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- đȘą#35: Unbound by Tarana Burke - Book Summary & Key Takeaways
đȘą#35: Unbound by Tarana Burke - Book Summary & Key Takeaways
How do we move from self blame to empathy following deep trauma? Is it possible to find joy afterwards? How was the Me Too Movement formed?
Eleanor Carey
September 28, 2022
Hello courageous people! đ Welcome to Edition 35, aaaand the very first edition coming to you from Read Your Mind, previously Post Traumatic Growth Weekly!!! I hope you like the new name and brand - I'd love to hear if you have any thoughts or feedback.
This week, we are reading đ Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement đ by Tarana Burke.
Trigger warning: this summary contains mentions of sexual assault and rape.
So letâs jump in! All text in italics are quotes taken directly from the book.
đ„ Who is Tarana Burke?
Tarana Burke is the Founder of the "Me Too" movement that took the world by storm in 2017. That is when the hashtag came to prominence and it became a household conversation and got news coverage worldwide, but Tarana's work started long before that:
"Burke works to dismantle the cycle of sexual violence and other systemic issues that disproportionately impact marginalized people. For more than three decades she has worked at the intersection of racial justice, arts and culture, anti-violence and gender equity.
Her theory of empowerment through empathy is changing the way the world thinks about sexual violence, consent, and bodily autonomy and has galvanized millions of survivors and allies" - page 2
This book is Tarana's story. It is her coming of age, her finding power and strength, her being broken time and time again, her being there for others. And there are so many lessons here for us all.
đ Tarana's life was changed forever when she was raped at the age of 7
I wish we didn't have to talk about it, but it is such an essential event to understand from Tarana's life and how it has shaped her life's work.
At just seven years old, Tarana was taken by the hand by an older boy into an abandoned building where he raped her. And while of course the event itself was horrific, there were also so many other levels of damage done around the perception of such an event happening.
I'll explain.
Growing up, Tarana was told (which I think many of us can relate to):
"The older women in my lifeâwhether it was my mother or my aunt or the women in my building, who looked at me as their sweet babyâtaught me plenty about protecting myself and my private parts.
"Never let anyone touch your private parts," theyâd say. But I wasnât told why I had to protect my private parts, just that it was imperative that I did." - page 35
This created an extremely damaging set of beliefs for Tarana.
đ„ How did Tarana end up believing the rape was her own fault?
" ... when I thought of my experience, I didnât hold my abusers accountableâI held myself to blame. In my mind, they didnât abuse me. I broke the rules. I was the one who did something wrong. It was this thinking that also kept me from ever identifying as a survivor. I didnât even identify as a victim." - page 36
She believed it was her fault. She was out after dark. She went with the boy. She "let" him touch her.
She blamed herself.
She carried the weight of the shame, the guilt, the disgust around with her for years, all because of the messaging that she had received. That so many of us have received.
"The story of how empathy for othersâwithout which the work of âme tooâ doesnât existâstarts with empathy for that dark place of shame where we keep our stories, and where I kept mine." - page 12
đ€Ż How do we move from self blame to having empathy for ourselves?
It starts with having more stories to relate to, so we can see our experience in other people.
For Tarana, it took another 5 years from that horrific event before she was able to gain some of this outside perspective.
Growing up, their house was always full of books. Especially the books of strong black women like Toni Morrison and Gwendolyn Brooks and of course, Maya Angelou.
Tarana was always asking her mother if she could read Maya Angelou's books from a young age, but her mother always told her that she wasn't ready. That they were "too old" for her. So one day, when Tarana was about 12 years old and her mum was out of the house, she picked up I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings which detail's Maya's own experience of rape and sexual assault.
While Tarana's mother didn't want her to read that book, for fear of exposing her to that kind of violence too early on her life, little did she realise that her own daughter had already experienced it, and in fact would fine immense solace in the book:
"My twelve-year-old mind had not understood that this was a thing that happened to other girls who were innocent. I thought it was just me, or at least girls like me. I thought I was the kind of girl who bad things happened to.
When I read about what happened to a young Maya Angelou, I was able to read her as innocent in a way I didnât allow of myself. Maya was decent and nice, and it seemed egregious that God would have allowed something so horrible to happen to her. It was the first time I ever realized a little girl like her could have gone through what I went through." - page 69
For the first time Tarana was able to see her 7 year old self as innocent. As someone that an awful thing happened to, not someone who caused the awful thing to occur.
Not only was she able to separate her own actions from the event, she was able to see something else in Maya Angelou that she had all but lost hope for her own life.
Joy.
đ What caused the change in belief that a joyful life was not impossible, but in fact very possible indeed?
In school a couple of years later, Tarana's class watched a video recording of Maya Angelou reciting her poem Powerful Woman. This was the first time she had ever heard Maya's real voice, and something hit home.
When Tarana had read the poem before, she thought the take home message was "fake it til you make it" or "go along to get along". But when she heard the actual recital, she realised that Maya Angelou was living her truth of being a powerful woman:
"Listening to her voice, watching her lips perfectly articulate each and every syllable of that poem, I knew she meant every word. I believed her. I believed that she felt like a Phenomenal Woman as she delivered each line with an audacity and authenticity I had never seen before. I felt like I knew the kind of pain she had to be holding because it was the same pain I held every single day.
Where had her shame gone? How had it not seeped into her cells, and if it had, how did she get it out? And if all of itâthe pain, shame, and fearâwere still there, where did she find space for this thing I saw in her face and heard in her voice? What was this softness? Where did the joy come from? I went home that night and wondered in my journal who Dr. Maya Angelou wasâfor realâand how I could have gotten her so wrong.
More than anything, I contemplated the question that eventually became central to my healing. If what I saw was real, how could a body that holds that kind of pain also hold joy?" - page 74
It is possible for us to hold both.
đż When we work to make change, we are forced to face our own demons in the process
Years later, when Tarana had graduated from college and she had joined an organisation called called 21st Century Leaders (or 21C for short), which she had done a lot of work for throughout her university years. It was a match made in heaven.
At 21C, they ran a variety of different camps ranging from three days to ten days. This is the passion that Tarana speaks about the ten day camps:
"It was what endeared and committed me to the organization. It was also where I met my chosen family. We laughed, cried, sang, danced, testified, chanted, organized, learned, taught, and loved for ten days straight. For a lot of us, it was more love than we had ever receivedâor given. It was a sacred space.
People came with trauma, and while dealing with trauma wasnât an official part of the 21C agenda, it existed in so many of us that dealing with it was inevitable." - page 141-142
As a quick sidebar, these sessions still sit uncomfortably with Tarana even all these years later, for this key reason:
"Years and years of girls spilling their innermost truths about their experiences, and 21C never employed a trained professional to oversee these sessions. Numbers of girls, and some boys, gave us clear indications that they may not have been safe at home, and we sent them back anyway, with no defense and no recourse. It remains in the front of my mind today.
It is wildly irresponsible to make people feel comfortable enough to open up without being prepared with the resources to help them process their experiences and receive continued support." - page 151-152
(This approach, and ensuring that she didn't make the same mistakes again became a cornerstone in the rest of Tarana's work.)
But the point for this section really is, that it's impossible to be doing this work, to be hearing the stories of other people and to not be affected. To not be reminded of your own experiences and be triggered.
She didn't want to, but she was forced to face the reality of her own experience:
"I opened my mouth and they crept out, one small syllable at a time:
I was raped. They molested me. I didnât want it. I didnât like it. Iâm sorry.
This is what I felt. This is what I spent so much time ducking and dodging and twisting and contorting to avoid. These words. My truth. It was a truth my mother never asked for. It was a truth none of my family or friends ever knew. It was a truth no one was there to validate. It was a truth I ran from for so very long. But it was a truth I knew I needed to unravel. If not for myself, for the love of the girls like me who could be saved. For the next girl like Heaven I would meetâand there would be so very many. It was out of my body for the first time and I was still alive. I was still standingâwith my truth on the outside." - page 160
Wow.
đ©đŸâđ€âđ©đ» Acknowledging that the Black experience of rape and sexual assault is very different to the white experience
As we come towards the end of this edition, it would be remiss of me to write all of this and highlight Tarana's work without closing on this very important point. Following the virality of the "Me Too" movement, the phrase and the work was taken up by many more white people, compared to where the roots of Tarana's work started - with Black and Brown communities.
Of course, the experiences of rape and sexual assault are difficult for all of us, and while:
" ... sexual violence doesnât discriminate, the response to it does. In some ways, it is the great equalizerâno demographic or group is exemptâbut the reactions to different people telling their stories are far from equal. That is largely why my work has always centered Black and Brown folksâparticularly women and girls. The response to our trauma and our truths is wildly different than the response to white womenâs." - page 242
Even in tackling these difficult topics, it is important for us to acknowledge our privilege-if we have it, as I as a white woman do- and understand how this contributes to our ability to feel seen, be represented, be heard, be believed and get help.
There we have it. This was a deep, gut-wrenching, yet soul soaring read. The journey of processing our difficult experiences continues, but something that continues to stand out to me is how the more we hear how other people have made sense of their stories, the more sense we can make of our own, too.
Until next week my friends,
Eleanor â€ïžđ
đ§ Resources & Links
đž Follow Tarana Burke on Instagram - 351k followers
đ„ Follow Tarana Burke on Twitter - 163k followers
đ Next week's book
Coming out next Wednesday 5th October 2022 is Edition #36:
đ Unf*ck Yourself: Get Out Of Your Head And Into Your Life
đ by Gary John Bishop
âIn Unfu*k Yourself, Bishop leads you through a series of seven assertions:
I am willing.I am wired to win.I got this.I embrace the uncertainty.I am not my thoughts.I am what I do.I am relentless.I expect nothing and accept everything.
Lead the life you were meant to haveâUnfu*k Yourself.â