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

by Tarana Burke

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.