Survivor

I have a lot of women, friends who are empowering and inspiring each other to be raw,  authentic and vulnerable.

I'm going to be really vulnerable for a second now. 

Today has been shit. The whole Stanford rape case made me angry and then I read the victim statement.

I.wasn't.fucking.ready.

What ensued was an outpouring of grief. Grief for her, grief for other survivors and grief for me.

Grief, I have learnt after time to shake off, move on. 

I'm usually so good at keeping it together. 

I'm often unmoved and unshaken by shit that comes at me.

Today was not going to be one of those days.

I made it through my gym session, the only time I left home with tears just being held back my anxiety pulsing through me.

A mixture of hate, pain and overwhelming sadness surged through me, often having to take myself to the bathroom in between sets to slow my breathing as I entered into a state of panic as the events of my rape repeated over and over in my head.

You see, the first time I was raped, I was a teenage girl.

This would also be the first time I would be penetrated.

It was cold, I remember because I was wearing my oversized skate jeans which were the fashion at the time and my cousins oversized snow jacket.

I wasn't into drinking at that age but I was social and happy to be with everyone  at a party.

One minute talking and laughing with someone I considered a friend no flirting as far as I could tell.....maybe I was naive. 

The events and time frame is a blur mainly due to the shock of having someone roll on top of me and press me so hard into the cold ground that I physically could not move, not that I could have anyway as I clearly remember being paralysed with fear as he groped my body and I felt his hand pull my pants down and his penis enter me.

I had never had sex before, I didn't really know what was happening other than something ticked over in my body and I found the strength to escape.

I was comforted by a small amount of people still in the house.

I begged everyone not to say anything.

This would start a habit in me I only became aware of today.

I have been raped two more times since then. 

Twice while sober. Once while unconsciously drunk awakening toward the end as my vision became clear I could see him between my legs.

Once I fought......twice I let them

Finish in my fear.

This was not consent, this was my survival.

Each time I found excuses as to why I couldn't make a big deal of it. 

Each time protecting them. 

Each time becoming more numb to the violation.

This dismissive, apologetic behaviour seeped into everything.

I haven't had the easiest life. Ive been torn apart by people so many times I can't even recognise pain when it burns me. 

No longer angry, no longer sad I made them into nothing as they had done to me but in doing so I had let them off of their responsibility of their actions.

My mother arrived at my home today and asked if I had been crying.

Immediately I retreated into my 16 year old self. Scared, afraid, trembling I told her what had come up I watched her face as I saw her mind recall it.

As she spoke to me I lost her words and all I could hear me whimper was " I can't I'm scared" as if I were still a teen and I were still in that place.

I built my walls higher, stronger, thicker over time.

I am stronger, in every way and it's taken me a lifetime to become who I am and if anything these events helped shaped who I am but if I have a weakness its in not allowing my emotional weakness to be heard.

While I have healed from most of the traumatic experiences I've lived through there are parts that linger. Parts of buried for song long I forgot.

Today the flood gates opened.

Today I tore my walls down. 

Today I hurt, unlike I've hurt in years.

I was plunged into darkness crying, no......howling in pain. 

Drifting in and out of lulls of sleep momentarily dulling the turbulence of my emotions.

Today I learned my weakness, I purged my pain I had hidden for so long, today I will lay down emotionally exhausted, today I allowed that young girl grieve for the first time in 16 years.

Tomorrow I continue on my path in personal growth. Tomorrow 16 year old Loureen can move on.

Tomorrow I take this pain and take the lesson and use it to evolve.

I'm still processing my reaction to reading her victim statement.

She is the collective of every survivor and he the face of rape and violation.

It was unexpected and yet.....what did I expect and how many more are there that read those very words and were dragged into an abyss of bad memories.

I'm not sure what I wanted to get out of writing this other than to heal and to purge this from me.

My sexuality had been Brought up today in regards to my experience and in a few days time when I have settled I'll write my next piece on how my sexuality and taking control and ownership helped me not only heal but to transform,  

.

The enemy in sisterhood.

As I become more self aware, as I purge the toxicity that has been ingrained in me since birth I have become more aware of others and how they speak, how the react and how they treat others.

We as female have been told that other women are our enemy. We breed insecurity within ourselves and use gossip, harsh judgment and degradation of each other to fill the void in ourselves to find validation.
We bond of mutual dislike of another, We create cliques, we emotionally manipulate each other in order to keep our "friends" close.

I first witnessed this at school, I was 5, I am Bi racial and had once been softly spoken and shy. I was an easy target. some days I was accepted and other days people isolated me from the group. My race was an easy target for bullying.

While boys were much more in my face about it, girls were more cruel and calculated.

I grew to take strength as I learned to accept myself for who I am.
This would be a life long journey spanning many years and learning through much perceived pain inflicted on me.

I would still have years to go before I could ever fully be at peace with who I am.

This really hit home when I started teaching. it was more than noticeably in the behavior of the 5 year old girls in my class.

I'd watch as they'd repeat the same behavior I had been subjected to. I began to question why ? Why would a child this young feel the need to behave this way?

Still being young and insecure I would find myself in similar situations although never one to be too interested in gossiping about others or judging peoples actions I would be swept into the pack mentality of it.

Female toxicity.

It has only been in the last few years at the ripe age of 30 when I began to take care of myself, I began to accept myself, there is a freeing power in self love.

Through correction of my own negative behavior's I soon understood why I too would engage in this type of toxicity.

Toxicity that makes women judge others that forces others to compete, indulge in gossip and degrade women for their life choices, their sexuality, their choice in clothing, their body size,  their desire to bare children or not, their relationships or choice to be single .... the list is endless,

I have come to learn that what others think of you, what their judgment is of you is always a reflection of their own deep insecurities.

I am for women, I am for men but sisterhood is an undeniably powerful source of support and love.

While I do not compete with anyone, I do not seek to talk ill of anyone, I come with only love and compassion I do understand that being for women doesn't always mean accepting the behavior of all women.

In my new found freedom of loving myself wholly and unconditionally I understand I do not have to condone the toxicity among friendships and I do not have to have any emotion whatsoever towards anyone directing their insecurities at me.

Now as an adult, unashamedly me in my love for others, in my sexuality, in my femaleness, in my independence and total lack of need for attachment, my outspoken tendencies in which I stand firm but always malleable in my own correction the last thing people judge me on is the color of skin.
Now they come at me for being me, without shame and I recognize the insecurity within them that sees their lack of freedom and self love as a threat in me.

In contrast I have also found a tribe of women also as unapologetic in who they are as people and how they conduct themselves as strong, fierce women.

Being in connection with women of this caliber makes me want to be better, do better, speak with love and integrity.

We deal as women. centered and serene. vulnerably yet strong our friendship bound not in the destruction of others but in shared love and a need to be facilitators in changing the game that is sisterhood.

I am in awe of women who own themselves.

If you are wishing to evolve past this entrapment that is insecurity and toxicity it starts at home, with yourself.
When you feel the need to judge and degrade another woman ask yourself why you are so emotionally invested and what is it within you that needs to be corrected in order to purge yourself of this negativity.
I sincerely hope every woman sheds this toxic behavior, we must stand together in solidarity and stop perpetuating the age old myth that "she" is the enemy.

1. In the beginning, there was Death.

Like all good rebirths, my story starts with Death.

Death of ego.

Our ego is merely a self image, a center constructed through a lens of judgment, opinion, societal norms that we squeeze, mold and shape ourselves to fit into any given group in a search for validation and acceptance.

I had always danced on the edge of what is viewed as appropriate for society.

I somehow danced between acceptable and yet strange.

My father was a great advocate of eschewing social norms.
He taught me fearless independence but always in the safety of his presence.

While I had practiced independence my biggest ego trip was the need to be loved, attachment.
My Father died early one summer, 5 years ago.

My world had shattered.
I had lost a large part of me and wallowed in sorrow.
The pain of grief felt as though my heart was literally tearing in two.
Surrounded by a young family, two young boys and a partner I began to sink deeper.
The one man who had loved me unconditionally had now gone from my life, I felt so alone and unsure.
My need and ache to know I was loved, to feel loved, the desire for attachment tore shreds from my soul as I searched for it in my partner.

What had began as a beautiful love story soon turned into a mess of chaos and confusion weighing heavier on me, already broken from grief.

I felt I had to constantly battle for attention, me V alcohol ......But this story isn't about him. Its about me, how I feel about the version of events from his end is not what this is about.

Soon I slipped into masking my pain and grief with alcohol and drugs. I wanted to be numb and in turn of living a life of numbness I became reckless in finding cheap thrills in order to feel something, anything.

I became so consumed in masking my pain that I could no longer see the chaos I was creating around me.


Life was Dark and cold. I viewed the world with utter disdain....I would soon learn that this was just simply a reflection of how I felt about myself.

My need for attachment and constant reassurance pushing him further away and my ego searching endlessly for validation in places where it would never be found.

Soon a landslide of events lead to my utter downfall.

The blackouts, the spinouts, the depression, the crippling anxiety.

until one day I find myself wrestling on the front lawn grasping at a fist full of pills, "just let me go" is all I can recall saying over and over in my blurred mess of a mind.

We knew it was time to move on long before we had actually parted for the last time.

We did the painful dance of on again off again for what felt like forever, our egos not wanting to let go of the comfort of familiarity, clinging to old memories that belonged to two young people who no longer existed.

We became toxic.

The last time we parted was not pretty, it was not on good terms, I did not want to leave but as I left for the last time I knew......This was it.

I had by this stage already started taking responsibility for myself, my health and my actions.

The attempt to kill myself had been a big wake up call, this is not me. I do not give up now.

I had taken myself to counselling and began taking everything out at the gym.

Small steps forward I was rebuilding but at the very last goodbye was shattered once again.

But why ? Why when the toxicity was literally killing us ?

Attachment. that word again.

Days passed,
Weeks passed.
We desperately tried to remain "friends" but in time that too seemed as toxic as "together"

I felt I had to grow and in doing so it was time to let go.

Inevitably friends faded away as we went our separate ways.

Some not surprising, many unbiased and one heartbreaking.

I died a thousand times in shedding the layers of my ego that had built an attachment so strong to both my father and ex that I felt like nothing without them.


Each time I opened myself up to feeling the pain, feeling the anger, feeling the sadness and taking it head on, I faced it like a warrior.....because if all this had happened and yet here I still am, What did I have to lose in taking everything life was throwing at me. Instead of hiding from the war raging in me I stood tall as a warrior and took each ounce of pain like a sword and in my downfall I found destruction of my ego......and as my ego began to die something started burning in me, something I had not felt in years. I felt a surge of freedom.I felt energy pour through every cell as I rebuilt.  I felt alive.

The day had come I could think back on the past and instead of feeling hurt and anger I simply smiled and felt gratitude for everything that had happened. I felt the catalyst of something truly powerful growing in me.

I had no idea who I was as an adult, without the safety of a partner....without the safety of my father.

It was time to find out.

And so the End had become the beginning.

What is Mahina Rising?

MAHINA // Tongan for Moon.

RISING //
nounnoun: rising; plural noun: risings1.
an armed protest against authority; a revolt.
"the Warsaw rising of 1944"
adjectiveadjective: rising1.
going up, increasing, or sloping upward.
"the rising temperature"
advancing to maturity or high standing.
"the rising generation of American writers"
approaching (a specified age).
"the rising fives on the verge of school"
ASTROLOGY(of a sign) ascendant.
2.
HERALDRY(of a bird) depicted with the wings open but not fully displayed, as if preparing for flight.

1. 

   
   
   My Name is Loureene,
   
   Mother, Sister, Friend, Lover.
   
   MOON//
   
   I have long held an affinity for the moon.
   It's presence Large, powerful and humbling.
   
   Beauty in its predictable ever changing appearance, waxing and waning, Rising and sinking.
   
   Her form always appearing female, like a belly pregnant with life and energy growing in light and power.
   
   I've always been in awe of her.
   
   RISING//
   
   Each of those descriptions above are fitting in a sense of what my writing will reflect.
   
   As the Moon has risen, so have I.
   
   Over the last few years I have been on quite a journey of self discovery.
   
   Not one to adhere to social norms for the sake of keeping up appearances I sought to explore myself Physically, mentally, spiritually and sexually and on my path to self discovery found my place as an individual and a member of society.
   
   At the center of this I have learned to embrace my femininity as I experience it.
   
   I have found deep spiritual connection between my Physical, Mental and spiritual aspects through embracing all of who I am.
   
    My light, my dark, my happiness, my pain, the joy, my fears and my love and through it I have become significantly more aware of who I am, where I am, what I am.............I am Woman. I am Mahina. I am maddona, I am the whore, I am a Priestess and I am Divine.
   
   
   My blog is a thought catalog of many things, among a main theme of exploring and expressing life experiences of death, pain, grief, power, happiness and freedom  and how sexuality opened me up to healing.  I will also be taking a broader view on the  impacts of sexual energy on self, on society and on relationships and its power in suppression and growth.
   
   I hope you enjoy coming along on this journey with me and i hope you too find your own divinity.
   
   L.