Music is an incredibly important part of my healing, as it is for many of my brother and sister survivors.

In the summer of 2014 my dear friend Bryan Sirchio, a gifted musician working to make the world a better place, and I wrote a song to tell parts of my story. He persists in telling me that it’s “my” song, but I will forever think of it as “our” song.

The whole process surrounding the song – from dreaming of it, to writing it together in the heat at Pilgrim Center, to recording it, to performing it, and sharing it – has been part of the tipping point, moving The Revolution forward.

I struggle with embracing my singing voice, having been told that I don’t sing well. But perhaps that’s the point of the song. It’s title is “I Need You To Hear”. I don’t like to admit that, but it’s true. I need to be heard, to tell my story in my own voice, with my own words, no matter how clumsy they might be at times, no matter how far out of tune I am.

I think that’s true for many (I might even dare to say most) survivors – we need you to listen, to hear, to speak, to know that you aren’t going to run away when it gets tough, when the words make you uncomfortable, when you would rather look the other way and pretend that rape simply doesn’t exist.

The video here is of Bryan and I singing together after I gave the keynote speech at Ten Points of Light to Take Back The Night at Moraine Park Technical College in Fond du Lac, WI in April of this year.

Please also check out Bryan’s work at http://sirchio.com/and his incredible work with the people of Haiti at http://www.haitiallies.org/