Open your phone.
Scroll for thirty seconds.
It’s the same headlines. The same names. The same outrage. The same disbelief.
Stories of abuse. Men in power who walk away untouched. The Epstein files resurfacing. Public figures trending for all the wrong reasons. Women sharing stories that sound painfully familiar.
It feels loud. It feels relentless. It feels exhausting.
And then I saw a post that stopped me cold:
“Find one woman who hasn’t been abused by a man in some way, shape, or form. I’ll wait.”
I wanted it to be dramatic. I wanted it to be exaggerated.
But it wasn’t.
I’ve been in abusive relationships.
Every close friend of mine has.
My mother has.
Several of my aunts.
My cousins.
The neighbor next door.
Every woman I know has a story.
Some stories are loud and visible.
Some are quiet and buried.
Some are disguised as “he just has a temper.”
Some are emotional, psychological, financial.
Some leave bruises you can’t photograph.
And the question that keeps circling in my mind is this:
Where does it come from?
Is it parenting?
Is it culture?
Is it entitlement?
Or is it the silence that protects it?
The silence that says, don’t make a scene.
The silence that says, it’s not your business.
The silence that says, it’s probably not that bad.
I need to tell you something that still sits in my bones.
It was around 2013. Cape Cod. A crowded bar. My boyfriend at the time wanted to see an Irish folk singer. The place was packed, shoulder to shoulder, standing room only.
That’s when I heard him.
A man’s voice. Angry. Sharp. Cutting through the music.
I turned around and saw a couple sitting at a small table. The woman’s head was down. Not defensive. Not arguing back. Just down. Folded inward.
The man across from her was irate. Red-faced. Leaning forward. Yelling at her like she was something to conquer.
Not whispering. Not arguing privately.
Yelling.
And here’s what I can’t forget:
The bar was full.
Full of men.
Full of women.
People on dates.
People laughing.
People ordering drinks.
No one moved.
No one said a word.
Why weren’t the men stepping in?
Why wasn’t the bar kicking him out?
Why were we all just… standing there?
After his third outburst, I started walking toward them.
My boyfriend grabbed my arm.
“Don’t get involved.”
We argued in hushed voices while she sat there being humiliated in plain sight.
They eventually got up and left.
And the bar went back to normal.
The music kept playing.
The drinks kept pouring.
The laughter resumed.
And I have never stopped wondering what happened to her when they got home.
For those of you who know me, you know I don’t stay quiet. I don’t shrink. I don’t keep my head down.
And that’s why this memory still haunts me.
If I had stepped in, would it have helped?
Would it have made it worse?
Would it have mattered?
I don’t know.
But I do know this:
Silence is a breeding ground.
We stay quiet to avoid conflict.
We look away because it’s uncomfortable.
We tell ourselves it’s not our place.
And then we wake up in a world that feels broken and wonder how it got this way.
Look around.
Is this the world we want?
Because this is what silence builds.
The answer isn’t complicated, even if it’s uncomfortable.
We support each other.
We lift other women up.
We fight for them.
We fight with them.
We fight next to them.
We call out bad behavior.
We stop excusing it.
We stop normalizing it.
We stop protecting it.
We speak up.
We ask for help.
We refuse to let humiliation happen in public without consequence.
I have two girls.
And when I think about the world they will inherit, my heart pounds.
If we don’t stand up now, what will be left for them?
I don’t want them learning how to survive abuse.
I want them living in a world where it isn’t tolerated.
And that starts with us.
Not tomorrow.
Not when it’s trending.
Now.
