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

by Tarana Burke

Capacity and desire are not the same thing, especially in discussions of

love. I was an adult with a child of my own and a trail of mistakes behind me before I could say with certainty that my mother loved me. That clarity came from being faced with my own limited capacity.

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.

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 believe that our legacy of living under the oppressive reach of white supremacy has trained us to take on shame that is not ours to carry. It’s a training that tells us we must have done something wrong or played a role in causing this harm in some way, however small. Ms. Ann and I were

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.