Warriors

To all my Exited Sisters and Brothers.

 

To be a survivor of prostitution is to hold tight a warrior spirit.

We have known war, known despair, known hope draining from us – known what it is to forget how to be human.

But beyond reason, we fought to to live, fought to have a better future, fought to say our truths to erase prostitution from all societies.

We were and are warriors.

Warriors do not seek danger, but as it crawls into every corner of their existence, they stand firm and reach into the depths of their souls for courage and determination.

Warriors have Hell forced into every cell of their bodies and minds – and they remember how and why it is happening, to tell to the world and bring about real change and justice.

See what it is to have the warrior spirit.

It is not carrying guns, it is not burning cities to the ground.

It is not blaming or killing bystanders or the ignorant – it is targeting those guilty of being violent, profiteering or justifying the stripping of all human rights of the prostituted.

To be a warrior is to still enough to let the past in to build a better future, while enjoying being alive in the present.

Warriors are deeply wounded in their bodies, minds and souls.

Our wounds are invisible, our wounds are inside our sexual organs, our wounds hide in deadness.

We are scarred, we have known how men can torture till you lose the will to live, we have wounds that may never mend only become shadows as we strive to go forward.

To be a warrior, is to know and carry these wounds with pride and as a form of being a witness to the evil than men can do.

Warriors known and are not afraid of deep grief.

The grief of losing the person you were before prostitution, the grief of knowing the scale of the violence to the prostituted, the grief of understanding how organised and pre-planned that violence is.

Warriors come alive by grieving and expressing what words cannot say.

Warriors scream, draw, put to music, hit out and rage all that stolen from them, all the injustices they known, all the lost prostituted brothers and sisters we have known.

To be exited from prostitution, is to have seen and known too many missing or dead prostituted friends.

Every time our warriors speak out for justice and radical change – we hold our lost friends in our hearts.