized, and describe the community or institution’s commitments to doing so throughout the reporting and response processes.

9. Clearly Articulate Procedures for an Investigation

A community or institution’s formal investigation is not a court proceeding. It is simply a process by which that community or institution comes to a decision about what kind of accountability, if any, is appropriate to impose in the wake of reports of serious harm. Usually, a formal investigatory process for coming to such a decision is called for only when a community or institution is considering imposing lasting consequences on those reported as having perpetrated serious harm. Investigations are not necessary for a community or institution to offer survivors safety accommodations or supportive measures. They are also not necessary for a community or institution to take responsibility for its own failings, though coming to a place of informed acceptance of responsibility for such failings will likely entail some kind of fact-finding and evidence-weighing process even if that process does not take the shape of a formal investigation.

In general, the point of a community or institutional investigation is to gather and assess evidence related to a report of serious harm so that the community or institution can decide — based on its own values and moral commitments — whether to substantiate that report, how to assign responsibility for harm, and what accountability measures to impose on those who are found responsible. These actions enable the community to support survivors’ trauma recovery through affirming survivors’ sense of reality, to enact justice that makes the community safer for survivors, and to prevent similar harms from being perpetrated in the future.

A survivor-centered policy should thoroughly and clearly outline the components, process, and timeline of formal investigations. Each step in the investigatory process should be explained. The names of individuals and organizations who will play a role in the investigation should be disclosed and their specific responsibilities described. The steps and shape of any survivor-centered investigation should, like all else, be informed by principles of survivor-centered care.

10. Use an Appropriate Evidentiary Standard

In the event of a formal investigation, survivor-centered policies should specify how investigators will decide whether or not to substantiate the report. For example, in criminal court trials it is usually the case that a claim of harm must be shown to be accurate “beyond a reasonable doubt” for the claim to be substantiated. However, civil court cases often specify that a claim of harm is to be substantiated if it is supported by a “preponderance of evidence,” meaning that a claim is to be substantiated whenever there is stronger evidence supporting the claim than there is evidence undermining it. Or, in other words, when 51% of the evidence leans in favor of substantiation. Because a community or institution’s investigation is not a criminal proceeding (or even a legal one), because such a community or institution does not have the means or expertise to collect or analyze forensic evidence, because the nature of truly occurring interpersonal abuse tends not to leave physical evidence or direct witnesses, and because the community carrying out the investigation does not have the power to incarcerate the accused, it is not appropriate to use criminal evidentiary standards in community or institutional investigations into claims of abuse or serious interpersonal harm. Rather, the preponderance of evidence standard is recommended. This means that a claim is to be affirmed if it is more likely true (51%) than not true (49%). A survivor-centered policy should direct its investigators to use the preponderance of evidence standard and offer guidance that helps investigators understand what this means.

Further, when considering that which qualifies as evidence, survivor-centered policies should include trauma-informed assessments (ideally, professional assessments) of the congruency of each party’s statements and behaviors with the kinds of communication and actions that commonly attend experiences of victimhood and perpetration. This is a form of evidence always available, even when physical evidence and witness testimony are not. However, since it is easily misinterpreted by nonprofessionals, survivor-centered policies should build in mechanisms for expert input when conducting this kind of assessment.

11. Treat those accused of doing serious harm with human dignity

To be survivor-centered means to operate in a manner effective for dismantling systems that enable sexual violence and building systems that promote sexual justice and wellbeing. For these goals to be met, all parties involved in a report of serious harm must be treated fairly and with human dignity, including those named as responsible for the harm that has occurred. “Fair” treatment is not the same as “equal” treatment. A community or institution’s definition of “fairness” should be informed by an astute analysis of how abuse works and what is ethically required to maintain respect for truth and human dignity while confronting circumstances in which these have already been denied to the harmed party. Maintaining respect for all parties’ human dignity recognizes that it is in the holistic best interest of those who have perpetrated harm to be held accountable for their actions. It works toward survivor-centered ends by ensuring that processes of confronting abuse themselves embody a spirit of resistance to human degradation in all its forms. Survivor-centered policies, therefore, must be mindful throughout of maintaining the human dignity of those accused of perpetrating serious harm. Survivor-centered policies must also avoid implementing this requirement in any way that compromises other elements of survivor-centered policy and praxis.

12. Make your lawyers work for you

Legal liability protection is not fully compatible with trauma-informed and survivor-centered ethical commitments. For example, whereas a liability protection framework would recommend strictly limiting access to information about reports of serious harm, a survivor-centered framework recommends full transparency conditioned only by survivor’s confidentiality requests. Whereas a liability framework might recommend that any report of serious harm immediately trigger an investigation so that a community can legally demonstrate its due diligence, a survivor-centered framework advises allowing the one coming forward to determine if and when an investigation is opened so as to preserve their sense of safety and control.

Because legal liability protection is not fully compatible with trauma-informed and survivor-centered ethical commitments, maintaining those commitments will require your community or institution to thoughtfully consider and accept certain legal risks. Lawyers, however, are trained to advise you against all legal risk and to prioritize your community or institution’s legal protection over the wellbeing of people who have experienced serious harm in connection with your community or institution. Without clear and firm instruction from you, the lawyers you hire are likely to recommend policy features that are directly contrary to principles of survivor-centered care. Remember: your lawyers work for you, not the other way around. While it is their job to advise you of your community or institution’s legal risks, it is also their job to work with you toward achieving the best legal protection possible within the parameters of your ethical commitments. A survivor-centered policy is most effectively developed when a community or institution makes their ethical commitments clear to their lawyers from the beginning and tasks their lawyers with ensuring that those commitments are represented in policy form with as much legal protection as possible.

If you’d like a copy of these recommendations in PDF form, visit the resources page on my website to request one.

I was asked to give a talk at a church last weekend on the parable of the persistent widow. The parable reads like this:

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. ² He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. ³ In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my accuser.’ ⁴ For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, ⁵ yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ ” ⁶ And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. ⁷ And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? ⁸ I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

The widow in this parable is exactly the kind of character that progressive, politically aware Christians often hold up as an exemplar. She’s a woman, which means she’s marginalized in society. She’s a widow, and we know that widows represent something like the oppressed of the oppressed in Jesus’ culture. All the cards are stacked against her, but she rises up anyway. She stands. She believes in herself. She uses her voice. She demonstrates courage. She resists injustice. She risks attack and ridicule in doing so. But she keeps on, keeps going, keeps speaking, keeps insisting, and gosh darn, wouldn’t you know it, she prevails. Even though she was alone, without resources, without social support, and all but forgotten by society, she refused to be silent, and she did it. She got the wealthy, comfortable, corrupt, morally reprehensible arbiter of power to do the right thing and give her justice. All odds were against her, but nevertheless she persisted. And through her persistence, she bettered her life. And not only her own but the lives of all of society’s forgotten. Because if she can do it, anyone can do it. Everyone can do it. We right here can do it. She stood as an example. One woman, one heart of courage, one set of feet dug into the ground. One resolve to persist, and persist, and persist, come what may. And she changed the world.

Ok, I took that a little far, a little beyond what’s written in the text, but this is the dream, right? And isn’t this the lesson of the parable? The most disadvantaged, least likely person to make a difference in the world does it. God chooses and uses the least likely among us.

The unjust judge in the parable is an obvious parallel for God—the point being that even an unjust earthly judge eventually does right by the widow because she was so relentlessly persistent. Obviously, God, the just judge, will listen to us if we just try and keep trying.

So, reach down deep, find the Spirit’s running well of energy that never runs dry, the cup that floweth over. Keep trying, keep at it, run that race again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and God will hear you. You of little faith. All you had to do was keep trying. The widow can do it. She’s poor. She has no help. Society hates her. And she did it, alone no less, so who are you to sit down and watch Netflix before bed?

Nevertheless, she persisted.

My husband, Sam, died two years ago—Brain cancer. Our first child was 8 months old and our second still far from being born. Tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of his memorial service. Which, coincidentally, is how I got connected with the community where I gave this very talk. One weekday shortly after Sam’s death, I wandered in with a friend, ran into the pastor, and told him that I was looking for a place to hold Sam’s memorial. The pastor was gracious and kind and offered his church building. We ended up having the service in the bird watching hall at a botanic garden because Sam wasn’t huge on church and did love birds. He made birding cool somehow. Everything he did had style. But I continue to feel grateful toward that pastor and the people who make up his congregation, which is part of the reason I surprised myself by saying yes when he asked me to speak on the parable of the persistent widow.

Being a white, middle-class widow today in the United States can’t be much like being a widow in Jesus’ time and place. I imagine I got the better end of that deal by a long shot. But when I read this text my visceral reaction was, “Jesus,” (literally) “let that woman rest.” The text’s description of her persistence landed in my widow bones as a curse, not a virtue.

Widows come in all manner of experiences. Young widows in the chaotic throes of parenting face different challenges than elder widows trying to breathe through the thick, still silence that descends on their homes three minutes after the funeral ends. Some widows, like myself, have lost the love of their life, the person who grounded their being and made life good. Some have found themselves released from a relationship of toxicity that held them back. Some find themselves in a messy place in between. Some were caregivers though devastating illnesses. Some had to cope with the shock of their partner suddenly and unexpectedly gone. Widowhood is different for everyone, but one shared experience that I suspect spans the gamut is that it is relentlessly exhausting.

The widow in the text for today is not a historical figure but a character in a story that does not specify her circumstances. Because there are so many different ways to be a widow, I’m going to project my own set of circumstances onto her for a moment so that we can get a little deeper into what this text might have to say to us. Let’s say her husband died of a long, debilitating illness. Let’s say she and her husband were young and had little kids. Let’s say that she loved him. And let’s give her a name, I think she deserves that. I’ll call her Mara.

Before her husband even died, Mara was worn out. Dying can be hard work. When an ill husband can’t walk anymore his wife must carry him to the car for his medical appointments. When an ill husband can’t stand or raise his hands, his wife must get him to the shower, wash his hair, and then lift the dead weight of each of his limbs to get him dressed. When an ill husband becomes incontinent, his wife must clean him and the sheets, often. When an ill husband becomes unable to talk, his wife must devise methods for reading his mind.

When an ill and dying husband is sad or scared or frustrated or bored, his wife must be there fully in that with him and comfort him without trivializing his pain or pretending it will resolve—because it won’t. When an ill husband has an infant child, his wife, who is also a mother, gets up once or twice in the night with him and another eight times with the baby. She does not sleep. She feeds their baby from the same body she is breaking a little bit more every time she must support his weight down the hall. She carries them both, father and son. She feeds them both, loves them both. One is growing, the other withering, but neither can live moment-to-moment, breath-to-breath without her. It’s her job to nurture one into life and the other into death, preserving each one’s best chance for dignity through their heart-breakingly similar limitations.

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Did Mara have the money to call for a doctor? Did the doctor listen? Did she have to call on him again, and again, and again, and again, and again to get that doctor to give her husband the care he needed and deserved?

Was it on Mara to maintain a source of income while doing the 24/7 care work necessary to provide for her baby and husband’s most basic needs? How would she have worked? When? If she left the house for an hour and her husband fell on the floor while she was gone, who would have picked him up? If she got behind in the laundry, or the cooking, or the cleaning, or the bills, or the management of prescription meds or appointment updates, who would have stepped in to stop that snowball from spinning into an avalanche?

How should Mara have explained to her baby that she could not pick him up while he cried because she needed the next 20 minutes to get his daddy to the car so that they could take a now somewhat-routine family trip to the emergency room?

How do you think Mara might have felt when she came back to her husband’s side after putting the baby down for a nap, only to find him uncomfortably slumped over and unable to straighten himself. How long had he been like that? Waiting for her. Needing her to help him.

And what was it like for Mara to watch the person she loved most fade just a little bit more every day? Was there anyone in her life with whom she could let herself cry? Would she have had the time if there were?

I’m telling you, regardless of the circumstances, by the time her husband died, Mara, the fictional widow in our text for today, was exhausted: physically, emotionally, spiritually. It took plenty more than everything she had to get her husband to death’s embrace and to keep her own embrace steady and secure for her baby all the while.

And then.

And then.

The text says she was petitioning a judge for justice against her accuser. Mara sees the love of her life, the father of her children, die. And then some family member or creditor or other social opportunist comes for her in the aftermath. Even today, it is devastatingly common for widows to lose their financial security when their partner dies. Maybe the medical bills were too high. Maybe the family needed his income to get by. Maybe there is no life insurance or not enough. I can’t tell you the number of widows who are forced to move out of their homes in the months following their husband’s death because they can’t afford to stay. And in Jesus’ time, of course, circumstances for women were atrocious economically speaking. Mara likely lost her access to the land she might have used to support her family’s income, and she would have had no right to inherit her husband’s money or assets. His death could easily have made her and her children homeless with no means survival.

But perhaps, her husband, having loved her very much, made arrangements for her provision before he died. And perhaps, after his death, those arrangements were under attack. Maybe the life insurance company refused to pay out, claiming the circumstances of his death nullified his policy. Maybe the family member who had sworn to take them in changed their mind. Maybe the creditor who the husband had paid before his death suddenly insisted the debt was still owed and came for all Mara had left.

Whatever the case, Mara was exhausted. She was struggling with grief, struggling to keep pace with her sweet child who never slows down. She was navigating a truly astonishing barrage of post-death logistics like getting new credit cards, registering her husband’s death with the bank so she could maintain access to their accounts, changing 600 passwords on his online accounts, retitling the car in only her name so that the bmv would stop demanding his signature for registration renewal, packing up his work computer to send back to his employer so they wouldn’t charge her for it, and so on and so forth. All of this, and someone came for her in such a way that she had to drop what she was doing and go address it with the judge. Not once. Not twice. Over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. She had to persist.

This exhausted woman had to persist. She did not have a choice. Or, if she did, the choice was between survival and not, for her and her children. If it weren’t a matter of survival, this would not have been the way she chose to expend her energy. If anyone in the world would or could have petitioned the judge on her behalf she would have let them. The fact that she persisted tells us that she was alone, unsupported, and fighting for her life.

Marginalized. Forgotten. Without resources. All odds against her.

Nevertheless, she persisted.

It has become a slogan for women’s empowerment, and with good reason. But this woman: alone, aggrieved, forced to fight so hard for her basic right to survive—let’s say nothing of surviving well—this is not an image I want to hold up as exemplar.

I respect this character we’ve sketched. I love her. I feel protective of her. She, and every human being like her, is nothing short of miraculous for figuring out how to persist, and persist, and persist. But this is not life abundant. Mara’s story is not good news. Hers is the kind of story prophets use to show a society how it has gone off the rails. I can hear it:

“See this one from whom everything has been taken? You who have been given much, instead of coming to her aid you take the last loaf of bread she carries. And the judges of this land, rich with wealth and plenty, heed her voice not because they have ears to hear but because its sound annoys them. Change your ways, my people or lo, beware the wrath of God.”

It has that Hebrew Bible prophetic ring. And, of course, Jesus was a prophet in that tradition. So, I have to wonder if the twist in this parable is something other than an unjust judge giving in to a widow’s persistence and doing the right thing even though his heart was unmoved. Parables always have a twist, we know that. It’s the genre. But if that’s twist, it’s pretty tame: Even a tyrant will do the right thing if you annoy him enough, so just pray a little and God will answer.

I don’t know. To me, it falls flat.

Plus, Jesus is a smart guy, and this isn’t a very compelling claim. In Jesus’s time and now people pray all the time for justice and don’t get it. I can’t believe that he would have told this parable in denial of that obvious reality or to suggest that people who don’t get justice should have just prayed a little harder.

Jesus also seems to have genuinely cared about widows and children, which suggests he would have known that the woman of his parable, our Mara, doesn’t end the story in a genuinely good position. She just gets to survive another day, and her survival will include continued grief, more strain on her body, more lost hours of sleep, more exertion, more exhaustion, more isolation, and plenty more struggle for safety and security for herself and her children. Widowhood doesn’t get better the longer one’s Love is gone.

Yes, unless I’ve got Jesus totally wrong, I just don’t think he could have been holding up the widow’s persistence as a model of faith he’s suggesting we follow. On the surface, the text seems like it disagrees, but I looked into it a little bit more.

Apparently, biblical scholars think that verses 2-5 represent the original parable as Jesus told it, and verses, 1 and 6-8 are additions that later editors added to help readers interpret the parable’s meaning. This doesn’t mean they carry no authority, but I’ll skip trudging through the weeds this time around and jump to the point that still stands: The original verses (v. 2-5) make no suggestion at all for how we should orient ourselves to the widow’s persistence. They read,

“Jesus said, ‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. ³In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my accuser.’ ⁴For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, ⁵yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’ ”

Some translations say something more like, “so that she won’t punch me.” (Yes, you read that right.) But, that’s it. That’s the whole parable. It was Jesus’s interpreters who added that this was a parable about the need to pray and never lose heart. Again, I’m not saying that interpretation shouldn’t be grappled with. I am saying, let’s put it aside for a moment. Let’s sit with this character, Mara, we’ve created. Let’s remember Jesus’s seemingly genuine love for people and desire that they have the freedom to live full and abundant lives. With these in mind, what other interpretations of this parable become possible?

What if the twist is not that, in the end, the widow succeeded in coaxing justice from the hands of a corrupt judge, but that the way the world makes her to expend so much energy to survive is... not a thing for God? Not something that God requires of us at all.

Because, I’m sorry, she didn’t get justice, not in the holistic sense of the concept. The corrupt judge kept Mara from receiving the blow of one particular injustice, but she was still a woman in a patriarchal, ethnically stratified society who almost certainly had a steep hill to climb to scrap together a secure life for herself and her children. And let’s not even talk about what justice means in the wake of loved ones senselessly gone from this world too soon.

The twist of the parable is that the so-called justice awarded to this widow by the tyrant judge was a farce all along. Has anyone heard the word “justice” thrown around by a corrupt leader lately who cries peace, peace when there is no peace? Whatever justice Mara’s judge granted, it was a cheap and empty version of the whole and good life that is promised by the source of all life that is love and would not dream of forcing us to persist so far beyond our capacities. The love of the One many call God, the justice of this God—they are not the sort that drive us to exhaustion. Love and justice of this kind do not require that we break ourselves just to earn the chance to keep struggling for survival in perpetually devastating circumstances.

I don’t think Jesus’s God wants us to have to persist at all. Yes, because the world around us is not always of God, persistence is necessary sometimes for survival here. And for change. For resistance, solidarity, liberation. But it’s so important that we remember Jesus’s God isn’t the one setting that condition. Persistence is necessary because of corruption, because of injustice itself. For widows of today, persistence is necessary because this culture all around us causes wonderful, well-meaning people to functionally up and abandon them as soon as possible—because, woof, nobody wants to have to keep dealing with the messy aftermath of death, and certainly nobody knows how. So, widows are iced out. Made to be alone. And being alone costs an incredible amount of energy.

Of course, Jesus’s God, who defines justice as treating widows and orphans well, does not wish widows a strained and lonely life. This God beckons community. The need for persistence cannot be imposed by this same God. It is a sign that God and society are at odds.

This is even easier to see in the daily news. The headlines are catastrophic because they mean people who are vulnerable must now persist harder and longer to survive, and that people who are comfortable must and should choose to enter in and persist with them. The corrupt judges of the world who do not love God or care about people will pound this whole globe into dust if we don’t make it painfully inconvenient for them (Scene: Mara, pestering, persistent, and about ready to throw a punch.)

But I think Jesus told Amara’s parable not to compare the unjust judge with God as if God is a gentler, more loving version of this judge, but to call attention to the absolute opposition between them. The twist of the parable, I think, is that nobody needs to be exhausted to for Jesus’s God to listen or care. This God’s justice is whole.

It is a land flowing with milk and honey. It is the love of being known down to the number of hairs on your head. It is not just the simple chance to survive, but a sweet, good, gentle place to thrive. Even as she had to persist, I have a feeling Amara knew this. It’s this kind of empowering knowledge that makes such prolonged persistence possible in the first place.

And then I ask myself: Why does it matter if it’s not God who requires persistence but the world? We still can’t get by without it. We can’t escape the fact that, too often, for too many, the cost of survival is exhaustion bone-deep.

True. But it does matter that we know another world is possible. And that we remember the world we’re all persisting for, trying to coax into being, is one in which rest is given, not earned. Provision is given, not earned. Breath, and calm, and laughter, and health, and fun, and love, and adventure, and connection, and all that make human existence full—these are meant to be gifts that we give and receive with pleasure. Give with pleasure. Receive with pleasure.

As the ground of society as we know it continues to rumble, and rock, and threaten to split, we’ve got to keep this world in front of us so that we don’t forget what we’re struggling and persisting for. And so that we don’t miss our opportunities to make small glimpses of it manifest now inside of ourselves and with each other.

So, when we are exhausted. When we feel like we must persist, and persist, and persist. Let’s remember to ask ourselves:

• First, do we really have to? Is our persistence for someone’s survival or true wellbeing? The answer might be yes. And in that case, keep on. Or maybe it’s a habit the unjust judges of the world have made us believe is a virtue.

• As we persist, do we know that in our inmost being our resolve to keep going is not the source of our value? Our effectiveness maybe, but not our worth.

• And when we are tired, are we also expecting and looking for the small but mighty ways the One who wants us to be well holds out opportunities for rest and peace in the midst of the struggle? Because if we’re not expecting God’s gentle touch we might miss it.

I think, in telling this parable, Jesus was asking those listening: Do you really understand that my God is not a corrupt judge? That my God does love people? That all of our struggle is for a world in which everyone has what they need? Do you realize that my God wants us to experience this world as often as possible already? What will it mean for you, in your own life, and in your communities of belonging, to let that sink in?

#notabiblescholar

Note 1. Mara – Bitter (Hebrew, Italian)

Having lost her husband and two adult children to death, the widow said:

“Call me no longer Naomi;
call me Mara,
for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me.
I went away full,
but the Lord has brought me back empty;
why call me Naomi
when the Lord has dealt harshly with me
and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me.” (Ruth 1:20-21)

Note 2. Amara – Beloved (Latin), unfading (Greek), eternal (Sanskrit), grace and mercy (West African).

This is the question I hear most: Ok, but how should we respond when someone shares or reports an experience of sexual violence?

What’s ethical? What’s not? What’s helpful? What do survivors actually need? Is it possible to act in solidarity with survivors while also doing right by those survivors say harmed them? What does that look like? Can you give me an itemized list of instructions? Please.

These are fraught waters, and I doubt I need to explain to anyone that the national politics of the last decade have infested them with sharks. (Sorry, sharks. You don’t deserve your reputation.)

As is the case for all contexts of human complexity, there is no single list of dos and don’ts that cover every situation. But, after working for years as a direct advocate for survivors, I do believe there are clear, concrete principles we can turn to for guidance. As a part of developing a graduate-level course on responding to violence, I created a list for my students of ten principles my advocacy colleagues and I have found essential. I call these: Principles of Survivor-Centered Care. A PDF is available on my website, and I’m also including the principles below. What’s written presumes that the person reading it is in some position of authority or responsibility with respect to the survivor (i.e. religious leader, senior colleague, professor, etc.), but with small adjustments they work for everyday relationships too.

These principles are not exhaustive, but they go pretty far. Today, I’m just introducing them. In coming weeks, I’ll go through each one in detail. If you read through this initial list and have questions about any of the principles, I’d love it if you would share your question as a comment on this post and I’ll engage it (with the same level of respect and care you offer when posing it) when I go into more depth on that subject.

And don’t forget to check out Into Account, the national advocacy organization where I’ve done most of my advocacy work and out of which these principles were born.

Without further ado.

10 Principles of Survivor-Centered Care

1. Survivor-Centered

To be survivor-centered means to be guided in all of your actions by the following priorities:

1. Dismantling systems that enable sexual violence

2. Building systems that promote sexual wellbeing

3. Seeking justice and empowerment for survivors, and

4. Holding survivors’ voices as authoritative in the process.

2. Trauma-Informed

To be trauma-informed means to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to:

1. Understand when trauma has likely occurred

2. Anticipate and recognize trauma in its myriad forms, and

3. Act in ways that promote recovery rather than retraumatization.

3. Survivor-Led

In the wake of sexual violence, what constitutes justice, recovery, and/or repair depends on what actually creates these in the lives of those most directly harmed. This means that anyone working for justice, recovery, and/or repair must take survivors’ lead in determining both appropriate outcomes and steps toward getting there.

Always:

• Orient your engagement around survivors’ needs and goals.

• If welcome, help survivors articulate their own needs and goals.

• Consider an individual survivor’s needs and goals in relation to what you know about being survivor-centered and trauma-informed.

Never:

• Tell a survivor what to do regarding their own experience.

• Make decisions for an adult survivor without their informed consent.

• Share information an adult survivor has confidentially disclosed without their informed consent.

• Cut a survivor out of the communication loop.

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4. Safety First

Any adult receiving a disclosure of sexual violence has a social responsibility for assessing and supporting the immediate safety needs of survivors. In the case of abuse against children, the safety needs of other potential victims should be immediately addressed as well.

• Consider whether the survivor remains in danger of immediate future harm.

• If yes, offer to assist the survivor in developing a concrete safety plan or helping them find someone who can.

• If no, continue to learn about what would make a survivor feel safe or unsafe as you continue in relationship with them.

• If children are at risk, prioritize limiting or removing the accused person’s access to them.

5. Avoid Conflicts of Interest

A conflict of interest exists when an individual’s personal relationships, employment situation, or other social or material investments could compromise their judgment with respect to a specific instance of sexual violence. Those with conflicts of interest should not have an authoritative role in formally assessing or responding to a survivor’s disclosure of sexual violence. Of course, it is appropriate for anyone to offer general feedback and support if it is welcome from the survivor.

Examples of individuals with conflicts of interest:

• Family and close friends.

• Those holding dual roles (i.e. both employer and pastor).

• Those whose employment, income, or other basic needs are involved.

• Those who have previously shown themselves to be prejudicially biased.*

Examples of institutional conflicts of interest:

• A church whose pastor has been accused.

• Prioritization of liability protection while working with survivors.

• Hiring outside investigators that specialize in protecting institutions.

• Using the same individual(s) to give care to victim and perpetrator.

6. Confidentiality, Not Secrecy

Confidentiality protects a survivor’s safety and right to decide who knows about their experiences of sexual violence and what is done with that information.

Secrecy protects:

1. a perpetrator from accountability for their sexually violent actions, and/or

2. an enabler/community/institution’s interests in self-preservation at the cost of survivors’ wellbeing.

Always

• Keep survivors’ confidence exactly as they have requested.

• Let survivors know up front that you cannot keep confidence if you have reason to believe they are an imminent threat to themselves, to others, or if they tell you a perpetrator poses an imminent threat to specific others.

Imminent Threat:

You have good reason to believe that a specific act of extreme violence is likely to occur in the near future.

Examples:

Explicit threats of suicide, homicide, rape, battery, etc.

Never

• Agree to keep a perpetrator’s disclosed acts of violence a secret.

• Ask a survivor not to talk about their experiences of harm.

• Ask a survivor not to name those who caused them harm.

• Refuse a survivor’s request that you speak openly about their report.

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7. Direct, Timely, Attuned Communication

Direct: Speak plainly. Don’t hedge or hide details.

Timely: Create an agreed-upon communication schedule and follow it. Know that when a survivor is experiencing high levels of traumatic activation, it is reasonable for a survivor to request a brief, daily update.

Attuned: Adjust the manner and tone of your communication to a survivor’s particular needs around safety, affirmation, and trust. When in doubt, be personable and warm. Avoid projecting your own anxieties.

8. Commit to Transparency

Survivors have an ethical right to be provided access to all information relevant to their case.

Examples:

• Their options for how to proceed

• Comprehensive descriptions of next steps before those steps are taken

• Names and precise roles of individuals involved in their case

• What was said in meetings about their case that they did not attend.

A commitment to transparency also includes willingness, when a survivor requests it, to speak openly about their case or your own/your institution’s role in addressing their disclosure of sexual violence. This commitment is necessary even, and especially, when carrying it through involves acknowledging mistakes and taking public responsibility for them.

9. Self-Accountability and Outside Support

It is the responsibility of those receiving survivor’s disclosures of abuse to develop a plan for keeping themselves accountable to survivor-centered values while they navigate sexual violence crises. This kind of plan should be built on awareness that anyone in such a position will face internal and/or external pressure to abandon survivor-centered values. It should include multiple, concrete strategies for getting support and honest, trustworthy, critical feedback.

It is always wise to incorporate outside, professional support into a self-accountability plan.

Outside: Not a member of one’s own personal community of belonging or institutional network.

Professional: Specifically trained in survivor-centered praxis relevant to the situation at hand.

10. Stay Off the Triangle

The drama triangle is a symbol that brings awareness to unhelpful roles and patterns that helpers often take on during times of crisis.

1. Regularly check in with yourself and ask whether you might be feeling drawn toward a position on the triangle.

2. Give yourself love.

3. Seek an off-ramp.

Gently extend that ramp to others.

Notes

Note 1: The Drama Triangle was originally introduced by Dr. Stephen Karpman in 1968 and has been adapted widely since then. Here’s the 1986 citation: Karpman, S. B. (1968). Fairy tales and script drama analysis. Transactional Analysis Bulletin, 7(26), 39–43.

Note 2: As is always the case, I’m not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. If you are making a decision that is of legal consequence, please consult a credentialed attorney who has knowledge of sexual violence and a professional history of supporting survivors.

(Here it is: hilaryjscarsella.com)

What am I actually doing with myself while I’m not on a faculty? This summer, I’ve come up with as many answers as there are people who have asked. The best one, an answer I haven’t actually spoken aloud, is that I’m playing.

I’ve made-believe a world in which I can do what I love, feed my family, keep our home, have healthcare, and live at a gentle pace—all while avoiding dependence on institutions that would have me trade my voice and dignity for half of it.1 It’s a fantasy land. But my two-and-a-half-year old jumped onto my bed the other evening, raised his hands, palms out, looked intently into the air around us and said, “There is magic here, mommy. Magic is falling through the air. It’s sparkling and making our house powerful.” He had just successfully banished monsters from crawling across our floors and was brimming with the delight of realizing himself to be more powerful than he knew. Or, at least more capable of concentrating the power glittering around us and coaxing it to work for our good and protection.

It’s a trick these days to know what’s imaginary and what’s real. Is it true that an academic can only really succeed as a scholar if they have institutional backing and tenure? Or, is that a lie those institutions told me to ensure they’d retain access to my labor and royalty rights on my products? I don’t know the answer, but I want to find out.

So, I’m playing. I’m asking the magic in the air to please settle for a moment into my hands and help me banish the monsters of scarcity, hierarchy, and bureaucracy who flash their teeth to keep folks afraid of stepping out to look for kinder lands.

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Here’s my dream, my play, and my plan:

I’ll be writing. Writing a lot. My first book on sexual violence and belief is just about in production with Fordham University Press, and I have a few more half-written in my head. More on sexual violence and ways beyond it. On death, physics, theology, and time-travel. On plants and their spiritual rhythms. On Sam.

I’ll be creating resources accessible to support individuals and communities in learning to respond well to survivors’ disclosures of sexual violence. In fact, there are two or three already available on my new website. You can find “Principles of Survivor-Centered Care” and “Principles of Survivor-Centered Policy & Praxis” as free pdfs on my resources page.

I’ll be talking with universities, divinity schools, and seminaries about what it could look like to offer their students access to a cohort model degree concentration in addressing gender and sexual violence. I’ve got a list. But, if you have a particular school in mind you’d like me to be in touch with, let me know. I’d much rather draw near to spaces where interest already exists than fight upstream to create it. The fantasy world I’m trying to inhabit is one of mutual benefit.

I’ll be offering workshops. This one came initially as a request. An ecclesial body approached a colleague and I about training their leaders in survivor-centered responses to reports of sexual violence. We decided to go all in and create an educational experience that is both repeatable and customizable to the needs of particular groups, should others have interest.

I’ll be transforming my graduate courses into publicly available web-based courses and/or content redesigned for wider audiences. It’s silly that advanced thought on religion is so often only done in formal religion programs. Almost nothing of our entire social and political world is comprehensible apart from thought on religion. There have to be ways to make this kind of thinking accessible and desirable to non-specialists. It sounds fun to me to experiment.

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I’ll be tapping on knowledgeable shoulders to learn everything I can about funding academic and practical work in the humanities re. sexual violence. In a future version of the world I’m playing in, there exists a foundation dedicated to advancing research in this field, as well as the the embodied implementation of its findings.

Of course, I’ll be continuing in my roles with academic conferences, research groups, projects and so on. Just as obviously, I’ll be building barns with magnatiles and splashing in the kiddie pool. I’ll be growing more flowers than I should (or, at least, trying and learning from my failures).

And I’ll be holding all of this work together through my new website: hilaryjscarsella.com

Beyond what I’ve already mentioned, you can find access to all of my publications there (pdfs when possible, and links when not). And I genuinely welcome you to use the contact form to be in touch with me about anything at all. Since this is a time of playfulness for me, the landscape of the world I’m imagining will change, I’m sure, as that play carries on. And it would be beautiful if the shapes that emerge are helped into form by your questions and suggestions. I’m open to ideas and to collaborations. I trust the magic circling you is connected with the glitter I breathe. If you feel so moved, reach out, and know I welcome the gift.

Here’s to make-believing the world we want into the world we have.

This is not a breakup letter. You’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise. I am, after all, leaving my chaired faculty position today. And, true, I want nothing to do with your worst qualities going forward.

Your tantrums
Your decorum
Your insatiable hunger for more
Your entitled belief that we owe you whatever it takes
Your quickness to grab what's in front of you and scream, "mine!"
Your controlling temperament
Your sacred chains of command
Your authoritarian spirit 
Your secrets and retributions and ploys

It’s a vibe I will no longer abide. With all of it, I’m done. And I might have been able to set the lot of it down gently and carry on my way if it weren’t also for the fact that the picture on your dating profile is a fake.

Hello, catfish, nice to finally see you there.

It’s the lies we need to talk about. The gaslighting. The manipulation. It’s the dictionary of alternative meanings you use but do not publish.

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In your vocabulary, collaboration means subordinating oneself to the highest ranking member on the team. Decolonizing the academy is a phrase that covers for taking power away from educators in service of profit. Respect means obedience. Self-care means efficiency. Timely means now (for us, of course, not you).

As is often the case in relationships gone sour, I’m looking at you now wondering how I ever could have been so naive. It’s embarrassing, really. That I believed you when you called me pretty. That I thought I meant something to you. That I expected your character in person to match the bio you put online.

It’s not all on me though. You spoke beautifully and with such depth: of thought and care and possibility; of particularity, mutuality, and social flourishing. You are the one who wrote and published your supposed values in books celebrating difference, truth, and the mess of beauty. I observed firsthand the complexity that your intellect has the capacity to sustain. I saw you call the world to a better future — one that looks nothing like your behavior in the office.

You are the one who chose your profile pic. You are the one who lied.

This does sound like a breakup letter. Am I a liar too? The metaphor has become strained.

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I’m aware, though, that you got that profile pic from somewhere, and you put it up before AI had hit the scene. So the object behind the image must exist. What drew me in is real. So the task now is to find it.

Find it?
Build it?
Recognize it?
Join it?
Grow it?
Grow with it?

I’m looking for the you you said you were. I’ll be looking in faraway places as well as in and around our whole set of mutual friends. It could get awkward, but I’d prefer it if you’d just let me be. You do your thing, I’ll do mine. We’ll smile politely and make sure there are a few seats between us at dinner parties. We’re all adults here. We’ll make it.

But the better future would be the one in which you decide to quit posturing and go on this hunt with me — with me, but actually within yourself. This is the future where you come to terms with your duplicity, work on yourself, and grow authentically into the image you originally put up as a fake. It’s what Hollywood would do if you were a character they wrote, because (weirdly to the movie industry’s credit) it’s the right thing to do.

I know I can’t change you. I won’t try. But I also know that you can change if you choose.

And I think you should.

Reasons why I shouldn’t be on this panel:

1. I’m genuinely not sure what mothering is vs. parenting. When I think of myself as mothering there is, first, a warmth that rises in me, and then that warmth is met immediately with the sting of my partner’s absence. Sam died of cancer a little over a year ago, when our first child was eight months old and our second was not yet a child at all but a cute little microscopic blastocyst frozen in a lab hundreds of miles away. I’m aware every second that my kids don’t have their father. If I am “parenting,” it feels like I can bring him along with me into our children’s lives. If I’m “mothering,” the binary edges his fathering out of the picture. Except, I’m reminded, that Sam felt weird about the identity of dad and father. These didn’t quite fit him. He didn’t know what a father was vs. a parent. Or, he didn’t like the story he knew about what a father could be. So, maybe he wouldn’t have fathered our children if he’d had the chance.

Maybe he would have mothered them with me.

2. Reason number two that I shouldn’t be on this panel about single mothering is that I can’t quite conceive of myself as single. First of all, my partnership with Sam didn’t end with his death. I’m just as committed now as I ever was to loving and respecting his person, to living out the values we held together. And his support for me was so fierce it has become a well I’m fairly confident I will be able to draw from easily for the rest of my life. So I have a partner, he’s just not here. And, my partner is not here, but he is not not here either.

I’m not romantic about death. I’m not a platitudes person. I don’t believe in grand reunions in the hereafter. When a person is gone, they’re gone. But what I’ve learned since he died, almost reluctantly because it challenges my worldview, is that his death hasn’t made him entirely gone. The feeling of his person and his presence hasn’t left me for a second—totally disorienting, by the way. I knew him so well that I can conjure something pretty close to how he might have engaged our child’s hilariously intense love of cows. When I hit a parenting hard spot, I can ask what he thinks and hear at least a glimmer of an answer that isn’t only of my own making because I’m not only of my own making. Over the years I was made myself by him as well.

This is not parenting with a partner. He’s not here. But it’s also not parenting entirely without one, because he is. On government paperwork I don’t check the married/partnered box and I don’t check the single box. I check the widowed box. And for me, while we need a to have whole other conversation about the problematics of that term, it’s an appropriate marker of my place of in between a partnered parent and a single one. Single in flesh, partnered in spirit, and an experience of parenting in which spirit and flesh are one.

3. Reason number three that I shouldn’t be on this panel is that our conversation is committed to resisting the notion of single mothering as representing lack. Lack of a parent number 2, an income number 2, an extended family number 2, lack of a household that is as it “should” be. But my household is not as it should be, and I will vehemently maintain that point forever and ever amen. My children and I will grieve the loss of parent number 2 and partner number 2 everyday forever. We are in a position of lack and no amount of my presence, no number of days spent with grandparents or cousins, no development of chosen family relationships will ever cover the gap.

My kids will grow up knowing in their bones that there is something and someone unspeakably important whom they are without. This sheer fact will mark their self-development and how they come to show up in the world. We will always be reaching toward the space of Sam’s absence trying to draw him back to us. And at the same time, it is because I am so ready to affirm the lack that inhabits us and nurture myself and my children through its emptiness that my mothering will be sufficient.

Sam’s mom died when he was little. His sister died young too, so he knew what his kids were in for and he grieved hard that he couldn’t protect them from it. But, he also had a secure knowing tucked in right next to that grief: that his kids would carry his absence in a relational environment that would give them the resources they would need to thrive. He knew that I, as their mother, would never be enough, and he believed that my mothering would sustain our kids with love and joy and care in excess upon excess. He thought they were blessed with riches.

Phew, Ok.

So I don’t know what mothering is, I don’t think of myself as single per se, and I’m stubbornly committed to insisting that my single mothering is marked by a position of lack. Do I have anything remotely helpful to contribute to a conversation on how single mothering can be used to critique the image of the single mother as representing scarcity and the social systems making use of that figure to maintain harmful binaries and hierarchies of power? Great question. I’ve been asking myself the same.

Perhaps it’s obvious that each of my three explanations for why I don’t belong here comes down to not fitting within the confines of a binary: mothering/fathering, single/partnered, lack/abundance. And that does get us back to the point of this conversation rather swiftly. Single mothering as “binary breaker against the hierarchies constructed under contemporary systems of social reproduction,” including, in addition, “mother/whore, straight/queer, independent/dependent, mature/immature, able/disabled, productive/unproductive,” and more, and more, and more.

When I think about what I know of single mothering, an image comes to mind. It’s a queer-bodied woman the color, head to toe, of that greenish blueish patina that forms on copper, her arms and legs reaching out so that her body ends up something like the shape of a star. Each of her limbs is holding tethers that also spread up and out toward everything that converges in her. The tethers attach on their far ends to one element of a binary each. So she has one arm holding “my partner is gone,” the other “he’s right here”; one leg tethered to that ER trip she took alone with her toddler in the middle of the night and the dinners she makes alone for two under two who both needed to go to bed an hour ago, the other leg tethered to the group chats she has open and active all day everyday, full of beloveds who will ask how dinner went and care about the answer, because she has done the work to build regular quality connection into her life for the wellbeing of herself and her children. Every end of every binary spectrum there is: one held on the left, the other held on the right. In this image, the single mother becomes the space in between.

I’m not sure how I feel about this image. I didn’t design it proactively with metaphorical intent. It presented itself and I am observing. She looks strong, on one hand, holding so much at her core. And she looks like it might get tiring. She looks powerful, her stance taking up all the space she needs. And she looks vulnerable with her limbs out like that, like it might be difficult to bring them in and cover her head if she needed to protect herself from wounding. But then I notice that she’s not necessarily standing. She could be standing, but she could just as easily be lying down. There is no clear directional orientation in my mental image. Maybe she is resting on the ground and the tethers are resting with her, slack. Or maybe she is up in space where there is no gravity to make all she holds pull on her body. Or, maybe the tethers reaching out from her are parts of her that she has grown, like fleshy webs, or alive like the snakes on medusa’s head, they extend the distance she can reach without taxing her form. And if the tethers are grown from her body maybe she can bring them in toward herself as a cocoon when she has need for quiet, or softness, or self-protection. And maybe the image in my mind presented itself with ambiguity that allows for all of these possibilities because all of these possibilities are real, are actual, are true to her at once.

The image of this single mother isn’t a God. She isn’t a superhero. Those are tethers she holds, right along with mortal and villain. But remember, she is the space in between.

What this image can do for us, perhaps, politically and theologically speaking, is keep us from making the end points of a spectrum into frozen identities and then divvying them up between us, assigning superhero to one and villian to another, snipping off the ends of our tethers and clinging to their contents instead of becoming ones who hold them in relation.

This image can’t solve everything (anything? Is solving what we’re really after?). That the point, actually. No one anything solves everything. But I think she can help us breathe less anxiously in the space of both/and, and help us resist the social pressure to split ourselves, our families, or communities, our resources up into either/or.

I realize the vision I’m offering is fuzzy, and that’s because it’s fuzzy in my head too. I’m not sure if that is a glitch or a feature, which perhaps, is a point for us to explore.

When Sam first introduced me to Bright Eyes, I wasn’t into it. I’m the kind of music lover who takes a minute to warm up, especially to the good stuff. The first time I listened to Kid A, I hated it so much I knew it had to be brilliant. But there was one song on Sam’s favorite Bright Eyes album that pulled me in right away: Bowl of Oranges.

Like all great art, one has to experience it to know it, so I won’t try to tell you, second hand, what it is. But what I felt when I listened was something like recognition. I felt like I could see something clearly that had previously been a blur. The song felt like a map to forgotten, ruined cities where hope and despair were unopposed, where binaries had yet to be set against each other, where I could take slow, easy breaths, and rest into the beautiful and messy incongruity of it all.

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The oranges come in at the end:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

And every time you feel like crying, I'm gonna try and make you laugh
And if I can't, if it just hurts too bad, then we'll wait for it to pass
And I will keep you company through those days so long and black
And we’ll keep working on the problems we know we’ll never solve 
Of love’s uneven remainders, our lives a fraction of a whole 
But if the world could remain within a frame like a painting on a wall 
Then I think we’d see the beauty, then we’d stand staring in awe 
At our still lives posed 
Like a bowl of oranges 
Like a story told by the fault lines and the soil

That bowl of oranges became a glue that stuck Sam and I together. Quickly thereafter, he became my best friend, my college boyfriend, my deepest love, my partner, my mirror, my husband, my joy, the father of my children, and my biggest loss. He died in 2023 of brain cancer, brought on by a rare genetic condition that also took his sister, mom, and grandfather desperately young. Bright Eyes was his artist of choice because the music was about death, which, far before his own came near, he knew crushingly well. It refused to mask the face of grief that will not quit. It put a spotlight on questions that had no answers. It did not refuse to notice the delight that can remain. It spoke plainly of death’s ubiquity and brazenly about what life could (and could not) be in its shadow.

The peril of existence and the audacity of zest’s persistence. Those oranges. They’re full with the lot of it.

And then, there’s The Postal Service — bottled nostalgia for anyone who came of age in the ‘00s. When I was in the operating room at the birth of my youngest child, I asked the anesthesiologist to put on the “boop boop” song as my cesarean began. It’s known to the rest of the world as “Such Great Heights.” The boops started booping (give it a listen, you’ll know what I mean), and I felt myself drawn down, down,

d
  o
    w
       n

into deep and still waters where Sam and I could be [us]. There. Between death and life. Breathing in the dark quiet. Palm to palm. Ready. Solid. Present.

The song says that everything looks perfect from far away. That the sensible people of the world will call us down from our high places to ground-level accuracy and reason. That we’ll say, no thank you.

That in our high places, we’ll stay.

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It’s open for interpretation whether it’s the view from above that is illusory or the one from the ground. Either way, the choice to stay is a choice for one perspective against another. In the song, it’s a choice for a perspective that holds up delight as the real real. The kind of delight that draws from connection, and since genuine connection is predicated on things like honesty, authenticity, self-awareness, care, respect, curiosity, and with rather than for—these as well.

I’m aware that I’ve introduced a potential metaphorical conflict by imaging myself as drawn down into the deep waters by an anchor to great heights in the air. But the oranges, remember, offer us that space where binaries aren’t so much opposed as they are points holding open an expanse between themselves.

That’s the expanse I hope my writing comes from. Let’s not kid ourselves, that’s the expanse I hope my living comes from. And writing is a medicine I use to keep my living well.

So, why is this newsletter called We’ll Stay for the Oranges? Listen to the music. See if it moves you. There is a spirit between the notes I cannot name. If that spirit draws you, come back here to this space any time you like, and we’ll see where it leads.