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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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The Sound of My Voice

Oct 9 Leave a Comment

I don’t have a neat label for what he did to me.

All I’m really sure of is he took something from me that I didn’t want to give, and now I have the trauma but no proof.

I was home for the summer before my senior year of college. I saw him for the first time on stage, playing guitar and leading worship for the youth group where my parents were leaders. Mild flirtation on MySpace became hanging out and then going on a real date. He took me to the driving range on a warm summer night, the air laced with humidity and possibility as he showed me how to angle my club just right. I heard the thwack and saw the ball sail into the sunset and fall gently to the ground.

Within a month we weren’t exactly going on dates anymore. He was 26 to my 20, and though he worked full time, he was always tight on money. His wife had left almost a year ago, and his extra income went to legal fees to make the divorce final (or so he said). We opted instead to watch TV at his house, and perhaps this is where people would say the real trouble began. (You know, the same kinds of people who would ask, “But what were you wearing?”) What was I, a 20-year-old, doing running around with a 26-year-old, still-technically-married man? And why would I go to his house alone?

The very first evening I was there, I said no, and he insisted.

Well, I did let him lead me to the bedroom.

I said please, no, we can’t do this, but it didn’t seem to matter to him.

Well, if he’s as good as guy as everyone says, then maybe it’s not as wrong as I think.

I tried one more time to get him to stop.

He pressed on: “I was married until recently, and now that sex has been a part of my life, I still need it. I can’t control it.”

Well, I guess he has a point.

Later that night, back in my own bed at home, I cried myself to sleep.

It wasn’t just that one time. Over the course of our two-year dating relationship I was coerced into sex constantly with lines like, “Don’t you love me? This is how I need you to show it,” and “When you refuse, I think you don’t want me,” and “When you say no, I can’t help but think there’s someone else.”

He never pinned me down with his arms, but he did with his words. He never clamped a hand over my mouth, but still I felt like I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. I grew accustomed to my own silence.

***

The second instance I can clearly label sexual assault. Perhaps it’s because he was a stranger and there was no guise of consent. He didn’t coerce; he just took.

I stood in a crowded El train car, packed in with hundreds of other people on their way to see the Chicago River dyed green for St. Patrick’s Day. My shoulders were pressed against my friends’; there was hardly any room to breathe let alone run.

As we chatted, voices raised to be heard above the drunken hubub, I felt it: there was something between my legs. I froze.

Surely I imagined it, or it was an accident. We’re crammed in here like sardines; how easy it would be to brush against someone the wrong way.

I returned to my conversation, and less than a minute later, it happened again. This time I was certain: there was a hand between my legs, and then a finger trailing along the crotch of my skinny jeans. I struggled to turn around in the crowd, but as soon as I did, I saw him. He was shorter than me, and his navy-blue beanie was pulled low on his head. I looked him in the eye, and I could tell that he knew that I knew it was him. I shimmied backward, trying to put distance between my body and his. He got off a few seconds later at the next stop.

I told my friends what happened, and another girl in our group exclaimed, “He did it to me too! That’s why I awkwardly tried to move a few minutes ago.” I felt simultaneously disgusted that she had experienced it too and angry that her instinct for self-preservation had put me in his path. But, I thought to myself, I did exactly the same thing.

Years later, when I told this story to my husband, he asked me, not ungraciously, “Why didn’t you yell, call him out, make a scene?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, mystified. “That never even crossed my mind.”

***

A few days ago, I was listening to a Voxer message from a friend. Responding to something unrelated to sexual assault, she told me that she admires my straightforward and clear voice, both in the way I write and talk.

Me? I thought. I come across as straightforward?

I’ve never thought of myself as straightforward, preferring instead to dance around hard topics and not share what I really think. I have opinions, of course—oh lord, I have such strong opinions that for most of my life I’ve been afraid to unleash them. It’s almost never that I’m afraid I might be wrong. It’s that I’ve been taught throughout my life, in obvious ways—like these experiences with sexual assault—and also in very subtle ways—being told by my loved ones that I’m “too argumentative”—that keeping my mouth shut is not a choice but a responsibility. Staying quiet keeps peace. It preserves relationships. It allows us all to believe in a more palatable version of reality.

I’ve known this friend for less than two years, and as I thought about who I’ve become in these recent years, I realized that there has been a marked shift in how I engage with the world. I have turned up the dial on my own voice without quite realizing it, and I have surprised myself by refusing to back down in situations where I historically would have not said anything in the first place.

I asked my workplace to expand paid parental leave, and when I was told no, I revised my proposal and asked again. Where I used to hide behind Christian-y language, I now write and speak honestly about my changing faith. When everything in me wanted to stop before I’d finished the first sentence on this essay, the fire inside pushed me to keep telling the truth. Somewhere along the way, I started to believe that my voice matters.

At first I assumed this was part of my coming-of-age story, a normal shift that happens as women move into their 30s and start to care less about what people think. But as I examined the timeline of these changes in me, I realized that they were kicked off not with my thirtieth birthday but with the election of 2016.

Throughout the election season, I never for a second entertained the idea that America might actually elect Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed predator who has bragged about the ways he’s assaulted women, to the highest office in our country—arguably, the highest office in the world. His own words—“grab them by the pussy”—pretty clearly name my own experiences. Harassment. Assault. Abuse. Trauma.

When my alarm woke me on November 9, I rolled over to check the election results on my phone. My stomach lurched as I scanned the headlines announcing my new leader, and I wondered how I could have been so heartbreakingly wrong. To half of America, assault is something we can blink our eyes at. To half of America, my story doesn’t matter.

I knew it in that moment, as surely as I know the sky is blue: No one was going to tell my story for me. No one was going to ask me to come forward. No one was going to hand me a microphone. It was up to me name my experience, to say that what happened wasn’t okay, and in doing so, to check the power that we give to predatory men. From that moment forward, I resolved to lean in to the opinionated nature I’d always been told was a fault—not to create abrasion and division for the sake of it, but to speak truth to power and demand better on behalf of other humans.

I thought something in me broke that day, but looking back, I see that what was broken had actually been fused back together. Out of that once-broken place, everything I had repressed for three decades came pouring out: righteous anger, devastation, trauma, clarity. Most importantly, the sound of my own voice.

And now I control the volume.


Photo by Daiga Ellaby on Unsplash

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Filed Under: Life Tagged With: me too, power, sex, sexual assault, values

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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
✔️ Kamala shirt ✔️ Kamala pearls ✔️ Ka ✔️ Kamala shirt
✔️ Kamala pearls
✔️ Kamala mug 
✔️ Kamala curls

It’s a great day to witness the shattering of a glass ceiling, to embrace empathy and decency, and to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The work is only just beginning, but today, we celebrate. Congratulations, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris! 👏🏼🎉💙
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
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Brittany L Bergman is a for-profit blog. Any company that I collaborate with is chosen by me and fits the theme and readership of my blog. At times, posts may contain affiliate links or sponsored content, which is never at any charge to you.

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