Take
Back the Night Address
by Suzanne Stutman
I presented this speech
to over 600 students at Rutgers University,
New Brunswick on April 17, 1998 and Penn
State University, University Park on April
22, 1998. I was invited by students at
both Universities to speak as part of
their Take Back the Night programs on
campus.
Take Back the Night
For the child I was, for
all of my fellow survivors, and most of
all, for the children, I remember.
After my uncle hurt me,
he would leave a quarter on the bureau.
And after he left I would hide it. And
the next day I would spend it. If I think
back really hard, I can remember the feel
of those quarters clutched so tightly
in my hand. I didn't know then that he
was making me a part of a conspiracy,
a secret, that I would pay dearly for
in pain and shame for so many years of
my life. I remember. Before I would fall
asleep, I would stare at the ghost of
the door. It was formed by the light coming
through from the hallway. If I watched
and tried not to blink or not close my
eyes, then it wouldn't move, or so I hoped.
Every night in that room
I lay, eyes wide open, watching, praying
that the ghost would not move. It wasn't
until so many years later that I came
to understand that I was waiting for the
door to open, frozen in fear and helplessness,
and praying that it would not and that
I would be safe for one more night.
I tried to tell, but no
one was listening. And I cried a lot,
but my tears seemed silent, not to make
a difference. So I stopped trying to tell,
and I really didn't have the words anyway
to say what was happening to me. I felt
invisible. And I fell silent, thinking
that what was happening was the way of
things, and that I was being punished
for being bad, and that I was indeed the
ugliest, the stupidest, the baddest person
in the whole world.
I believed that for some
reason what was happening was supposed
to happen. That I was supposed to hurt
like this. So I got up and changed the
sheets during the night, or put a towel
on my bed to cover the wet spots. And
I complained a lot of stomach aches and
didn't want to go to school. And I was
always afraid because I never knew when
it was going to happen. And I felt so
different from everybody else because
I had this terrible secret I had to keep,
and I was an ugly, bad and awful person.
But I would try to be better. I would
try to make people love me. But I was
so alone. And I didn't know how.
When I was a little girl
I had no voice. I was invisible. Nobody
listened. All that is changed now. And
I raise my voice on behalf of the children,
so that they don't have to suffer anymore.
I didn't really know what
it was that pained me, but I felt that
it was a natural and necessary part of
my inner self. I also felt that for some
reason I had to hide it, that it was for
some reason dangerous to show, even to
the people who loved me the most, how
much I was afraid, how little I really
liked myself, and most of all, my anger.
I cannot begin to explain
to you the fear. I would wake up with
it. I would go to sleep with it. It would
awaken me in the night. And that was the
worst time. Something was going to happen
and I didn't know what it was. I kept
closet doors closed, but not before I
looked into closets before I went to sleep.
I looked under the bed. I kept the light
on in the bathroom, because I understood
that darkness was my enemy. What I understood
deeply was that no one was really to be
trusted. That anything could change at
any moment. That I had to fight very hard
to be loved because I wasn't really worthy
of it, so I had to be really good, very
good, always good. And I could never really
let my guard down. From the earliest time
came the lesson. No one must ever know.
I became in my home and
in my teaching, and in fact in most every
situation, a defender. Knowing what it
was like to be invisible, I found myself
fighting for the rights of those who were
treated in any way lesser than. And because
I had experienced so little true kindness
in my early life, I understood always
the magnificance of the simplest act of
mercy. Kindness, gentleness seemed to
me the greatest balance in life. And I
must say, they still do. To give to those
who may not have visibility, who may not
have love, moments, space, the strength
of telling, these are the lessons I learned
from the silent world around me. These
are the lessons I learned from my deepest
self.
So in trying to heal myself,
I came to understand instinctively the
importance of caring. I became a mother,
then I became a teacher. From both I learned
to stop the world. To try to make it,
in my own private sphere, a clean, well-lighted
place. To do for others what was rarely
done for me.
I began to write my story
in poems and sketches and entitled my
book Broken Feather: A Journey to Healing.
I would write the pieces, or they would
write me, and each time I finished I would
understand more about myself, I would
hold in my hands another small piece of
the past. For so long I had been teaching
the voices of others. Now I was writing
my testimony, bringing my voice out of
the darkness. I came to understand that
there was no going back. I would have
to break the silence. Big time.
I have found in each encounter
with others who have been victimized,
men and women, the boys and girls in them
still locked in pain, that what happens
to we who are abused as children is often
much the same. I have heard tales of horror.
Tales of fear. Tales of rejection. Over
the past year and a half I have heard
so many stories. Indeed, everywhere I
go others share their stories, often in
secret. And I think always, why is it
we who are not believed? Why must these
horrors of abuse which can diminish a
soul for a lifetime not be shared? Why
cannot this secret be brought to light?
What is wrong with this society when the
victim is to blame and the abuser is free
to hurt again?
Which brings me to the
next step in my journey. In this short
time I have found a new advocacy. I advocate
for survivors, to let them know that they
are loved, that they are not alone. That
the healing journey is indeed possible.
That it is o.k. to tell. And the big lesson.
The one it takes so long to really believe.
That it is not their fault, what happened.
It is not our fault.
I have done fundraisers
for various child abuse prevention agencies,
nationally and internationally, and a
major portion of the proceeds of my book
goes to benefit these agencies. I am on
the Board of Friends of the Children,
a group of volunteers which works to help
fund The Center for Children's Support
in Stratford, M.J. Some of my new poems
have been on display at UNICEF House,
serving as my interpretation of the artworks
of abused children from the Center for
Children's Support. It is our hope to
turn this project into a book to benefit
the Center in the near future. I have
been working for the last year in an afterschool
pgogram for disadvantaged children, and
I go into area high schools to talk to
teen mothers, some who have histories
of abuse, to let them know that they are
not alone. I have come to understand that
I must use my power to try to build power
in others.
I have learned through
my own life to take back the night. And
I ask you, particularly you students,
you who are among the best and the brightest,
to do the same. Do not believe that one
person can't make a difference. If you
make a difference in one life, you have
stopped the world.
It is the aloneness of
abuse which is part of what is so terrible.
It isolates, it denegrates, it makes us
feel that we are bad, and ugly and useless--and
the list goes on. In fact, those of us
who have been so wounded have our own
kind of beauty. We understand pain and
invisibility and vulnurability and silence.
We have often the passion and the compassion
to take the pain away. This is our gift.
For we are like the phoenix risin from
the ashes. We must make the day bright
for those not as strong as we have become.
We must march, we must protest, we must
legislate, we must raise our voices into
the darkness so that no children be allowed
to fall, no victims surrender in silence
and shame. In so doing, we take back the
night.
Copyright © Suzanne Stutman
1998
Suzanne Stutman
Professor of English, American Studies
and Women's Studies, Penn State University
