Content warning: sexual violence

When #MeToo started, I found that I didn’t have much to say. While I was relieved to see at least a few powerful men and known abusers removed from their positions of power, I also knew how many more were out there, how so very many of us had been hurt, are continuing to be hurt.

As the campaign wore on, I found myself increasingly worn down. Day after day the news and social media were streams of horror; I couldn’t escape stories of sexual harassment and assault, of rape, of ruined careers and devastation and injustice and loss.

There are so many of us who’ve suffered, and yet #MeToo has already veered away from us; now there is the inevitable backlash and cries of “has it gone too far!?”; there are calls for “due process,” the world essentially shrieking at us, “but what about the men!?”

Due Process Is Needed For Sexual Harassment Accusations — But For Whom?

Some days it feels like those of us who’ve survived violations and violence of the most intimate kind are barely present in this movement at all.

But that changes today.

Back for its fourth year, #SurvivorLoveLetter, the brainchild of filmmaker and media justice activist Tani Ikeda, is here to flood the internet with love for survivors.

Per the #SurvivorLoveLetter Tumblr, the campaign is: “A call to survivors of sexual violence and our loved ones to publicly celebrate our lives. By telling our stories we seek to build knowledge and reflect on the ways we heal ourselves and our communities.”

“By telling our stories we seek to build knowledge and reflect on the ways we heal ourselves and our communities.”

“When we live in a culture of violence, one of the most radical things we can do is love ourselves,” Ikeda adds.

“That love is what will make it impossible to stop fighting for each other — to make it impossible to give up on ourselves.”

Four years ago, Ikeda had a breakthrough moment in her journal:

“A few days before Valentine’s Day — the anniversary of my rape — I thought about all the times I had wanted to end my life. But this time, I decided to write myself a love letter. This radical act of self-love was the start of a letter-writing project called Survivor Love Letter.

I wrote in my journal: ‘After surviving my rape, I spent 10 more years surviving chronic depression and a perpetual feeling that I had to continue to fight for my life. This is my survivor love letter. Don’t give up on your own happiness.’”

Then she decided to spread the campaign:

“I reached out to women of color activists such as Suey Park, Lisa Factora-Borchers, Patrisse Cullors as well as friends who were healing from abuse and in doing so, envisioning a world free of violence. Valentine’s Day kicked off #SurvivorLoveLetter, and we flooded the internet with love for survivors on Twitter and Tumblr.”

To participate this year, write a declaration of self love or honor a survivor in your life using the hashtag #‎SurvivorLoveLetter‬.

“Survivor Love Letter is a declaration of self-love and a call to allies to honor the survivors in our lives. I imagined what it would have meant for my younger self to wake up on Valentine’s Day and read message after message of public support for surviving,” Ikeda said.

Today, instead of the triggering torrent of trauma and abuse online, we push back and make space to love ourselves and our survivor siblings. Today we stand together, and reacquaint ourselves with our own strength and ability to hope.

Today, instead of the triggering torrent of trauma and abuse online, we push back and make space to love ourselves and our survivor siblings.

As Ikeda says, “Healing from abuse has taught me to believe in magic. How else would we be able to alchemize violence into a loving vision of hope?”

Healing doesn’t look the way I thought it would. I used to feel that my chronic pain was an example of how I had failed to get better. I am starting to embrace the more complex narrative of my healing. It’s not linear. It’s not graceful. Healing does not mean fixing who I have become.

Survivor Love Letter enables us to talk about what survivorship really looks like. Through this growing collection of love letters, maybe we can build strategies for the ways we heal ourselves and our communities. I hope sharing our real stories makes other people feel that there is no one right way to heal.

Here at The Establishment, we spend a lot of time talking and writing and thinking and scream-crying about the elaborate ways in which homosapiens wrong one another. (In addition to the planet, non-human animals, and maybe even extraterrestrials—there’s a LOT of space-junk out there people.)

We thought that this Valentine’s Day, we should talk about love, but Establishment-style, because the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy doesn’t take a day off.

So we partnered with the Creative Action Network — which “crowdsources campaigns around causes, inviting anyone and everyone to contribute their own designs” — to help us host an art project to talk about love in 2018…

…and turn one chosen design into our official Est. Love T-Shirt.

Out of 14 amazing submissions we chose the work of Artemis Xenakis, which you can buy below!

Here’s what Artemis had to say about her work, her life, and the beautiful aberration we call love.

“Our bodies are the vessel for how we experience the world, and the world has an ever growing fracture from the absence of love. Where love has recessed, systems of oppression take hold, diminishing humanity down to the bodies that carry us through this existence. Living under these measures, we are all at odds within our very selves, with our fellow people, and with our home planet. This is because Love needs a space to manifest, a vessel to carry its truth in the forms of empathy and true equality. Love needs to grow from the decay of hatred. Love needs to heal fear. Loves needs the full participation of people to be felt, given, and known. Love needs all bodies to be.”

We talked to Artemis to find out more about her brilliant design, her artistic process, and her thoughts on love and existentialism.

(Check out the other holy-shit, hell-yes submissions throughout this interview as well — all of which are on sale too!)

KATIE: Tell me a bit about yourself! Where did you grow up, when did you realize you wanted to create art and anything else wonderful or strange you’d like to include…

ARTEMIS:

It’s hard for me to trace back to a moment of realization with art because I can’t remember a time I didn’t draw on something, anything; a coloring book; a napkin; my bedroom door (the latter was much to my parents’ chagrin, yet they understood my drive).

My mom especially is very supportive of the Arts and Artists; she was an art docent for my classes all throughout elementary school, so I just grew up with a strong yet subconscious understanding of its importance in education and societal roles. I say subconscious because as an adult I see in retrospect how that form of expression influenced each of my interests and drives. Drawing was certainly art’s first manifestation in my creative pursuits, and it only ever spiraled from there.

Mythology was presented to me early on—in part because of my name and Greek heritage—but also because of my psychological response to these stories. When I wasn’t actively pursuing a creative work I was taking in myth and symbol from all corners of storytelling and filtering them through my passive thoughts and feelings.

And in the nature of peculiar things children do when left to their own devices, I would make art in ritualistic ways that I understood later in my early adulthood to be akin to Witchcraft practices. For instance, I loved to climb trees and carve made-up symbols in the branches that were meant for only the tree and me to understand; I would write poems that were meant to conduct any negative feelings I had and then I would take my frustration out on tearing up the paper and throwing it away. Communing with nature, directing your energy in sigil writing, banning negativity and enacting for what you want, all take creative thought and process.

KATIE: How did you develop the idea for your submission? Where did you find the heart and body and rose to collage together?

ARTEMIS:

I’m an amputee, and I’ve been trying to craft a dialogue about disability in my art for a few years now. It’s a subject that’s still otherwise in progress because I feel like it deserves an exchange of voices outside of my perspective of disability, too. This image used for “Love Needs…” is one of the first I created pertaining to the concept of just addressing what being disabled is, sans able-bodied expectations. I’ve participated in live figure drawing both as an artist and a model, and I was surprised to experience the latter with the response of people expressing that they saw me as beautiful despite being disabled.

I was so distraught over the idea that there must be a lack of self ownership over all parts of me to function; as if I adorn my aesthetic in spite of one thing that’s perceived to be unlike the rest of me.

I knew it was time to take control of this misconception and demonstrate my self-love and autonomy. It came from having to live in a culture that wants me to live in spite of myself, and learning through my process of resistance to this that there’s a multitude of reasons other people are expected to do the same.

Buy Some Swag And Help Build A New Establishment!

Ultimately, it expanded my empathy for understanding all kinds of systemic oppression. So this image roots in disability, but for this particular project I wanted to express the sentiment that we intersect at our bodies, especially for those of us that are minorities to the default and who have a common goal of having to declare our truth and demonstrate our importance. By embodying empathy for one another we can create a larger voice in response to what is considered normalcy.

For the image itself, I used illustration combined with photography that I took during my personal nature walks while living in San Diego. I love the synchronicity of nature’s cycles, and observing the intricacies of how these processes express themselves in color and form. I love getting up close to plants and using micro-focus to display them as greatly as the role they play in our Earth.

These walks I took by myself were the beginning practices of learning to enjoy my own company and make time for myself. This rose and these leaves in particular, I remember from a whimsical stroll through San Diego’s Rose Gardens. Nothing extraordinary happened during that walk, but when looking at those photos I remember it as if it were yesterday. And those leaves are naturally those colors; that vibrant red and green kissing is nature’s complimentary contrast, not mine. I just played with their tone.

As my most formal discipline is Graphic Design, I was able to combine all these elements together digitally. I feel like Graphic Design is the “Math” of the Arts, and I definitely apply a calculated approach when trying to balance the organic forms and enigmatic symbols I love, with the articulation that proper expression calls for.

KATIE: What is the role of art in actualizing social change? Do you believe that the Artist needs to play a role in undermining systems of power?

ARTEMIS

Art definitely serves as a conduit among major movements, I think largely in part because artists are usually individuals oppressed by these systems of power. Rather than focus on the trope of the “tortured creative,” I think we need to begin considering the ways our society (at least in America) diminishes the arts as a viable skill and career that sustain both the artists and the cultures we contribute to.

Authentic art can’t function under capitalism, censorship, or other forms of oppression and exploitation without becoming propaganda, and I believe authentic artists are among the first to call that out. And I do mean “Artists” as more broad of a term than I think we’re used to attributing to it; I think the upswing in progressive activism we’re seeing is a perfect example of demonstration as art.

KATIE: How do you describe your work as an artist? What mediums or themes are you drawn to?

ARTEMIS:

Drawing is more like a sense to me that I rely on for executing spatial intelligence, and the mediums I use are the moods I shift them in. I love graphite when I’m being open to interpretation; it’s something I use when I’m open to letting a piece stand alone without needing a background or any sort of detail framing it.

I love ink when I’m feeling precise and have an organized subject in my mind; even my pieces where I get messy with ink are more illustrative and balanced than most of my graphite drawings. I do very amateur photography, but I developed an inclination to use this medium when I feel like any way I attempt to hand-render a subject wouldn’t do its beauty complete justice.

I can’t draw roses worth a damn, but look how richly nature produces these all on her own. I find inspiration in the storytelling of female archetypes in ancient mythology, the lens into the old ways our fore-mothers across the world have contributed to society that often gets overlooked.

Most of my subjects involve deconstructing the traditional forms and adorning them in natural elements that have been attributed as feminine symbols. These elements also reflect the same impermanence found in all forms; the phases of the moon; the crystallization and disintegration of earth.

KATIE: What role does Love play in your life? How does it manifest?

ARTEMIS:

I’m fortunate that I have a lot of love in my life now, and have come from a supportive family. But it took a lot of discipline for me to manifest the romantic love that I have now.

I experienced a string of abusive, tumultuous, and otherwise toxic relationships from my teens to young adulthood, so I decided to take a break from commitment in my early twenties. At the same time I began cutting ties with friends that I felt were mirroring the same behavior as my exes — or, in some cases, remaining complicit to the toxic cycles those people were conducting as I was actively trying to remove myself from all that. My views on relationships were pretty jaded coming out of that initially.

But it forced me to examine how my giving qualities were being displaced to people that didn’t deserve that much of me, and give it back to my craft so that my art could benefit from my need to nurture. In doing that, I learned to give love and strength to parts of myself that I previously mistook as weaknesses. It was another process of reclaiming parts of me that got swept up in external energies.

Once I was able to give that much to my creative drive, it became a force that worked its way into every facet of my life once more. I met the love of my life in art school; we were friends for years before we began dating, and that trek to our current relationship helped serve as additional lessons I needed in understanding unconditional love.

By embodying empathy for one another we can create a larger voice in response to what is considered normalcy.

There were time-appropriate barriers that stalled the beginnings of our relationship, and I reached a point where I knew I was going to be an awful friend to him and others if I kept harboring unhealthy feelings about my attraction to him. I had to deconstruct those feelings that stemmed from ego and fear, and embrace the idea that in order to give love to someone from a genuine place, I had to let go of any expectations for how love should be received.

I learned that to love someone with pure intent is to accept them in every moment as it comes, and that I was fortunate to even have a friendship with someone as genuine as he is. I realized that if I was only able to love him platonically, I would focus all that excess desire for closeness into healthy boundaries for our friendship. I let go of all those ugly feelings, and about two months later our romantic relationship culminated.

Love only wants you to participate if you’re honest, and it’ll open up its channels when it can trust that you are.

KATIE: If you had an intergalactic megaphone and could tell the universe one thing, what would it be?

ARTEMIS:

Assuming that “intergalactic” is affirming reference to my future hope for sky-rocketing off the planet and finding respite in space, my announcement would be: “Message from the Cosmos: Nothing can see you from here!”

Hubris is humanity’s biggest downfall; we regard our human perspective as the pinnacle of existence. I appreciate Carl Sagan’s interpretation of the Universe’s timeline in his Cosmic Calendar method. It linearly maps out the Big Bang to show how minuscule human history actually is among the grand scheme of events that made it possible for us to ever exist.

We’re literally blasting through space at a rate unable to be comprehended by our limited-dimension-perceiving minds; and here we are perpetually berating each other over whose indoctrinated-book is the best, who has the most currency, power, etc.

Humanity could benefit from a healthy dose of existentialism.

For every sentence read out in court, there’s a family serving time for a crime that they didn’t commit.

Giant tacky teddy bears are in every shop window, heart-shaped boxes are being sold in phenomenal numbers, rose petals are being scattered on beds, and candle-lit bubble baths are being run. If you walk up and down your street, you might even hear the sultry crooning of Marvin Gaye as “Let’s Get It On” is blasted from a bedroom window. Gas stations are about to become a hotspot for those who have fucked up and forgotten a gift again.

Which is to say: Valentine’s Day is upon us. But while you’re booking tables for romantic dinners and spending hours in the changing rooms of lingerie stores, there are millions for whom February 14 isn’t just uncelebrated, but impossible to celebrate.

As of February 3, 2017, there are about 85,000 people incarcerated in the UK. In the U.S., the country with the highest prison population in the world, more than 2.1 million people are behind bars. It is estimated that there around 9 million incarcerated people worldwide.

There are millions for whom February 14 isn’t just uncelebrated, but impossible to celebrate.
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For every sentence read out in court, there’s a family serving time for a crime that they didn’t commit. And as Valentine’s Day rolls around, it can be particularly difficult to handle the emotional stress of a partner behind bars.

“As with any holiday, visits get requested and snapped up super fast,” says Lauren, a prison officer from the UK. “That leads inmates who haven’t been lucky enough to get some time with their loved one to become even more agitated. Sometimes I think it’d be best to get rid of visits on days like Valentine’s Day altogether.”

That said, Lauren notes that there are often attempts to try to make the day special; in some prisons she’s worked in, officers have decorated the visiting hall for the holiday. But, she notes, “making a thing of it like that can highlight the loss for anyone who doesn’t have their loved one with them, so we try to keep it modest.”

As Valentine’s Day rolls around, it can be particularly difficult to handle the emotional stress of a partner behind bars.
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Those lucky enough to get visits on Valentine’s Day won’t get any special treatment, however. Lauren says the set-up remains the same, and while some officers — herself included — might allow a discretionary extra kiss at the end of the visit, Valentine’s Day is treated like any other visiting day, except perhaps for some paper hearts here and there.

As stuffed bears and candlelit baths mark another Valentine’s Day for those not incarcerated, it’s important to consider that not every couple has the opportunity to celebrate — and that not every love story fits the narrative the holiday exalts.

“The dynamic of the relationship shifts instantly,” says Hetty, 38, a job-seeking mother of three from the Midlands, England, whose husband has been in jail for four and a half years for his part in an organized crime unit found responsible for money laundering and attempted murder. “Everything changed the minute the police knocked on our door. After that moment, it was never the same again.

“I went from being a financially stable full-time mum with a committed partner, to a single mum living on state handouts with an inmate for a husband in literally three seconds — two sharp knocks on the door. That was all it took.”

For Hetty, the months following her husband’s arrest only unearthed deeper, more complicated emotions. Haunted by the idea that her husband had committed a violent crime without her knowing, she became fixated on remembering the quirks in his behavior in the time leading up to his arrest.

“I was thinking back to all the times I was chatting to him over dinner about holidays, school trips, a new washing machine — all these things that were so normal, when all that time he knew what he’d done.”

It’s estimated that there are around 9 million people worldwide behind bars.
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The thing about having a relationship with someone in jail, Hetty says, is that you are never given that time to talk it over.

“People always think that visits are going to be these joyous occasions where you jump into each other’s arms and tell each other how much you miss each other, but to be honest, by the time you’ve gotten there and been searched, you only have time to talk about the necessities — usually the trial or whether there’ll be a visit for Father’s Day, that kind of thing. There’s no room for romance anymore.

“We let Valentine’s Day pass us by — it doesn’t seem as important as the other special occasions that the kids are involved in. It’s kind of a selfish holiday for us.”

Keeping the romance alive with one half of a couple in prison is no easy feat. In the UK, conjugal visits are non-existent, despite calls from European Prison Observatory to “allow prisoners to maintain and develop relationships in as normal a manner as possible” and petitions from the public to change policy. In the U.S., conjugal visits are only allowed in four states — California, Connecticut, New York, and Washington — with New Mexico and Mississippi canceling their programs within the past three years due to budget cuts.

Securing a conjugal visit in the states where it is allowed is a victory in itself, with only medium to low security prisons opening it up it as an option. The regulations vary vastly from state to state, with some making it easier than others. But as a general rule, to qualify for a conjugal visit, inmates must have a clean record of good behavior and must not have been convicted of a sexual assault.

Other conditions fall onto the visitors themselves. Their relationship to the inmate, their background, and their criminal history will be closely scrutinized before any conjugal visitation order is granted.

Without the physical intimacy, couples must rely solely on verbal and written communication to maintain a romantic relationship.

“We’re really struggling to keep the spark in our relationship,” says Nina*, a 33-year-old mother of two from London. Her husband is serving seven years for fraud and has been in prison and away from the family for nearly two years.

“Telephone calls and letters are monitored, so we never have phone sex or anything like that. Even kissing in visits is hard for us — some couples need to be hosed down! We’re both very wary of Big Brother watching.”

‘We’re both very wary of Big Brother watching.’
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When I speak to Nina, she tells me that she was “just thinking about Valentine’s Day.” Her husband is currently serving his sentence in a category D prison — otherwise known as an open prison in the UK — and will be eligible for home visits once it’s been signed off on by a parole officer. The couple had hoped to have their first real date in over three years for Valentine’s Day, but Nina says their plans had been dashed when the open visits weren’t granted:

“We’d hoped to go out for a meal with the kids somewhere local to the prison. I tried to get a visiting order for Valentine’s Day or the weekend before, but because of the time of year, the visits get snapped up. I snoozed, so I lose. I’m not very good at sentimentality, so I find Valentine’s Day extra hard. I’m not good at writing love letters or sending pictures — he’s always complaining about it.

He sent me a card last year and I’m sure he’ll do the same again, but I’d rather wait until he’s out to celebrate. This situation is so surreal — I would never have thought I would be here. I don’t want any memories of this period in our relationship.”

Nina explained that once home visits are allowed, her husband will be able to come home for 12 hours at a time, offering them the first chance to have sex since he was incarcerated. When her husband went to jail, Nina was heavily pregnant, meaning they haven’t shared a bed in over three years.

“Most people choose to get a hotel room when the open visits begin,” she says. “I feel like it’ll make sex feel dirty, as we’ll essentially be paying by the hour. The local hoteliers must recognize the couples of prison visits, and it’ll just heighten my feelings of shame. I’d much rather wait to have sex in the comfort of my own home.”

Nina says that she’s never had a particularly high sex drive, which helps to take the edge of this period of enforced celibacy and to stay loyal to her husband, despite him not being around.

‘I’d much rather wait to have sex in the comfort of my own home.’
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Jendella, 27, from London, says that it’s weird how quickly you adapt to a sex-free relationship. “That doesn’t mean it’s easy,” she says, “it just means you get used to it.”

“Staying loyal would probably be a lot harder if I didn’t have a child. Being a mother takes up most of my time, and then having a husband in prison is like having another child — constantly sorting out their affairs, dealing with their solicitors, being the main point of contact for their friends and people who want to get in touch.

“It takes up so much emotional energy that having an affair sounds more exhausting than tempting.”

For Valentine’s Day this year, Jendella and her husband have agreed to let the day go by uncelebrated:

“Last year we sent cards and I did see him on the day, but it felt a bit forced given the circumstances.

It’s easier to allow days like Valentine’s, anniversaries, birthdays to pass than to try and makes them feel special because that can feel worse sometimes. I guess for others it might be a comfort, but for us it just highlights the absence.”

Since Jendella’s husband went to prison, she says that the emotional dynamic of their relationship has shifted. “You find yourself holding back from telling them what’s happening on the outside because you don’t want to worry them, and you know that they do the same regarding what’s happening on the inside. Most of the time you find yourself talking about what’s happening in other people’s lives, or reminiscing about memories that you share rather than talking about the present.”

“Sometimes he asks me if I miss him,” says Nina. “I do miss him, but I think it’s easier not to let the emotion come to the surface.” Nina explains the emotional toll of the situation on her and her family:

“I’m a volcano waiting to erupt. I think that anger holds me back — I’m fucking angry he put me and the kids in this situation. I feel like he gets all the support and as the family we’re left to fend for ourselves.

We have to face the daggers from people who know what he did. The questions about where the dad of my children is from strangers; the feeling of living as a single mother but having a partner who still wants control over your life; having to struggle financially whilst finding money to send them money.

I’m looking forward to when this is all over and we can celebrate Valentine’s Day like any other couple. Not stealing kisses in a cold visiting hall with other horny couples with guards and kids watching.

It’s a lot to cope with, having him inside. I wouldn’t wish this sentence on my worst enemy.”

There’s no reason your lack of a significant other should keep you from being out and about on the biggest date night of the year. In fact, this can be an ideal opportunity to offer the world some cringeworthy reminders of how completely miserable it is to be romantically untethered, totally sans love, purpose, or life direction.

So without further ado, here are the best locales and strategies to make strangers uncomfortable this Valentine’s Day — no matter your style or budget!

Your Favorite Seafood Restaurant

Your local surf and turf spot’s guaranteed to be teeming with lovers slurping down oysters because they read it will make them fuck like dolphins after dinner. Order the trout (or anything that comes with a full face), then pick it up and make it sing Adele songs to the dining room until the management kicks you out. Bonus: you’ll already be full from the complimentary breadsticks!

An Improv Show

As the old proverb goes, the couple that laughs together shags together, which makes an evening of improv an excellent date night — and a comedy club an excellent locale to sidle up to with your sorrow. When one of the performers inevitably calls out, “I need a suggestion!” you’ll have the opportunity to sob-scream: “Give up! The concept of romantic love and monogamy is just an archaic social construct designed to enslave us all!”

This is an ideal opportunity to offer the world some cringeworthy reminders of how completely miserable it is to be romantically untethered, totally sans love, purpose, or life direction.
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The Ice Skating Rink

One of the most adorable things about a day at the rink with your meet-cute is having them hold your hand because you’re pretending that you’ve never done this before. The best part about skating solo? Howling bloody murder every time you fall on your ass, while resting assured that you have no one to kiss it better later.

A Wine Tasting Event

What’s more romantic than getting white-girl wasted while mingling with upscale pairs out for a taste of the town? Flirt shamelessly with your sommelier then ugly cry in the bathroom after they politely turn down your invitation to make out in a stall during their 15-minute break.

Your Local Sex Shop

You’ll find plenty of twosomes (and a few threesomes) shopping for something special to christen that very night, and others who just dipped in to drunkenly wave around the biggest dildo they can find while giggling like maniacs. Thus your local porn hub is THE place to dramatically slide down the wall while wailing and hugging the dong that most reminds you of your ex.

Your local porn hub is THE place to dramatically slide down the wall while wailing and hugging the dong that most reminds you of your ex.
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A Strip Club

Buy a lapdance and spend your champagne room stint bawling to your dancer about how you’ll die alone with 25 cats. She’ll be glad you’re not a creepy dude who just jizzed his pants — and you can swap bikini-line exfoliation and self-defense tips!

The Bowling Alley

You’ll be surrounded by youthful pairs who are hoping to keep things casual. Every time someone gets a split, feel free to loudly whine: “HOPE THAT’S NOT A SIGN OF IMPENDING DOOM FOR YOUR RELATIONSHIP, HAHAH I’M JUST KIDDING, IT WAS A JOKE GUYS!”

A Park Bench

There’s a 100% chance someone will get proposed to within 20 feet of you. Feel free to lunge towards the soon-to-be-betrothed choke-sobbing as you film their happiness way too closely and announce “Oh my god this is SO going on Youtube!”

A Massage Parlor

Grab a V-Day Groupon then tell the massage parlor receptionist that your sweetheart bounced that very morning but you just couldn’t bring yourself to waste a bargain! Chances are, they’ll hook you up with an even bigger discount. Plus, the face hole in the massage table is literally the perfect outlet for your tears, and the soft lighting will keep your massage therapist from noticing how wet their shoes are getting. They’ll think you’re just reallllly orgasmic while you silently dry heave and weep over your neighbors’ synchronized love-sighs.

The face hole in the massage table is literally the perfect outlet for your tears, and the soft lighting will keep your massage therapist from noticing how wet their shoes are getting.
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A Hiking Trail

Once you get to the top, you can marvel aloud at the profound beauty of the sunset and the view — a whole new world of possibilities for future rejection and disappointment!

By Kelley Calkins

Content warning: sexual violence

One evening this time last year, I was sitting in my car parked on the street in front of my apartment, filling the night up with my sobs. Taken at face value, this night would not be dissimilar from a number of other nights I’d had — but these cries were different. They were the deep, heaving, cathartic kind, the rare variety released in response to really being seen, to being understood, to the implicit acceptance of even the darkest parts of the self not yet recognized or reckoned with.

A few minutes earlier, crouched over my iPhone in my Pontiac, I’d stumbled upon the #SurvivorLoveLetter hashtag.

I didn’t know, then, the impetus for the project or anything about its founder, or why it coincided with Valentine’s Day, or what its explicit goals were. I just knew, as I pored through the hashtag and read letter after letter, that I’d found true solidarity with fellow sexual assault survivors — and that it was loosening and unmooring some of the pain and self-loathing that had kept me anchored in the depths.

I’d learn that the project was premised on a simple request: “Write a declaration of self-love or honor a survivor in your life at #‎survivorloveletter‬.” This request, with its attendant responses, went viral; survivors of sexual violence and their supporters began writing and sharing letters addressed to themselves and others, many handwritten and decorated, all of them profound.

A year later, the originator of the Survivor Love Letter project — filmmaker and media justice activist Tani Ikeda — shared her reflections on the project with me over email, saying it “was incredibly powerful and painful and healing — it opened my heart by breaking it.”

The hashtag and its corresponding Tumblr began when Ikeda was reflecting on Valentine’s Day last February:

“A few days before Valentine’s Day — the anniversary of my rape — I thought about all the times I had wanted to end my life. But this time, I decided to write myself a love letter. This radical act of self-love was the start of a letter-writing project called Survivor Love Letter.

I wrote in my journal: ‘After surviving my rape, I spent 10 more years surviving chronic depression and a perpetual feeling that I had to continue to fight for my life. This is my survivor love letter. Don’t give up on your own happiness.’

I reached out to women of color activists such as Suey Park, Lisa Factora-Borchers, and Patrisse Cullors, as well as friends who were healing from abuse and in doing so, envisioning a world free of violence. Valentine’s Day kicked off #SurvivorLoveLetter, and we flooded the Internet with love for survivors on Twitter and Tumblr.”

The hashtag has been active ever since. And the letters continue to be posted on the #SurvivorLoveLetter Tumblr, which defines itself as: “A call to survivors of sexual violence and our loved ones to publicly celebrate our lives. By telling our stories we seek to build knowledge and reflect on the ways we heal ourselves and our communities.” The hashtag has even cropped up at the Sundance Film Festival in conjunction with the new documentary tackling sexual assault in the social media age, Audrie & Daisy.

On the one-year anniversary of the launch of the project, Ikeda is renewing the call for messages of radical self-love and support. Kicking off at 9 a.m. PST on Valentine’s Day, people are encouraged to saturate the Internet with messages of solidarity using the #SurvivorLoveLetter hashtag on Twitter and Instagram — and of course the Tumblr will continue to receive new letters as well.

My One Minute Rape Story

Last year, Ikeda wrote that:

“Healing doesn’t look the way I thought it would. I used to feel that my chronic pain was an example of how I had failed to get better. I am starting to embrace the more complex narrative of my healing. It’s not linear. It’s not graceful. Healing does not mean fixing who I have become.

Survivor Love Letter enables us to talk about what survivorship really looks like. Through this growing collection of love letters, maybe we can build strategies for the ways we heal ourselves and our communities. I hope sharing our real stories makes other people feel that there is no one right way to heal.”

As a possible testament to these words, Ikeda told me that she’s re-launching #SurvivorLoveLetter this year “from a different vantage point.” Reflecting on the letters she’s received, she noted that each had been written “with such profound honesty and deep love,” and that over the course of the year, the project had taught her “how to love myself even at my saddest, most hopeless moments. That small shift sent ripples of changes throughout my life. It was like a fog had cleared and I was able to imagine my future instead of just trying to survive another day.”

This year, as compared to last — when she was driven by “frustration, grief, and a need to speak out” — Ikeda contends that her own “personal urgency is gone.” This time, she’s resistant to speak of her own experiences, looking instead for the well of self-love to speak for itself and continue to grow and reach new people. “I am committed to holding space for survivors to make public declarations of self-love because I know that it is necessary,” she says. “It is necessary if we want our world to be different. It is necessary if we want to be free.”

When I asked Ikeda why she thought the project had gone viral, she told me that “sometimes we create the things we need the most,” adding: “I am so incredibly humbled that this project was able to support others in their healing journey, and I’m grateful to the amazing women of color who used their social media platforms to get this project out into the world.”

Survivors will never get the world we deserved, but we can sketch the contours of the best one we can imagine for ourselves going forward — #SurvivorLoveLetter provides the pen.