The Nightingale
an extension of the Awakened Voices
We seek to provide a platform for even more writers to share their voices. In The Nightingale, we published fiction, non-fiction, essays, resources, and reviews. As always, Awakenings seeks to make visible artistic expression on the topic of sexual violence that is survivor-focused and works towards healing. Like the magazine, our blog is home to many genres from different voices and experiences.
Our recent contributors
Rest: An editorial with Megan Otto, Ania Garcia Llorente, Interview with Marieken Cochius, Krista Robey, Shantha Bunyan, Interview with Bianca Thompson, & Interview with Aodan
Rest
An editorial with Megan Otto Rest We'd like to share with our Awakenings community that The Nightingale is taking a hiatus. We're pausing this project, and we'll continue to focus on our visual exhibits and our ongoing literary magazine. As an editor, I'm deeply...
Architecture of Intimacy
What if we imagined what we usually call "healing" as "building" or "rebuilding?" Ania Garcia suggests and analyzes this shift in language by imagining survivors as architects. She highlights important concepts of inside and outside with regard to our minds, bodies,...
Interview with Marieken Cochius
Marieken Cochius is a prolific visual artist, deeply inspired by the natural world around her. A painter, sculptor, and photographer, Marieken is an expert in letting her inspiration lead her to whatever form of expression suits it best. Currents and Shadows #7 and #8...
Hawks and Sparrows
A familiar image: a bird circling in the sky. With a gentle metaphor, Krista Robey writes to describe survivors' ongoing pain. A bird circling overhead may never descend, but it still feels ominous, and this image functions to describe how a survivor can feel anxiety...
A Mohawk and a Heart
When we're brought to city of Amman, Jordan with Shantha Bunyan, we're briefly wrapped up in all the details, small and large, that make up moments of her daily life there. There's a clear sense of place, and as we learn about something as simple as the walk home from...
Interview with Bianca Thompson
Bianca Thompson is a longtime friend of Awakenings and has participated in many areas of our programming, from backstage in a more administrative sense to center stage as a performer. Bianca is an Associate Board Member and a member of our Art Committee. And as an...
Interview with Aodan
Aodan is a fantastic artist currently exhibiting with Awakenings in Bloom, and she is a deeply thoughtful creative. Within her sculptures collectively entitled Hurting Spring, Aodan brings layers of meaning to work made simultaneously delicate and fierce. Her series...
Interview with Sreyash Sarkar
Sreyash Sarkar is one of the artists displaying work in Awakenings’ current exhibit, Bloom. His piece, Roots, is a beautiful network of brush strokes and layering of colors representing the many facets of a survivor’s journey after experiencing abuse. As a...
The body of the others
Survivors and those who have experienced physical trauma can have a unique relationship with physical art. As an intern with Awakenings and an artist in her own right, Ania Garcia uses her perspective on intersecting art forms and narratives to offer in-depth analysis...
Lost and Found
In a brilliant bouquet of images, Katherine Page interprets the experience of feeling separate from one's own body after sexual trauma. Page beautifully reimagines what constitutes one's physical being and one's sense of self. Amongst the shifting ways one sees one's...
Love WITH Accountability: A Conversation with Aishah Shahidah Simmons
When survivors can turn to loved ones with the truth of what they experienced and be met with love and trust, they can then work together to foster accountability and ensure the problem is never repeated. Everyone involved has an opportunity to heal. Love WITH...
Language, Education, and Trauma: A Bloom Editorial
An editorial with Megan Otto Language, Education, and Trauma: a Bloom Editorial Our understanding of sex and sexuality is muddled when we don’t have the tools that we need to talk about our experiences. In our society, the conversation about sexuality after trauma...
Why Didn’t I Tell?
Shelley Wolf Harris shares some of the details of her experience with rape many years ago, while other memories surrounding this event remain missing—yet that does not make her pain any less real. By placing herself in the context of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, Harris...
The Goldfish
Our earliest discoveries of violence often hold a unique gravity in our memories. In this burst of awareness, Shneiderman comes face to face with the vast potential of a man's abuse of power over herself as a young girl. With rich details and characterization of her...
Persephone’s Daughters are Survivors
As a digital literary magazine with a focus on art by and for survivors of sexual violence, Persephone’s Daughters is like a cousin to Awakened Voices and The Nightingale. Meggie Royer, an author recently published on The Nightingale with her prose piece “Afterwards,...
Broken Memories
The strength and earnestness with which Martinez describes her incomplete memories serve to prove that strong feelings are just as powerful as concrete details. Feelings are true, they leave lasting effects on one's life, and this alone makes them important. Yet many...
Afterwards, I.
In an ongoing emotional waterfall, Meggie Royer responds to sexual violence with a stream of consciousness. She drops us into the days after surviving intimate partner sexual violence and introduces us to the endless and overwhelming list of small things that need to...
Solar Power
Rebecca Nestor pulls us gently through dreams and reality, childhood and adulthood. As she comes to terms with a momentous move away from where she grew up and where she suffered abuse as a child, childhood sexual violence evolves into adult healing and strength. With...
Why I Didn’t Report
Harty asks the same question again and again, with a new answer each time. Why I didn't report? "There are too many reasons." Through writing that is open, gentle, and direct, Harty examines years of his own silence after experiencing childhood sexual abuse. Yet, by...
Other Me’s Request
Trauma has left us between times and worlds. In a response to our May prompt, “Other Me’s Request” experiments with time as we follow “Me” and “Other me” through an experience of childhood sexual violence. The two versions of our protagonist represent the common...
No Seconds
A chance encounter leads to a reckoning with the past in “No Seconds” by RW Anton. When someone from years ago happens upon the main character in a hotel lobby, our protagonist is presented with a choice to either allow or deny past pain to reenter their life. Through...
West Wants Us to Join the Witch Hunt
As a wonderful Awakenings intern and an astute writer and journalist, Emma Dempsey now contributes a review of Lindy West’s newest essay collection to The Nightingale. Accessible and engaging, Dempsey lends some of the fun that West uses in her essays to her own...
What’s Happening?
A lack of consent is a betrayal of trust--especially from supposed friends--and it can alter not only one's relationship with those people, but one's whole self and life. An event like this leads to irreversible change, but writing about it in a way that acknowledges...
Review: The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls
An intern at Awakenings and an excellent part of the Awakened Voices editorial team, Gillian Marwood now offers their voice to The Nightingale. In a review of The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy, Gillian writes with the same care, nuance, and...
Saturday Stress
In a piece for the current moment, Dominic Bucca reflects on his self-isolation experience and extends his thoughts and attention to those who may be experiencing COVID-19 while quarantined with an abuser. With great gentleness and consideration for his audience,...
Kintsugi; precious scars
What does it mean to feel broken, and how is it possible to rebuild? After sexual violence made her family feel broken, Dreen Lucky examines that brokenness with gentleness and an element of forgiveness towards herself. By incorporating kintsugi, the Japanese art of...
Breaking; Not Yet Broken
There is a difference between breaking and brokenness, between a splinter of pain and falling to pieces. Susanna Penfield explores the nuances of hurt in her life after sexual violence, acknowledging her splinters but still resolute in her sense of self. While we can...
Prompting
It’s normal to feel isolated right now, or scared, or worried, or unsure of what’s going to happen next, or whatever it is that you’re feeling. Chances are, one of us is feeling it too. We’re all navigating unprecedented times, and we’re doing our best to work through...
Letter from Executive Director Laura Kinter
We wanted to give our community a different kind of update. Not another announcement of closure and cancellation. Not another “stay healthy!” If you’re like me, my inbox, phone, and mind have been flooded with the bleak reality that this time of illness and isolation...
Intentions
Reverend Dr. Barbara Edemea returns to The Nightingale with a series of positive intentions celebrating belief in one another, oneself, and our community of survivors. These intentions are at once universal and specific--with a "he" and a "she" in this piece, we have...
Gashouse Eggs
In a response to our February prompt, a family breakfast tradition explores the tension within silence and an untold truth. Marema explores the contrast between the precise, familiar ease of making eggs for breakfast with the complicated unknowable experience of...
Bearing Myself
While it's a difficult story to tell, Zeller courageously conveys her experience and highlights the problems within rape culture that normalize sexual violence on college campuses. With careful description that carries the audience through Zeller's thoughts in each...
New Recipe: Healthy Relationship
In this response to our February prompt, a recipe for healing takes us through the process of leaving an abusive relationship and entering a healthy one, step by step. Hagman is excellently balanced between the general and the specific, knowing that the steps laid out...
I am a Survivor: An Anniversary in the Making
In this response to our December and January prompt, Ellen Sauter discusses the strengthening anniversary of her survival. The piece opens in the midst of violence, but Sauter also shares the questions that came after. Over a process of coming to terms with trauma and...
The Wife of a Bottom Feeder
In this piece by Laura Bristow, we view a fishing trip as an allegory for an experience with sexual violence. With deft language, clever metaphor, and easy lyricism, she cuts into a relationship and reveals years of abuse the same way one would cut open a fish. It...
Thank you, Chicago
Katherine Page revisits The Nightingale with a lovely portrait of a healing through traveling. She writes of finding strength as a survivor when she returns to Chicago, a city full of both positive and negative memories. She's able to meet these memories, good and bad...
The Nightingale Anniversary
The Nightingale Anniversary December 2019 We are 1 year old! We’re celebrating the one-year anniversary of The Nightingale! When we created The Nightingale, we wanted to cultivate a space that would publish survivor work every month of the year, with frequency that...
Interview with Bobbie Groth
Interview with Bobbie Groth by Nightingale Editor Megan Otto Bobbie Groth is an author, historian, and survivor of sexual violence. She is an accomplished interdisciplinary artist, having worked in both visual and literary mediums, and she has become a familiar...
Bodily Authority
One trauma folds into another as Meredith Lindgreen explores loss after a miscarriage and an experience with sexual violence. She meditates on a lack of authority or autonomy within her body, and she explores the un-reality that comes from grief in all its different...
Aladdin
Ami J. Sanghvi knows how deep and true the love of our animals can be, and how it helps us understand our own inherent worthiness of love. With earnest adoration, she writes of the lasting healing effects that come of loving and being loved well. In response to our...
Rewrite
In response to our October prompt, Katherine Page returns to a piece of writing that is distinctly connected to her past experience with sexual violence-a journal entry. By focusing on changing just a few words from the entry, she is able to reach back across time to...
Miss Ott and the Breaking Girl
C. Christine Fair answers our October prompt by expanding upon her poem "When Uncle Art Babysat for Mom", published in our most recent issue of Awakened Voices. While the original poem discusses the perpetrating figure of Uncle Art in just a few lines, Fair's choice...
Shadows of Darkness
"Shadows of Darkness" highlights the un-realities of experiencing an assault, especially when the violence comes from a close relation. With eyes closed, Charity Marie's escape in darkness feels like it shouldn't be more than a dream -- which proves the difficulty of...
The Girl in the Mirror
Danielle Hark responds to our September prompt with a piece about reclaming vital pieces of herself – her body, her skin, and her reflection. She feels distance from her own body, but by challenging herself to feel compassion for her reflection, she acknowledges the...
Reclaiming the Eastland
The theme of reclaiming is examined with a wider lens in this piece by Jean Cozier, the founder of Awakenings. She writes about the Eastland tragedy that occured in Chicago -- specifically, the near-forgotten women on the ship and the ways they suffered due to the...
Dead Canaries: The Bruises on our Wrists
J. Askew's poetic piece on recovery imagines her yellow bruises as canaries, and magical realism provides a pathway to love of a body that has been through trauma. When these bruises transform into birds -- separate living beings to be loved, cherished, and cared for...
Truth Found Me in the Trauma
Nothing can change the truth, and this is a beautiful source of solace for Mary-Elizabeth Meagher. Other survivors' stories about sexual violence helped Meagher come to terms with her own trauma, and as she relates this experience to her audience, she uncovers a...
Treatment or Trauma? I Wasn’t Sure. But Now I Am.
"Harrassment and assault can happen anywhere." This reminder in Mary-Elizabeth Meagher's piece is accompanied by powerful self-reflection. Healing isn't easy, and Meagher takes us through the long, winding thought process of recovery with authenticity and grace. She...
Let Me Tell You About Hazel
"Let Me Tell You About Hazel" holds a meta-narrative, a story inside a story -- we meet J. Askew and we also meet Hazel, their fictional character. By telling us about Hazel, Askew shares how writing Hazel's story has helped them live in their own story. The...
Beastman
With a compelling voice in a powerful story of experience with pedophilia, Jackie Bluu surges forward with a righteous desire for her trauma to be recognized and known. The piece doesn't hide or sugar-coat; Bluu offers a clear view of her years enduring violence and...
Reclamation
Rev. Dr. Barbara Edema reframes the concept of gaining back what was "lost" in trauma in a way that allows for new gentleness and self-compassion. The piece touches on the valid difficulties of reclamation as a survivor, and also the true inherent ownership of any...
A Drowning at Dog River
Kim Conrey examines sexual violence in the context of the social systems we're raised in that so often perpetuate it. Conrey bravely shares her story of experiencing assault and also retrospectively acknowledges the beliefs her female peers had been taught that keep...
Six Ways to Set A Bad Example
These vignettes by Carly Noble illustrate the ways in which the world around young women, including the people in their lives who should be protecting them, can let them down. Each of the six examples in this piece represent common, recognizable perpetuations of rape...
Stressure
A contribution to our July prompt, Rev. Dr. Barbara's word "stressure" comes from others telling a survivor how to heal, thinking they know best. Sometimes recognizing and fighting "stressure" means defending oneself against people who try to "help" in misguided,...
In November
Karissa skillfully writes about the experience of living as a silent survivor and, when she felt ready, breaking that silence. With "In November," she illustrates the process of enduring violence while not feeling able to speak out about the complicated nature of...
Vulification
In this response to our July prompt, D.A. Simants creates a new word to describe a perpetrator's act of weakening and causing harm. Although the word shares a root with "vulnerable," Simants skillfully adjusts the perspective of this meaning of weakness and pain to...
Bad Dreams
This letter by Addison Post, a response to our June prompt, opens in a version of reality that's difficult to interpret -- a dream. Post, in their letter to their assaulter, acknowledges the difficulty of coming to terms with violence when its source is someone...
Sexual Predation Recovery
A follow-up to The Nightingale post two weeks ago, Silver Damsen shares her research and resources on where else this frequently silenced or dismissed idea of 13th stepping has begun to break the silence. We share this with you as a means to continue to say "you are...
When the Voiceless Whisper
Sometimes the places where we hope to find the most safety turn out to offer safety and recovery in some areas but not in others. Even organizations that have a reputation for being very helpful and healing can be places where harm occurs. Silver Damsen bravely speaks...
When The Fairy Tale Ends
Dr. Reverend Barbara Edema revisits The Nightingale with a piece that adds to our prompt to retell fairy tales and myths. She compassionately acknowledges the difficult reality of survivor's experiences in comparison to the uncomplicated fairy tales we're used to....
The Girl With The Wooden Helmet
As our first contribution to The Nightingale's monthly prompts, this piece is a wise retelling of "The Girl With the Wooden Helmet," originally of Japanese origin and based on the English version by Andrew Lang. Windwalker, in her new version, looks more closely at...
Review: Broadchurch Season 3 – Finally a TV season I can stand behind
This week we bring you a review of the TV Show Broadchurch by one of our editors and current literary interns, Alana Zucca. We hope you enjoy her review of how the show handles sexual assault. Do you agree with her? Let us know in the comments or submit your own...
Reflections on April: Awareness and Poetry
The Nightingale Editor and Awakened Voices Associate Editor Megan Otto shares reflections on April.Reflections on April: Awareness and poetry by Megan Otto April is commonly known as Sexual Assault Awareness Month, but it also happens to be National Poetry Month....
My Voice
Dr. Reverend Barbara Edema has been a frequent contributor to Awakenings publications, and we're pleased to share more of her encouraging, affirming message. In this piece, Barbara speaks to the ways in which survivors can often find it difficult to share their voices...
Kills 99.9% of Germs
Jorie Rao delves skillfully into the aftermath of an assault. The piece explores the tiny sensory details that form whole memories and how those memories can grow into large parts of ourselves. Here, the smell of soap in a bathroom takes Rao's readers through a...
The Secret Power of Philomela’s Transformation
The Nightingale returns to the story of Philomela, a woman of myth who was able to find healing through art. Jane Beal offers a skillful telling of the Greek myth, and her analysis provides a modern path of access for these issues that survivors still deal with,...
Held
Take a journey through Kimberly Cunningham's poetic piece as she shares her arc and offers help and healing to others. Cunningham uses rhythm in the piece to carry readers through her journey from abuse to survival. She offers her discovery of her own power and a...
This is a Normal Bus Ride
This skillful piece by Allison Linne highlights not only the experience of sexual violence, but also all the complicated emotions that come after. Linne tells the all-too-common story of feeling isolated as a survivor in a world that overlooks this experience. Small...
Out of the Night that Covers Me
Bobbie Groth is a familiar voice to Awakenings. Her funny and touching memoir, Gifts From Her Table, is currently being serialized with Awakened Voices. She also has visual art work in our gallery as a part of the current Our Bodies Remember exhibit. Now, Bobbie...
Vehemently Speaking
How do we participate in society and listen to testimonies when that might bring our own past comes to the surface? Avey guides us through this type of experience in this stream of conscious narrative about watching the testimonies on Sepember 28, 2018, and how...
We Need to Break Through the Silence on Abuses of Institutionalized Children
In her essay, Rachel Litchman highlights groups of survivors who don't often get the spotlight. She focuses on institutionalized children, both from a personal perspective and from an objective standpoint, and she reveals the prevalence of sexual violence for this...
The Word Rape is Made of Tar
In this examination of the the word "rape," Nilsa Rivera encourages her readers to think deeply about how the intricacies of language can affect us. By analyzing each sound and letter to break down her associations with the word, Rivera helps readers understand how...
I am a Pastor and this is my Sexual Assault Story
Reverend Dr. Barbara Edema returns to The Nightingale with a powerful story of healing. Earnest and honest, this piece takes us through her own story. Even after experiencing sexual violence within the church, Edema proves in her short memoir that it's possible to...
If You’ve Got a Bell to Ring…Ring It
Thinking back to Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court, Wendi White examines her own experience as a member of the same generation. With an open, guiding voice, she offers stories and details of her own experiences to highlight the importance of speaking out...
Once Greek, Always Greek
Catharine Jones tells of a homecoming, but it isn't so straightforward. She discusses the relationship between her identity as a survivor and the other aspects of life that make her who she is. Fun, friendly, and inviting, Jones's tone invites her readers on a journey...
My Black Shoes from Paris
It's an empowering decision to be open about an experience of sexual violence for the first time. Ann Casapini contributes to the narrative of so many survivors who are finding the courage to come forward with their stories, and she engages her readers with vivid...
Easter Women
There is a consistent narrative throughout history of women not being believed or taken seriously, but the truth has always been that women's and survivors' stories are crucial. The story of the Easter Women is as powerful for women of thousands of years ago as it is...
Dad
Sandra Shaw Homer takes us through the complicated years of her childhood with grace and skill. It's a piece that speaks to the prevalence of sexual violence in domestic, everyday settings, and it also provides a powerful example of the ways in which survivors can...
On Healing Editorial
We are kicking off our blog with two editorials from one of our editors and the champion of The Nightingale, Megan Otto. Her clear voice has guided much of Awakened Voices in the past half year. Her knowledge and skillful dedication to writers and survivors of sexual...
Review Editorial: New and Noteworthy
We are kicking off our blog with two editorials from one of our editors, Megan Otto. Her clear voice has guided much of Awakened Voices in the past half year. Her knowledge and skillful dedication to writers and survivors of sexual violence has gently helped The...
a (wo)Man’s world
Sometimes, simply watching a movie can be interrupted by sudden confrontations with a past trauma. Katie takes her readers through one of these tough, quiet moments of fear and self-doubt, and she does so with powerful imagery and detail. a (wo)Man's world by Katie I...
“Ordinary Misfortunes”: An exposé on international rape culture
This skillful review by Kelsey May of "Ordinary Misfortunes" by Emily Jungmin Yoon tells us about this influential chapbook of poetry. May hits on the importance of the narratives and struggles of Asian "comfort women" in the 20th century, and how these stories that...
I wanted to feel your warmth…
In this piece, Taylor Finn explores memory and forgetting, forgiveness and acceptance. How can the forgiveness once directed towards the partner now be redirected towards the self? It's a process, and Finn explores it while using powerful imagery to explain the...