Mary

“They tell you that if you're assaulted, there's a kingdom, a courthouse, high up on a mountain where justice can be found. Most victims are turned away at the base of the mountain, told they don't have enough evidence to make the journey. Some victims sacrifice everything to make the climb, but are slain along the way, the burden of proof impossibly high. I set off, accompanied by a strong team, who helped carry the weight, until I made it, the summit, the place few victims reached, the promised land. We'd gotten an arrest, a guilty verdict, the small percentage that gets a conviction. It was time to see what justice looked like. We threw open the doors, and there was nothing. It took the breath out of me. Even worse was looking back down to the bottom of the mountain, where I imagined expectant victims looking up, waving cheering, expectantly. What do you see? What does it feel like? What happens when you arrive? What could I tell them? A system does not exist for you. The pain of this process couldn't be worth it. These crimes are not crimes but inconveniences. You can fight and fight and for what? When you are assaulted, run and never look back. This was not one bad sentence. This was the best we could hope for.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name

“Whatever comes, we let it be as it is. When we do this, we come to see, in this moment or the next, our emotions always moving. The word emotion has its roots in the Latin movere and emovere meaning "to move through" and "to move out". Our emotions move in us, move through us and move between us.And when we allows them to move freely, they change, perhaps scarcely and perhaps gradually - but inevitably.
This is grief's most piercing message: there is no way arounf - the only way in through.”
― Joanne Cacciatore, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

“The victims of Jack the Ripper were never 'just prostitutes'; they were daughters, wives, mothers, sisters, and lovers. They were women. They were human beings, and surely that in itself is enough.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“I am a victim, I have no qualms with this word, only with the idea that it is all that I am.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name