"I might have defied ruin, but my young life changed dramatically that day."

[Content Note: Sexual assault.]

Swimmer Diana Nyad has penned an extraordinary piece for the New York Times about surviving sexual abuse by a coach when she was a girl: "My Life After Sexual Assault." It will almost certainly be a familiar story to many women and girls, terribly so. It was familiar to me.

And it prompted this thought:


For millions of us, it never really goes away. I am grateful to Nyad for saying that. And I am angry at a world that doesn't let us say with frankness that what we've survived is something that makes life harder, and changes us for the rest of our lives.

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