Dr. Japji Anna Bas

Transcript

My daddy's a fireman. My friends on the tire swing looked back and forth at each other. Is not. Is too. Is not. Is to. Uh-uh. Last week you said he was an ambulance driver. And before that you said something else. So what is it? I couldn't answer. I didn't know. And I can't remember what happened next. But I know something worked cuz he agreed to meet me. Me, my daddy. I had a dad and he loved me. Just not the way grown-ups are supposed to love little girls.

Not the way parents are supposed to love their four-year-olds. I was seven when my mom called the Children's Aid Society. Daddy went to jail. Through all the police and lawyers and news, I just couldn't wait for it to be over, to finally be a normal kid, to belong. But when it was all over, none of it was over. Except this time, we both knew nothing could stop it. Not the police, not the courts, not the Children's Aid Society. I was alone in the hands of a pedophile again because the systems meant to protect bent to his will rather than my need for safety.

So, I sat tight. From grade four to grade eight, I pretended to be safer than I was. I thought maybe if I could just get the story right, I could finally be a normal kid. But reality didn't bend to my picket fence fantasies and the abuse got worse and worse till suicide felt like the only way to make it stop. And then I heard a celebrity talking about how they had survived. They broke the silence. They shared their story. And for the first time, I got the idea that maybe I could grow up.

Maybe I could have a life. And I I chose it. I chose life. I told my mom. But a week later, lurking in the stairwell of my gym team practice, he cornered me, demanding, "How could you betray me?" And I froze for longer than seems humanly possible until I mustered every ounce of courage I could and tried to run. But he was bigger, stronger, faster. He hopped the banister and pinned me against it. and passers by just averted their eyes. I could hardly breathe.

Still, every cell in my body shook like a rocket about to launch. And I realized something. He loved an audience, but he hated witnesses. So, I waited and I waited until the stairwell filled with people. And I took my chance. I tried to de out underneath one of his arms and when he grabbed me, one man stopped. Hey buddy, isn't there a better way to handle this? And then a few women stopped. Daddy had an audience. So he turned to soothe the adults and I flew up the stairs.

He was caught in his obsession with managing the narrative and I escaped. That day, I wasn't just up against my father. I was up against all the systems that had failed me. To escape, I had to be stronger than the architecture of power that protects abusers. I was barely 13. See, the system teaches us to turn away from pain, to suffer in silence. But what we ignore doesn't disappear. It fers erupting in our bodies, our relationships, and the harms we normalize.

Healing doesn't come from delivering the painful truth in a perfect package. It comes from letting it breathe, airing it out long enough to be met in it and to integrate the lessons. That's the alchemy. Pain does not make us stronger. But when we face it, process it, and realize you don't have to carry it alone, it becomes compost, nourishing, integrating all the lessons your life has to teach. You become the version of yourself you needed, the version the world needs today.

Far from festering, when we process our pain, it becomes a portal to superpower.

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.