They had tried to take my voice, first slowly and then with a blade.

And I had ended the story with a voice more powerful than I had ever possessed, a voice that had put my would-be murderers in prison and would now be used to protect others who could not yet speak for themselves.

That is what I want any woman who has been made quiet to know: that your voice, even when it has been taken from you, even when you have given it away, even when it has been silenced at knifepoint, is never entirely gone.

It waits.

And it can come back louder than before.

Mine did.

And I intend, for the rest of my life, to use it.