Red Pants: Stories We Wear and Stories We Tell

Moving Closer to Healing

*Content Warning: This week’s reflection includes discussion of sexual abuse. Take care of yourself in choosing to read or listen.

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Shortly into my first year of school I got my first pair of eyeglasses. Riding my bike head on into a utility pole prompted a visit to the optometrist, which culminated with a pair of violet red frames. I was late to class the morning I went to pick them up. I remember how everything looked so clear.

There was time for show and tell every day in my kindergarten class, but each student could only bring an item once a week. There was no schedule or sign up as we were expected to remember when we brought what. One week I accidentally went twice. I received a Little Professor calculator as a gift and couldn’t wait to show and tell my classmates all about it. It wasn’t until after my sharing that the teacher scolded me in front of everyone for forgetting that I had gone earlier in the week. I dreaded show and tell after that.

How many times do we get ready to show a piece of ourselves to others or tell a part of our story only to let fear, doubt, or insecurities keep us silent?

Last week in Intervals, I shared about giving a keynote speech in Grand Rapids. Driving in on that Sunday afternoon of the start of the conference, I found myself in the middle of ArtPrize, an annual international art competition with displays across the city.

One exhibit, featuring rows of red pants, caught my attention and intrigue while stopped at a red light. I told myself if I had time, I would come back to check it out up close.

The next afternoon during a break, I wandered back that way. Walking gently and curiously and almost reverently through the rows, I allowed each pair of red pants to touch me. They all held a powerful message and told a story. The stories were both comforting and painfully familiar. I was intentional to stop at every pair and absorb every word. I cried for the hands that wrote the stories and honored each life that lived them.

A volunteer shared more with me about the exhibit, a project of Healing in Arts, a non-profit that creates interactive art experiences “to foster community, inspire hope, and promote healing.” The Red Jeans Redemption exhibit featured 120 pair of red jeans holding stories of survivors of sexual abuse, rape, and sex trafficking.

It was never far from my awareness that here I was in town, preparing to share a piece of my story with a crowd of therapists, and that so many chapters of my story were reflected on those red pants.

I am careful with how and where I tell my story of sexual abuse. No longer because of shame or fear of judgement, but rather because it is so personal and intricate. Intricate in its complexity and inter-connectedness to so many aspects of who I am and how I exist in this world. My story also runs parallel to the stories of others and I never want to tell it in a way that harms them, even unintentionally so.

One pair of jeans brushed against me as the wind picked up. On the back left leg were these words, “you are not beyond repair.”

There was a time when I wrongly believed I was. That I needed to be and that I couldn’t be fixed. There were years when I thought that what was done to me ruined me. Keeping silent about my pain kept me trapped in that mind set. Stuck hopelessly with piles of blank pages and empty notebooks.

Zora Neale Hurston wrote, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”

If there is one thing that furthered my healing more than anything, it was realizing that shame thrives on silence. To heal from what happened I had to talk about what happened.

There are many ways to talk about the things that happen to us. There is no one way to tell our story. We may write it with black markers on red jeans, journal it, tell it to a therapist week after week, pen poems or reflections. We may compose songs or paints murals. Sew scarves or knit blankets. We might weave it into a keynote speech.

There is a unique artistry to the ways survivors of sexual abuse tell the story of our journey to healing, giving others the courage to do the same in their own distinct time, voice, and style. Speaking to the creative process, James Baldwin wrote,

“The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.”

Those red jeans remind me that telling our story heals our story and has the potential to bring healing to others, and to the world in which we exist. The current news cycle reminds us daily that violence is real. That powerful wealthy abusers find ways to avoid accountability and systems will defend them to maintain control. That justice is a long pursuit.

The color red, after the colors black and white, is the first that babies recognize. Its high visibility makes it a common color for warning signs and stop lights. Red is associated with strong emotions.

I look back and wonder why I chose red as the color of my first pair of eyeglasses. Was it simply that they caught my attention on the shelf? Or something deeper? Whatever the reason, those red glasses shifted and expanded my vision. And those red jeans, catching my eye on the drive in, have strengthened my resolve to continue healing and journeying with others on similar paths.

The next day of the conference as I walked to the podium to begin my keynote speech about the healing power of telling stories, I suddenly understood why I chose to wear a bright red suit instead of a gray one.

The stories we wear and the stories we tell move us all closer to healing.

Water-fully Yours,
Rebecca & 10CAMELS

Friday Field Trips are an extra serving of words and water for paid subscribers to Wednesdays at the Well. Our next Field Trip is Halloween, October 31st. Join us for a ghostly poetic adventure.