I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you. I’ve received hundreds upon hundreds of messages of support and understanding in the last week. They came from sexual assault survivors, attempted homicide survivors, traumatic brain injury survivors, trauma survivors, spouses of survivors, professionals who specialize in TBI and trauma, speech language pathologists, physical therapists, and just altogether thoughtful humans. Each one has hit me in its own way.
To each professional who told me I communicated the circumstances of their own patients in a way that gave them more empathy, thank you. To each TBI survivor telling me I finally normalized the way we talk and the way our memories function and the way we need to adjust to being rather than doing, thank you. To each spouse who wasn’t sure how to process the anger and isolation your partner feels in the intersection of their TBI and PTSD and credits me with opening your eyes, thank you. To each trauma survivor who expressed how the intersection of your many traumas is something you’ve never seen or heard represented until you read or heard my words, thank you. To healthcare providers asking me how you can do better for your patients just like me, thank you. To every single sexual assault and attempted homicide survivor who shared your stories and told me how you battle through each day, thank you. To every survivor who told me how you fought relentlessly for justice, and it never came, but you’re still here, thank you. To every survivor who told me you’d never told anybody before, because you’re scared, because we aren’t believed even when our rapists confess, but you wanted to share with me, thank you. To every disabled person claiming I validated the lack of mobility you feel and you live with, thank you. To every officer of the law who reached out to reassure me that I’m not alone, that survival stories like mine are everywhere, and that you felt called to their work to end our suffering, thank you. To every mother who told me I’m as deserving of justice as your little girls are and that you stand with me, thank you. To every person who started off their message by telling me you wished you had been on the streets of Interlaken that day, but since you weren’t you’ll help me now, thank you.
To Bekah and Jess, thank you for allowing some DMs about how my past with inter partner violence made a person on TV hard to watch to turn into this. Thank you for offering your platform up to allow me to finally put it all out there. Thank you for donating the largest single donation Change for Chantelle has ever received to the direct support of survivors provided by the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center.
To my medical team, thank you for listening and reading, and for looking at me with incredible pride. Thank you for reminding me just how far I’ve come, and how I’m allowed to be proud of myself. Thank you for always treating me with humanity, and understanding, and friendship. Thank you for looking at me in the beginning, seeing all the damage, and deciding you would help to heal me. Thank you for still trying your best in this long journey.
To my family and to the friends who have become family over the last 3.5 years, thank you for always deciding my life was more important than your comfort zone. Thank you for always telling me I will never owe anybody my story. Thank you for walking this life with me, even when I couldn’t walk without you holding me upright. Thank you for seeing the bruises, and the bandages, and the pain, and still seeing me and all I could grow to be, even if I was building from scratch. Thank you for telling me you’ll never let anything bad happen to me again, and for trying so hard to make me believe it. Thank you for loving the last me, and this me, and for telling me that every life of mine is worthy.
Sharing my survival story has been one of the most painful and daunting things I’ve ever done. No part of it has been easy. I stand nothing to gain, except maybe, if I’m lucky, a shot a justice. It’s been a terrifying and exhausting ordeal to re-traumatize myself in this way. I never thought I’d be able to do this, or that I’d feel backed into a corner to do so by a death threat. Thank you all for allowing me pour out all the painful facts of my life with brutal honesty and then for embracing me for it. Thank you for saying that you see me, that you hear me, that I am valid, that I am not alone. Just, thank you.
Getting Good at Running Away 