I got the recording out of the house.

On the night it counted most, I was not a body things happened to; I was a woman who fought and won.

And holding onto that — refusing to let the trauma erase the strength, refusing to let what they did on the dark nights overwrite what I did on the last one — has been the spine of my healing.

I am not only what was done to me.

I am also, and more truly, what I did about it.