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

by Tarana Burke

“This can’t happen,” I said through my tears. “Not like this! Y’all know if these white women start using this hashtag, and it gets popular, they will never believe that a Black woman in her forties from the Bronx has been building a movement for the same purposes, using those exact words, for years now. It will be over.” I was now outright sobbing. “I will have worked all these years for nothing!”

I had gone all over the country—any and everywhere folks would allow me space—talking about how the exchange of empathy between survivors of sexual violence could be a tool to empower us toward healing and into action.

Here was a woman feeling less alone because she had found a place to be seen.

My lessons are never low-key and my assignment is always plain and clear once it is revealed. I am hardwired to respond to injustice.

I looked up to find our neighbor, Ms. Davis. She was an older lady who was a good friend of our family. I adored her and she adored me. She was so fabulous. She was always “sugar sharp,” as the old folk would say. I had never seen her without a full face of makeup, complete with red lips; fancy, colorful earrings; and big, wide-frame sunglasses. She played her numbers in Mr. Wes’s spot and always came to family and community functions. She would call me “my baby” with a big smile as soon as she laid eyes on me. To this day, I refer to so many little Black girls in the same way when I run into them on the street.

The older women in my life—whether it was my mother or my aunt or the women in my building, who looked at me as their sweet baby—taught me plenty about protecting myself and my private parts. Never let anyone touch your private parts, they’d say. But I wasn’t told why I had to protect my private parts, just that it was imperative that I did. Because of this, when I thought of my experience, I didn’t hold my abusers accountable—I held myself to blame. In my mind, they didn’t 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 didn’t even identify as a victim.

I was carrying so much shame—more than any child should have to confront. But like pain and suffering, shame has no age requirement. There is no set cutoff or start. It’s just there one day and doesn’t leave. At least not of its own free will. On my luckiest days the shame sat on my spirit like a thin film of dust. I saw and felt it, but it wasn’t enough to disrupt things. On the worst days, it was like sliding down a muddy slope, helplessly sinking into the trap below.

I’m sure my mother thought I was crying because her yelling upset me, and it did. My mother didn’t curse much, almost never in fact, but she could reduce a grown man to tears without profanity when she was mad. It didn’t take much for her to go from zero to furious. But it wasn’t the yelling alone that made the tears fall. It was confirmation of what I thought I truly was—dirty, nasty, and used up.

felt like my mother would get meaner and more distant, further from the woman I knew. I used to be her sidekick. She would dress us alike, buying sweatshirts and ironing on matching letters and patches.

I didn’t understand that on the inside maybe my mom was still that little girl sitting on her steps, watching the happy faces going in and out of church, longing for what she saw as joy and love. I didn’t understand for far longer than I should have.

I had found a new thing to become: radical.

I understand now why my mother might have been wary of my reading this book too soon. Maya Angelou wrote of being molested and raped by her mother’s boyfriend when she was eight years old. My mom, who had no idea that my life was being mirrored in this book, likely didn’t want me to read it in an attempt to protect me from an ugly reality I had unfortunately already experienced. Instead of being horrified and compelled to ask incessant questions, I was being introduced to a truth that would forever alter my life. 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 didn’t 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.

I went home that night and wondered in my journal who Dr. Maya Angelou was—for real—and 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?

Belonging, connecting, and feeling seen and heard allowed me the space to channel my rage and hide my shame, which I more than welcomed.

especially since Mr. Eddie had come into our lives. But what must she think of me to believe I was a whore at twelve without considering that I might be a victim?

There is no question that self-hate severely limits one’s capacity to love fully and wholeheartedly.

In less than a week, I was set and ready to go. It was the first time I had ever been on a plane, but that part felt insignificant in comparison to the bigger adventure of college. My whole focus was on this new beginning. Everything I had was riding on this next chapter. No one knew me. No one knew my secrets. It was yet another chance at reinvention. Whoever I was when I stepped onto that campus was who I would be for the rest of my life, and I was dying to find out who that person was. In keeping my secrets I had inadvertently trapped some of the best parts of myself. I wanted so desperately to be free—to lean into the life I kept getting glimpses of.

After walking the yard, I went to the library and hand-wrote a flyer: IF YOU ARE ANGRY ABOUT RODNEY KING AND LATASHA HARLINS, MEET ME IN FRONT OF THE MAIN DINING HALL TOMORROW AT 12PM. Then I went to visit with one of my favorite office ladies in the admissions building and asked her to make a few copies. She made them but told me if I didn’t have them stamped by the dean’s office, then they would just pull them down. I marched to the dean’s office, where I got a song and dance about preapproval and paperwork. I took my fliers and headed back to the dorm, remembering one of my elders’ advice: “Sometimes it’s better to apologize than to wait for permission.”

I felt powerful. 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.

“We family?” Suddenly she looked more like the girl who got off the van a few days earlier. “We ain’t family, Ms. Tee, now you ain’t gotta say alladat!” “Alla-what? We are family! We are here to take care of each other. You will meet people here that you will know for the rest of your life.” “But families is supposed to take care of you and feed you and … loooove you, no matter what!” I stopped what I was doing, got real close to her face, and cupped her cheeks in my hands. “You don’t think I love you, Heaven,” I said, locking eyes with hers. She looked like her little milk chocolate cheeks were going to melt into my hands. Before she could even answer, I continued, “but I do.” And I kissed her on the forehead. She just smiled. Beamed, really. She gave me a hug—a long side hug that made me start laughing again.

We were committed to being better about taking responsibility for the young people in our care who were experiencing any kind of trauma. For all the good the organization did, sexual violence was its blind spot. 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. We were doing our best with the limited knowledge and resources we had at the time, but even then I wished we were doing more.

She didn’t see me looking at her because she was no longer there. She hadn’t physically left, but even with all the upheaval and movement around her, she was perfectly still—emotionless. I looked at her face and posture, and I didn’t have to see her eyes to know. She was me. I was transported right back to being fifteen or sixteen, sitting in a room full of crying teenage girls sharing horrible stories that I could never ever repeat, because I never allowed myself to confront the truths of what had happened to me. I would find a place to retreat in my mind, careful not to be so tuned out that folks felt the need to check on me. I would demure and become invisible. I was watching Heaven do it right before my eyes. She had faded into her own world of safety. The girl with a mouthful to say—ready to defend anyone she deemed defenseless—was doing her best to defend herself.

While she was simply trying to lean into what I had promised her—family, connection, love—I was desperately trying to run away from all she reminded me of: betrayal, loss, shame. Inside, I was running from room to room like the house was on fire. And then my brain did what I had trained it to do. It went into protection mode. You are not a social worker or a counselor, I insisted in the solitude of my mind. As she was walking away from me, possibly forever, I kept thinking about her face when she finally got me to stop and listen. She knew what she was about to say to me, but there was no fear in her eyes. Instead, she looked relieved. I wondered where that courage came from. How had she managed to do the thing that I had still not figured out how to do with a head start almost double her twelve short years? I wondered how, at the very least, I had not been able to meet her at the apex of her courage.

The moment I found out I was pregnant, I prayed I wasn’t carrying a baby girl. I was so committed to the idea that I picked out dozens of names for the boy I hoped was in my belly. I was too nervous to find out the sex of my child, so I let the nurse tell my boyfriend, who was dying to know. I forbade him from telling me. I wanted my baby more than anything, but the thought of bringing a little girl into the world who might be subjected to my fate was horrifying. I wanted to save my future “her” from an unkind world filled with unkind men who saw a little girl like me as an ugly, nasty dishrag to be used and discarded.

I thought if I had a little boy, he had a better chance at escaping my fate. He wouldn’t be immune to unkindness, of course—I certainly had my anxieties about bringing a little Black boy into the world. But I was able to hold that fear. I was able to isolate those anxieties. I told myself that I could prepare my baby for the nastiness that awaited Black boys in America, even though I knew my heart couldn’t handle the reality that too many of our boys are robbed of their innocence and walk through life with a target on their backs. But still, it felt different than the overwhelming fear of having a child who looked like me and dealt with the things I’d endured. The roaming hands of boys who didn’t give a fuck that they didn’t have permission to touch. The anger of men who didn’t understand why I didn’t want to give them my number or respond to their catcalls. Or the violent betrayal of those who would rather rob me of my innocence than take care of me. And so I didn’t want to know the sex of this child. Ironically, I learned I was having a girl when my child’s father let it slip during our breakup. As his words sunk in, my prayers to God changed. Now that I knew I was having a baby girl, I begged God that she at least didn’t look like me.

I didn’t see this as violence because I thought I knew violence. I explained it away as an extreme expression of his love for me, not making space to consider it manipulation.

A long time ago I’d learned about something called the butterfly effect. It is an underlying facet of chaos theory. The butterfly effect says that an event in nature as simple as a butterfly flapping its wings can set off a series of events that can result in something as massive as a tsunami on the other side of the world. When I first heard of it, I thought, what great misfortune it would be to feel the softness and beauty of a butterfly flapping its wings against your skin and dismiss it, not knowing its potential devastation to your life or the lives around you. Those events might appear chaotic, random, or unconnected when, in fact, they were meant to be interconnected, leading to a particular outcome that you don’t know about until you do. In that moment, sitting in my car, that unsettled feeling was the flutter of butterfly wings. I didn’t know what to call it or where it was leading but I knew it was important. What I didn’t understand was how it would change the trajectory of my whole life.

When it comes to sexual violence in the Black community, the culture of secrecy and silence is more complex than just wanting to protect the perpetrator. The long history of false accusations of sexual violence against Black men along with our tumultuous relationship with law enforcement is a factor. The pain of watching folks twist themselves out of shape finding new ways to blame little Black girls for their own abuse plays a part. And the general ranking of sexual violence as minor in the face of things like structural racism and crippling poverty also play a role in how hard it is for us to stare down the monster that is sexual violence and call it out by name.

I began to scream and cry uncontrollably, pounding my fists against the steering wheel. I had brought girls into my home, I had stood up to my elder and mentor, and I had asked people for help who a year ago I would never have dreamed of asking. “No, God!” The anger and desperation finally broke through in my voice. “No! Please, no.” I was pleading now. I had never let the rumbling come to the surface before, but it’d been there for a long time. I shut my eyes tight and let my hands fall to my lap, exhausted by the helplessness I felt in that moment. I asked God where all this left me. What could I do now? How was I going to help these girls? A stillness came over me and the rumbling settled. I heard, or felt, an answer. It’s you. I opened my eyes and looked around, but I already knew. I was so certain that it frightened me. I wanted to continue wailing like I didn’t hear it, but I did and now I couldn’t unhear it. But why me?

If these girls were telling me their stories, or indicating that they had stories, the damage had already begun. Yes, prevention was necessary, but it was beyond my limited capacity. Healing wasn’t. I decided to write down all the little things I had been doing to work on myself and all the bits of information that I had gathered in my short journey, and I started shaping them into a workshop.

I wrote out the story of Heaven. I wrote about how carrying my own shame had kept me from stepping out into the world to be who I was meant to be. And then I wrote about the celebrities who I knew the girls looked up to and whose stories of survival inspired me over the years, like Mary J. Blige, Fantasia, Queen Latifah, Gabrielle Union, Oprah, and of course, Maya Angelou. I wrote down a list of words that I wished someone had explained to me when I was their age. I defined things like grooming, rape, incest, disclosure, and shame. When I looked up it was dark outside. I had been writing—longhand—for hours. I felt good about what I had put down on paper, but it still felt incomplete. Parts of my own experience were embedded in what I was creating, but I knew I needed to share my actual story, something I never ever did. I didn’t even know where to start. I put down my notepad and sat on the edge of my mattress with my legs folded over one another and my back curved in a deep C. I hung my head and said a quiet prayer, asking God to intervene and lend me support. And then I did the unthinkable. I remembered. All of it. On purpose.

How different would her life be if I had found a fraction of the courage that child had? How different would all of this be: Bevel, the Sanders, the girls? How different would it all be if I just had a little bit more courage? But what was courage? I wondered. How could I find it if I didn’t know what it looked like? Maybe Heaven had courage because she had me. Maybe community creates courage? What if courage creates community? Maybe empathy creates courage? How can you express empathy toward others if you can’t empathize with yourself? Is the core of healing empathy and courage? The questions were coming faster than the flashbacks now, but so were the answers. Not in my head but in my heart, which felt like it was going to burst wide open. For the first time in my life my story was completely out of my body and I had finally told it to the one person who needed to hear it most, myself.

I searched around for a blank piece of paper. I wanted to capture this while it was coming. I found a steno pad that hadn’t been used and picked up a pen. I opened the pad and at the top of the page I wrote two words. me too.

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’m sorry, Mommy. I didn’t know! Are you okay?” I held them close and wiped my tears. “I am okay, my baby. And you will be too. That is what I want you to know.”

That is largely why my work has always centered Black and Brown folks—particularly women and girls. The response to our trauma and our truths is wildly different than the response to white women’s.

introduced to survival and healing as ideas that required practice—trying to make sense of why I survived. When I was in Selma, I rationalized that it was so I could do the work that I was doing. I thought the same thing when I was in Philly. No matter how hard the work, no matter how meager the resources, no matter how tired or frustrated or burned out I was, I always returned to it, not just because I loved my kids and I loved supporting survivors but because I needed to make the things I endured mean something.

Just as when the tears came in the parking lot of the rape crisis center in Selma, now my spirit knows I am called into this moment to do something more than represent a movement. It knows that this movement is more than a hashtag and bigger than any one individual.

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.

“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.