What many people are seeing right now is genuinely horrifying and for survivors of sexual assault, this is not just abstract, it is visceral. It is retraumatising. For parents, for fathers, for anyone who loves a child, there is a deep, primal protectiveness, rising alongside a sickness in the gut. For women, it lands deep in the body. The weight of living inside systems, and at the hands of men that still normalise harm, minimise pain and ask them to tolerate things they should never have to tolerate. So then, if the world really is a stage, what do we all come back too. The part that no one really talks about when everything starts to unravel. When the curtains gets pulled back and what has been hidden, comes into view. There is initial shock, a nervous system whiplash. Disgust. Rage. Greif and helplessness. The sense that what you are witnessing is too big, too dark, too entrenched to even touch, and maybe you will not be able to dismantle global systems or hold powerful people accountable with your own bare hands. You may not be able to fix what feels ancient and rotten at the very roots. That helplessness is exactly where despair is meant to take hold, but despair is not the end of the story. It is the crossroad. Pt1