Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement

by Tarana Burke

I had set out to reinvent myself, but it turned out that I didn’t have to start from scratch. I just had to dust myself off, because the best parts were already there.

“You won’t believe me if I told you,” I said, but he was insistent. “Ooh, no, ma’am. I have to know this, and I will believe whatever you tell me.” “Okay,” I said, ready to challenge him. “God.” “You saying God told you?” I nodded. “I KNEW it! I knew you was fittna say that—I swear I did.” “How?” Now I was the curious one. He stood up and moved about six inches from my face. He leaned his head down and, to my complete surprise, whispered, “Cuz you walk like you got an anointing on you.”

I stopped doing Kaia’s hair, took a deep breath, and bent down close to their ear. “You know there is absolutely nothing that can separate you from my love,” I whispered. Kaia jumped and turned to look at me with eyes racing back and forth. I held their sweet little face like I did often and planted a big kiss on their forehead. I said it again but this time with more emphasis and context. “I mean it, my baby, nothing. There is nothing you could do or say or think that could make me not love you. You can tell me anything—absolutely anything—and I will still love you and do everything in my power to help you. Okay?”

wrong. Nothing is your fault. Nothing at all. You are not a bad child. You are not in any trouble. Do you understand?” Kaia nodded slowly in agreement, still crying. I could tell they weren’t convinced, but I wanted to give them space to get there on their own. They laid in my lap for a while, whimpering and crying while I played with their hair. After some time, Kaia sat up and began to tell me the story of what happened to them. They were five and at a 21C summer camp. They told me who was involved and all the details as I fought to suppress my anger. They apologized again for not telling me because they thought they would get in trouble. And then, I realized that I had not yet done my part. In all the time I had spent thinking about and developing ‘me too,’ I was always clear that it had to revolve around the power of empathy, but I didn’t share my story in the workshops. I had been trying to get Kaia to tell me whether something had happened to them, but I had never shared what had happened to me. “My baby, listen.” I raised them up so that we were facing each other. “When I was a little girl, a similar thing happened to me. That’s why when I tell you that you are not to blame I know what I am talking about.” Kaia looked up at me, wide eyed with disbelief. “Mommy, someone did that to you?” “Yes, a long time ago when I was about the same age as you were.” It took everything in me to keep my composure, but then Kaia threw their arms around me and I couldn’t any more. “I’...

Sexual violence doesn’t discriminate, but the response to it does.

If unkindness is indeed a serial killer, then my revelation is that I was my own murderer. I had taught myself to bend to my own unkindness first, so that I would be able to withstand the unkindness of others. I will not bend anymore.

The work of ‘me too’ and uplifting empathy in our communities is far from done. I—that little girl in the stairwell, that ugly girl in the drugstore, that dirty, used-up dishrag—am also the girl who read voraciously, the girl who turned from fighting other girls to fighting for freedom, the girl who became a woman and claimed her voice as a leader. I am the woman who organized and fought and taught, the woman who despite all odds and in the face of trauma, kept traveling until she found her healing and her worth. I am her. She is me. And we are free.

“Maybe he just didn’t recognize me because he hasn’t seen me since I was a very little girl,” I said. “No, he didn’t recognize you because you turned out to be a smart, beautiful, accomplished woman despite him trying to take that from you.” I sat back in the seat and cried some more, this time to myself. It didn’t matter anymore that he couldn’t see me because for the first time in a long time I felt like my mother could. He had not won—I had.

For you Tarana, so that you finally know freedom.