My father once hit me in the ear so hard that a checkerboard of black spots formed before my eyes.  Another time, he, an alcoholic, slammed me into a kitchen wall, still in my chair, because I had filled up on milk and didn't want to eat my dinner.  I turned to my 8th grade science teacher for emotional support during this rough time at home, and he molested me in the school milk room.  My 40-something science teacher, married with five children, four of whom were older than me, proved my first French kiss.  He kissed me while photos of his wife and child were forming in developing fluid on a counter top only feet away. 

My harsh history with men continued, worsening, ranging from an alcoholic boyfriend who was mentally and emotionally abusive daily and once tried to strangle me in a bar (until several men stepped in and removed his hands from my throat), to taking a good friend's drunk boyfriend home as a favor and having to run out his apartment after he seized my wrist, intending to--what? have sex with me by force?, to a drug-addicted boyfriend coming down from a crack high, raping me in our apartment in the middle of an afternoon. 

I am a middle-class white woman, with two Master's degrees, who lives in the United States.  I learned enough and had opportunity enough to eventually lead to a better life.  I am blessed, and I know it. 

My husband, daughter, and I went to Haiti in Fall 2012 to teach English.  As we passed shanty towns in Port-au-Prince, I couldn't help but think about the women still living in the post-earthquake camps that I couldn't see from the main thoroughfare but knew existed.  The many women who had no education, no family, no work, and were being raped and impregnated by strange men under the closed flaps of tents.  How could they possibly rise above their situations? 

I know they are but one example and that violence, in horrific degrees, happens every second to women across the world.  I will never understand why men who are abusive feel entitled to take what they want, whether sex, self-esteem, or inner peace.  I am blessed, but I can never forget.  I wonder sometimes who I would be if men had been respectful to me; I do all right, but I used to shine.  It. Must. End.  Let women shine.