Reflection

Two weeks have gone by since Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight managed to escape from captivity.  Their story is no longer front-page news, but I’m still thinking about them.  In an intense mix of emotions, I’m so happy that they’re free but I shudder when I think about the horror they endured.

What Amanda and Gina and Michelle lived through is every woman’s worst nightmare.  From the time we’re little girls, loved ones warn us in many ways to be careful, and we come to understand an awful truth: there are those who want to harm us.  We are rape-able and abuse-able.  For the sole reason that we’re female, some see us as prey.  From then on, we live with fear, an ever-present fear that something might happen.  It’s part of what it means to be a woman.  We feel it not only for ourselves but for our daughters and sisters and friends.  Most of the time we push it to the back of our minds, but a certain cautiousness is always there, affecting everything we do.  Some of us go through life with only the nightmare.  For the rest of us, in an instant, the nightmare turns into terrifying reality.

As a mother, thinking about what happened to Amanda and Gina and Michelle in that house brings out the most visceral feelings in me.  What a despicable, loathsome human being he is!  An animal.  I want justice for those precious girls.  They were snatched away as teenagers and I want justice for them.  But justice seems to fail.  How can any punishment make up for what he did to them?  Death is too kind for him, an easy way out.  Prison is almost a gift, nothing compared to the hellhole he forced them to live in.  Inside me, the golden rule flies out the window and another rule takes over:  Do to him what he did to them:  physical and emotional abuse, sexual assault, locked in a room, bound, chained, beaten, for ten years.  No, not ten years, but ten years times three.  Retribution for what he did to them.

I know I have to move away from that kind of thinking.  Under that rule, I’m nothing more than he is and it can’t be right.  I want to celebrate the fact that Amanda and Gina and Michelle are alive and free but I hardly know how.  I’ll say this:

Amanda, I am for you.  Gina, I am for you.  Michelle, I am for you.  In every possible way, I am for you.  You were saved by your own strength and courage and endurance!  You made it out alive!   May the rest of your lives be filled with goodness and kindness and love.