After Great Pain: The Power of Words -- Lucy Coats

"After great pain," says Emily Dickinson, "a formal feeling comes...". It is a poem I go back and back to, to try and make sense of painful episodes in my own life. I have always felt emotional pain in a very visceral way, in my solar plexus, and the way I try to deal with it is, like Dickinson, to externalise it, to write it down, and get the pain onto paper. Mostly I do this by writing poetry. As anyone who follows my Instagram feed will know, sometimes I post these publicly -- especially if they are about my ongoing struggles with depression. I choose to do this because I know (from the messages and comments which come to me afterwards) that it helps others to feel that they are not alone.

Words, as all who read this blog know, are powerful things. They can wound and hurt when used carelessly -- but they can also provide succour and healing. Another thing that words can do is to bring a group of people, who would never otherwise know about each other, together. In the last week, we have seen many distressing revelations from Hollywood. Many women are coming forward with stories about sexual abuse and harassment in the acting profession, and talking openly about the hurt, fear and mental damage which are caused by a powerful person in the industry abusing that power. It has also had another effect. After an actress called Rose McGowan was (I and many others think unjustly and unnecessarily) suspended from Twitter for reasons which are linked to the story I have just mentioned, another actress decided to do something about it. (McGowan, incidentally, also tweeted the entirety of William Blake's 'A Poison Tree' -- which made me understand that poem in a whole other way). Alyssa Milano tweeted a hashtag with just two small words: #metoo and asked women to tweet it if they too had suffered sexual abuse or harassment ( it should be noted that the #metoo movement was originally started in 2006 by Tarana Burke, to spread awareness and understanding of sexual assault in underprivileged communities of colour).  What I have seen grow in the last few days under the umbrella of those two small words has been extraordinary. Women all over the world have brought forth a tsunami of stories, all linked by what we (and yes, I do include myself) have suffered in this way. Seeing friends, relatives, those I know well and not so well, complete strangers, share their stories in this way has been a powerful experience. It has made me weep. It has made me angry. It has made me realise yet again that far far too many of us have been subjected to stuff that is not now and never was acceptable, and also that even now, many of us will be too scared to speak out at all, because of the culture of shame and silence which has always been a part of the hidden story of abuse.

A few years ago, as some here may remember, I wrote about the first instance of my own abuse. It was probably the hardest thing I've ever written (that particular incident happened when I was 8), but getting the words onto paper and sharing them was, in its own way, a path to freedom from those memories that I'd suppressed and ignored for so long. Many women have suffered far worse than I did. But that doesn't matter. Whatever story you have, whatever abuse or harassment you have suffered, feels very very real at the time. The judgement of degrees, of thinking 'oh, my story is not worthy to be told because it's not bad enough' is not a thing anyone should be feeling. I have already described these stories as a tsunami, because that is how overwhelming it has felt to me. But maybe I should also describe them as a great tapestry, with every woman putting in a stitch for every instance of sexual abuse or harassment she has suffered (and yes, I know others suffer this too). Our stories matter, and it is only by sharing them on this kind of scale that the realisation of just how widespread this problem is can be measured, and I hope this time, finally addressed in a meaningful way, though there is a very very long way to go before that happens. It might, perhaps, begin, with a much larger two word tsunami of #IDid from men.

Words, as I said, are powerful tools -- even the small ones. #metoo, as Suzanne Moore puts it so eloquently, "is showing the ubiquity of sexual assault". And that is not a small thing at all.

OUT NOW: Cleo 2: Chosen and Cleo (UKYA historical fantasy about the teenage Cleopatra VII) '[a] sparkling thriller packed with historical intrigue, humour, loyalty and poison.' Amanda Craig, New Statesman

Also out:  Beasts of Olympus series "rippingly funny" Publishers Weekly US starred review

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Lucy is represented by Sophie Hicks at The Sophie Hicks Agency