The Sound of What Was Never Said.
- cgo129
- May 18
- 2 min read
Yesterday at the gym, I met a woman.
A Native woman from the village of Stebbins.
She told me she was raped by a Catholic priest when she was six years old.
And no one helped her.
No one noticed.
No one stopped it.
So she ran.
She left her home, her people, her language—her culture.
And for decades, she carried it alone.
It wasn’t until eight years ago that she even realized it was okay to talk about it.
That what happened to her wasn’t her fault.
That the shame didn’t belong to her.
She got into treatment.
She did EMDR.
She started walking back into her story—not as a victim, but as a survivor.
And she told me something that stopped me cold:
“I didn’t grow up in my culture. I don’t know my language. I barely know where I come from… because that was stolen from me the moment that happened.”
This is what trauma does.
It doesn’t just hurt—it steals.
It robs us of identity, safety, tradition, community, and voice.
And too often, the world only wants to talk about healing after we’ve sanitized the story.
But Feather & Fire wasn’t built for that.
It was built for women like her.
For women like us—who weren’t protected, weren’t heard, and weren’t allowed to feel the weight of what was done to us.
We tell these stories not to dwell—
but to reclaim.
To make it known: you are not alone.
Your silence was survival.
But your voice now?
That’s power.
And we need it.
Because truth is how we burn down what hurt us
—and build something stronger in its place.
If someone stole your voice, you still get it back.
And when you’re ready—
we’re here.
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