My friend Jennifer Storm is a woman in long-term recovery from addiction and a sexual assault survivor, advocate, and internationally recognized victims' rights expert. When she speaks and writes about the horrific things that happened to her when she was a child and young woman, she does so from a place of post-traumatic growth, which refers to the remarkable growth and change that people can experience following highly traumatic life events.
Jennifer's story is very much about finding hope in the aftermath of trauma and addiction. It's also about reclaiming or rewriting our stories.
As she wrote in her book Blackout Girl: Tracing My Scars from Addiction and Sexual Assault, "Neither your pain nor your offender gets to finish your story. You have the power to write your ending." Her reminder that we have agency in how we heal and what we do afterward is an inspiration for all of us who have been victims of violence and/or sexual assault.
Few of us avoid trauma in our lives; may we all experience growth in the aftermath.