A Fight Back Woman Blog

A quick note, readers, to let you know I am on my way to a much-needed vacation in France. (I have hired a housesitter, so don’t even think of stopping by while I am gone, to have a party at the Potts palace.) And while I am there, I am going to give it my best Carrie Bradshaw. Of the two celebrities I am told I resemble most, Sarah Jessica Parker’s character in Sex in the City is definitely one I don’t mind. I know it has everything to do with her wild, crazy hair and nothing to do with me being a petite fashionista. But part of me hopes people who say that to me see a little of her spirit in me too. I have a journal ready for entries about the beautiful things I will see, and the funny moments I experience at the morning market or when I try my hand at conversing in French. I am looking forward to letting my mind wander and stretch itself with no reason to reel it in. I hope to come back with wonderful musings I am dying to share with all of you. Au revoir!

Yeah, I’ve been there. Minus the stinky stick she’s holding.

Some might call this clutter. I call it “bee-u-tee-ful!”

As I finish preparations for my first solo trip to Europe in four years – a 10-day excursion to Provence, France - I wanted to share with you some of the thoughts that have flitted through my brain the past few days. In no particular order:

• Inflatable neck pillow, no inflatable neck pillow?
• What if it rains? What if it’s too hot? What if I step on a scorpion?
• What if all of France goes on strike? (they do that, you know)
• Je suis un publicist.
• Is my passport expired? (checks passport)
• Several days later…Is my passport expired? (checks passport..vicious cycle)
• Je viens de New York.
• Ok, I’ll have the brown shorts and the white shorts, and the four sundresses. Or should it be five sundresses?
• Je voudrais un ver de vin rouge!

As silly as these questions are, they’re a luxury I am afforded because I already took care of the serious stuff:  photocopying my passport and credit cards so I have copies for myself, my parents and my emergency contact; giving my emergency contact a copy of my safe deposit box key and instructions regarding my will, the deed to my house and other important documents it contains; and, I’ve alerted my credit cards companies that I will be overseas. Just in case you are wondering – I have performed these acts for every overseas trip I have ever taken. This time though, I have added extra precautions to make things easier for myself and my loved ones shoud something go awry. Pay attention, please.

For starters, I took a 10-weeks’ long course in conversational French to gain a basic understanding of the language.  I’ve purchased an international phone and shared the phone number with friends and family, and programmed their contact info into it.  I visited the homepage for the U.S. Embassy in France and located the nearest embassy branch to where I will be staying, recording the various phone numbers in my phone and printing a list of emergency services and personnel. Lastly, but most importantly, as it’s something every U.S. citizen should do when traveling overseas:  I registered my travel information with the State Department via its Smart Traveler Enrollment Program. It’s a free service that provides travel updates/warnings tailored specifically to your trip, and also serves as a record of where you’ll be staying in your chosen country of travel, your emergency contact information and other pertinent details should you require assistance from the Embassy. If you do nothing else to prepare for an overseas trip, please enroll in this program.

As I wrote in a previous post, this solo trip will not be my first in Europe since the attack, but it will certainly be the longest since I visited Spain in May 2008. And I admit, I’m a little nervous. I always get hit with a bout of butterflies upon landing in a foreign country and going through customs. Just getting from the airport, to public transportation and then, to my hotel, seems to be the hardest part of the trip because I am half asleep, dehydrated and cranky as all get out. Still, I recognize that scaring myself every now and then is healthy for me, especially when I know the reward will be immeasureable. This time is different, though.

I am keenly aware that if anything happens to me on this trip (e.g. I get mugged, scammed or manhandled) I will  be forever tagged as some kind of idiot who attracts bad things that in some way are my fault. Nevermind the fact I have successfully traveled this way for YEARS to my great benefit and enjoyment. People are strange. I’ve had no shortage of well-meaning friends tell me to “be careful” in a sort of parent-to-child way. While I know it comes from a good place, it stings a little. What happened with Marco was not about not being careful. It was about not being perfect and not forseeing the unforseeable. It was about crossing paths with an evil I could not have fathomed.

I wish people would celebrate with me or congratulate me on taking this very significant step forward. I know I am, and I’ve had some very sassy pep talks in the mirror the past few mornings to prove it. All I know is that a short time ago I was laid so low by fear that I could not understand why I ever thought I could or should travel alone overseas ever again. Somehow, I have vanquished that fear and all its terrible implications. Now, I have a coffee table covered with pocket French books, travel kit tems and a leather-bound journal I have not touched since November 11, 2008. And I have 10 days ahead of me filled with strolls through flowered fields and Van Gogh’s paintings, jugs of local wines and rinds of cheese that will make me forget anything I ever thought I knew about cheese or the delectable crepes it finds its way into. Isn’t that worth celebrating? Mais oui. Of course.

Team Afightbackwoman. Fierce feet.

I am wrapping up such an incredible day that I am not quite sure where to begin. Let’s see…I arose to that sweet blend of fresh morning air and sunshine that screams “Spring!” and lingered in my bed just a little longer to ponder the day ahead. After a few weeks’ wait, the time had come for Team Afightbackwoman to strut around the town green in the Walk a Mile in Her Shoes event supporting the Milford Rape Crisis Center. The past week, some of the men participating on my behalf had shared photos of themselves shoe shopping. The images they texted to me made me laugh out loud and then promptly tear up at the beauty of the gesture. Men who know and care about me were fully embracing the spirit of the walk and it touched my heart.

Earlier in the week, I had special t-shirts printed , and then yesterday, I ran out to purchase some accessories:  hot pink feather boas and Carrie Bradshaw-esque flower clip-ons. I was going for ‘understated elegance’ with the team’s ensemble.

I Carrie Bradshawed them. They loved it.

As this was my first time participating in this event, I hesitated to be too outlandish with our team’s attire. Upon arrival at registration and seeing the other participants, I quickly laid that fear to rest. I saw men in halter dresses and one-shoulder gowns.

I mean, some guys went all out.

And then, there was this dude:

Eek.

Our team gathered itself and posed for pictures while making some last-minute adjustments involving nylon footies and other blister-preventing tactics. And just for a few minutes, I tried to absorb the fact this would probably be, for me, the start of a sustained presence in the activist community.

Showing off our fabulous shirts and my shameless marketing tactics. And inadvertently, my rear.

I turned in our team packet of more than $650 in donations with swagger, and soon after, the walk began. Men and boys wobbled and teetered their way along the route. Motorists stopped and townspeople leaned out of buildings or sat on stairs to watch the motley crew pass by. We were a sight to see.

This participant was smooch-worthy. Love.

For the entire walk, I had a dopey smile plastered to my face. You would too if you saw your friends and pure strangers support survivors this way. I almost didn’t want it to end. My friend Rob clearly felt differently as he knelt down at the finish line and kissed the ground – for real. He’s a total ham. And totally wonderful, as I told you all in a much earlier post last year.

The best part of the day might have come after the event was finished. We saddled up to a favorite watering hole and sat in the bright sun on a patio overlooking the river, and we talked. We laughed. We reviewed our photos and dreamed about next year’s team and next year’s shoes.  I am not sure the day could have been better.

Aren't they glorious? I hear they go great with platform heels and boxer shorts. And a feather boa.

A quick note to say a longer post will come end of week as we are now 7 days from the Walk a Mile in Her Shoes event here in my town. I am so excited. The t-shirts I ordered for my friends arrived and I hope they like them. End of week, I am going to shop for some feather boas and maybe some silly hats. I say, if they are going to wear heels, they might as well embrace their inner Bette Midler.

Here’s a fun, quick note for you. As any blogger will confess, reading your site’s stats can be pretty exciting, especially with some of the analytics out there now taking deeper dives into the clicks. I just wanted to share something I find really cool regarding my afightbackwoman.com’s visitors the past few weeks. It gives my heart a little zing knowing that I am reaching people a bit beyond the US and Canadian borders. At the same time, I am confounded as to how these folks found me. The best I can surmise is the Marie Claire article on me was also run in the Marie Claire Australian issue. Perhaps, it ran elsewhere and raised a collective awareness?? Still, it doesn’t explain Macedonia. Or Russia. Or United Arab Emirates. Oh, the Internet is strange indeed.

United States	955
Canada	20
Germany	10
United Kingdom	9
Australia	8
Italy	8
Qatar	5
India	5
France	4
United Arab Emirates	3
Belgium	3
Hungary	3
Dominican Republic	3
Bulgaria	2
Kuwait	2
Bangladesh	2
Brazil	2
Japan	2
Egypt	2
Morocco	2
Switzerland	2
Thailand	1
Spain	1
Saudi Arabia	1
Russian Federation	1
Venezuela	1
Senegal	1
Sweden	1
Netherlands	1
Mexico	1
Philippines	1
Viet Nam	1
Macedonia	1
Poland	1
Colombia

How I love this wonderful woman. My Jessie girl...she should be cloned.

I just want to take a break to tell you about someone incredibly special to me: my friend Jessie. Aside from the fact she has the most amazing eyes of anyone I know, and the brightest smile, I like to think of her as the sleeper stalwart. As strong as I am or people perceive me to be, I need people equally as strong or stronger to lean on. I have found that’s a pretty tall order, so, I am especially appreciative when I find someone who lets me do that within the safe and loving confines of friendship. Jessie was and is the friend who I don’t have to be strong in front of. My carefully constructed walls do not exist in her presence because she doesn’t let them. She just loves me for me. And she’s incredibly strong in a way that’s not obvious because she has such a huge personality and side-splitting sense of humor that you don’t notice it right away.  But it’s there.

She also takes excellent self portraits. When I try to do that, I only get weird shots of my nose.

This beautiful woman kept me going through my darkest days. She did it effortlessly, asking for nothing in return. She endured my crying jags and multiple hugs. She kept telling me over and over that I was strong and doing the right thing. She told me I had worth and that my life would be normal again. She tells me still that someday, some wonderful, strong man will find me and fall in love with me. She is so sure of it and I believe her. I had always struggled to believe that until her.

She's fun to go to weddings with.

Today is her birthday and I am going to celebrate. On this day, she came into the world, and she weaved her way toward me and changed my life. How can I not celebrate that? I hope you all have a friend like Jessie. We all need somebody to lean on. Happy birthday, Jessie. I love you.

Our Jessie.

Any reader who has hung in there and read the majority of my posts knows that a) they should get a medal/monument of some sort and b) that inexplicably it seems divine intervention has been a theme for me, appearing at the darndest times/places to once again remind me that all this happened as it should and that I am God’s child.

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been a little antsy about answering ‘What Next?” since concluding my story here (all 115 posts of it). It’s been a long road and until I began this blog, most of it was very lonely in a way that I am rather suited for but don’t necessarily love. I wrote about feeling like a misfit because I wasn’t raped and my crime happened in a faraway place and I was really quite consumed with controlled blood lust for my attacker – none of which seemed a good fit for a victims support group. And I had tried to reach out to the Office on Violence Against Women for some direction, but also to perhaps figure a way to make the Embassy experience  a little more welcoming for sex assault victims who are in dire need of a hug instead of thick bullet proof glass to shout their assault details through. I know I worked really hard on giving myself the best possible chance I could to succeed with getting justice. And now that so much of that is in the past, I’d like to work for others, give my time to them more than through a magazine article or a few TV episodes on sex assault.

So, last week, during a long plane ride, I began brainstorming some ideas that revisited my earlier thoughts about improving the first point of contact experience for Americans assaulted overseas while also exploring my other areas of expertise: media/journalism and college athletics. I have some ideas and had begun vetting them with some trusted colleagues soon thereafter. Still, that feeling of “How can I possibly figure this all out on my own?” started to creep into my thoughts. I hate that feeling.

Well, I was at the Discovery ID shoot on Saturday. And we were running late. Almost three hours late. And I wound up staying longer so I could see some folks I didn’t think I’d get to see at all (Erin, Jose and Melissa). At around 3:30 p.m., a man was introduced to me who I had never seen in my life. His name was Roger Canaff and he was very striking, and welcoming, and he had a solid handshake (it’s all about the handshake as far as I am concerned). The producer explained that he was a legal expert on prosecution of sexual assault and child abuse and involved with an organization Ending Violence Against Women International, among others. I had never heard of that. But it sounded fantastic. In fact, much of what the producer said, and then, what Roger himself described about his work, sounded absolutely wonderful. It was a moment where I thought “Oh my God. Here is a person I can ask questions to and learn from and…Thank you God! This is so awesome, the timing of this!” The photo below was taken by Aly Charles (associate producer) right at the moment I was thinking those words. In fact, soon after this photo, I might possibly have quasi-manhandled Roger with my exuberance and said, “Where were you four years ago?? This is great! So great!” Poor Roger. That’s a lot to throw at a stranger.

Me, realizing how awesome this moment truly is. Roger had no idea I was thanking God for him.

But then, he sat with me while Melissa was being filmed, and we talked some more. Excited, words tumbled out of my mouth in a less than graceful way such that I am not sure I made a whole lot of sense to him. He had such a good vibe about him and displayed such understanding that I couldn’t shut up. I could tell he had heard much of what I was thinking many times before; it was in his face. That is so comforting. You see, for sooooooo long, everyone has wanted to talk to me about the escape itself. The fist fight with Marco. The rooftops I crawled and jumped on and off. But I have craved to talk about the legal stuff and the politically correct stuff like whether my belief that more women should report is offensive to women who are unable to. Or if my having not been raped renders me ineffective in my arguments for such things. Also, I want to talk to someone – anyone – about the differences and similarities of US vs. Italian law and the processes I had to understand about civil vs. criminal cases. And I hope someday to learn where else I might find others like me, who have done what I did. I want to know if I can help in any way, if showing my papers and documents is helpful whether at my blog or to others I might be steered to. If I can help a woman avoid searching through new/used bookstores - dozens of them - for books on Italian legal procedure, sign me up.

Roger showing me some organizations I should get to know. And me, covering my shirt which tends to flash America when I lean over too much.

I don’t expect Roger to give me the solutions but the fact I am now aware of his organization and work as well as VoicesandFaces.org and feel that he’d at least point me in the right direction is just a very important and timely occurrence. And I don’t think that is just chance. By now, I know better.

I give this post a triple A rating because I spent it with many people who supported me and just mean so much to me each in their own way, the experience challenged me and helped me grow, and I walked away with the prospect of something wonderful:  I met a man well versed in law enforcement and judicial procedure for victims of sexual assault.  He told me about several organizations and movements, including this one: http://www.voicesandfaces.org/about.asp that seeks to put names with faces of assault survivors so that others might be inspired and come to understand that shame has no place in the victim experience.

I will get into greater detail about my next steps in this space, but I prefer to show you some fun images from the day. Taping for the Discovery ID episode featuring my story took place at Angels and Kings on the Lower East Side. My dear friend Jessie and I had an early pickup in Hoboken for a 7:30 a.m. call time at the venue. And when we got there, I must say the feel of it was entirely different from that of the Travel Channel. The set was lit with dozens of votives in a quasi-Gothic setting that had random black and white police mug shots of famous musicians scattered on the walls.

The thought occurred to me that I might not be cool enough for this venue.

The crew was 8-deep and used more equipment and lighting than the previous taping I had sat for. The executive producer on hand was somewhat particular about my clothing and asked me to change from a khaki green sweater to a bordeaux-colored ruffled tank top I had brought with me. Something seemed a little more intense this time around.

Though I am still collecting photos from my friends’ cameras, I’ll get you started on a mini gallery of the day and all the people who played a role in my life these past few years.

Reunited with Erin Zammett Ruddy. My hero. My friend.

Erin getting the “Lights, camera, action!” treatment despite her cold/allergies. She is a total trooper, as only Erin can be.

A total pro, Erin "has a way with turning phrases" for delicious sound bytes, per the executive producer.

Melissa Soalt, “Dr. Ruthless” a self-defense expert I had come to know over the phone and through email but not in person until today, joined us on the set to give insights into sexual predators’ thoughts and motivations. She’s tiny, but as fiery as her hair. And she can totally kick your ass. \

Don't let her diminutive size fool you. You should probably take a step back. Or five.

And oh, did I mention the amazing Alyson Charles? Though she served as associate producer today and was just darling to talk to and very supportive and encouraging about everything, I already had the scoop on her and her awesomeness. I wish I had had more time to speak with her and grill her about her athletic pursuits. Check out her website. Woman is a U of Alabama track LEGEND. Ridiculous. I wish.  She also takes great photos and took almost all of the ones posted here.

So happy to make a new friend. This is Aly. And she's reallllly cool. And fast. I hear she's fast too.

Well, I shall post gallery#2 tomorrow. I want to tell you about a surprise guest who participated in the filming and who, unbeknownst to him, appears to be the answer to my prayers about how I can best contribute in this arena in a meaningful way now that my blog has completed the full cycle of my tale. I have a great photo (thanks to Aly) capturing the exact moment I realized this. Next post for sure.

Print it, post it, send it to a friend.  That is how much I love this poster from an anti-rape campaign in the UK: www.thisisnotaninvitationtorapeme.co.uk. brought to my attention by Melissa Soalt (Dr. Ruthless), an expert in self-defense strategies for women. Tell me you love it too.

So, so simple. So, so smart.

Take your pick. You know you wanna.

I wanted to bring your collective attention to a nationwide effort to raise awareness about sexual violence. My community will be participating as will (hopefully) hundreds others. The event is called Walk A Mile In Her Shoes and it allows men to show their solidarity with women against sexual violence by literally wearing women’s shoes/heels and walking a mile in their community with other men as women cheer them on. I am really excited to attend this year’s event in town and wish I knew some men around here who I could make part of team A Fight Back Woman. Best thing is, I have big feet so wearing my shoes would be easy breezy for most guys in need of loaner shoes. Clearly, that shouldn’t be the only incentive, but I hope it helps entice. Maybe I’ll place an ad in the local paper…At any rate, I think this is a really great event. And it speaks to my true feelings that men need to lead on the issue of reducing sexual assault. I think it will be very inspiring and comforting to see these men all stumbling and struggling in their lady shoes during the mile stroll. Wish me luck.