A Retirement Farewell from Jo.

By: Josephine A. Lauren

During the first decade of my adult life, I committed daily to my own process of intensive healing: recovering, reclaiming, and recreating my self, body, family, and future. Then in 2017, #metoo catalyzed my public journey as an anti-incest activist. This global disclosure of millions of sexual abuse survivors instigated a new energy in my body that hummed the clear and conscientious hymn:

My story is so much bigger than me.

This intrinsic truth launched me into the next decade of my life, where I continued to work through my wounds, while also connecting to others who knew the weight of them far too well. The work started slowly: through a simple blog sharing snippets of my story, then grew to first just connecting with survivors and allies then organizing them into an alliance of activists focused on improving methods of incest prevention, intervention, recovery, and justice. Simultaneously, I gathered the anti-incest canon written by literary greats like Maya Angelou and Judith Herman, and shaped a meta-narrative that answered the questions:

How did we get here? Why is incest still such a stigmatized subject?

Then I penned my own story into a hybrid memoir that weaves this history of my body within the answers I uncovered, including the greater sociopolitical narrative of the anti-incest movement.

The process of writing, organizing, and self-study quickly made it clear that more than anything else, the anti-incest movement needed to build an unshakable foundation that could withstand the continued social backlash that pushed it back underground so many times through history.

This is where Incest AWARE begins.

Incest AWARE was first founded by Suzanne Isaza who onboarded me early to build a digital education platform and team. When she retired, I had the creative opportunity to lay the foundation within the structure Suzanne built. Now, nearly four years later, I’m so proud to witness Incest AWARE become so much of what makes a social movement strong: 

• a storytelling body that reclaims and archives the history of those who suffer.

• an educational methodology and library that educates.

  everyone about the oppression that causes that suffering.

• a grass roots organizing wing that engages community and systems with context-based, culturally-affirming solutions.

• a support group of solidarity to support those still suffering.

• a transformative justice approach that stops the suffering before it starts.

With this foundation, Incest AWARE courageously commits to all three types of prevention: primary prevention (stopping harm before it starts), secondary prevention (supporting those who have been harmed), and tertiary prevention (supporting those who have already harmed to ensure the harm stops). And all of this infrastructure has been built with the generosity of the community: your time, money, skills, and energy have grounded the movement into something digital, something real, and something lasting.

This work has brought out the best in me.

I, like the other survivors among us, did not choose to be incested. I entered this work like many do: trembling. Fear and resistance and shame and anxiety kept me cornered in the silence and social submission I had mastered as a child to survive. My activism journey has felt like a necessary extension of my healing journey, as I knew I had to create the safe place to land that I never had for others. Little did I know, that I was also creating a safe place to land for myself.

Through this work, I have found solidarity with other survivors that validate the way I exist after this very specific type of trauma, friends who shape my new family, economic support for my dreams, and an organization that I know will continue to realize the vision of so many survivors throughout history. The gentle encouragement, consistent validation, intimate relationships, and economic generosity of this community made me bold and brave and unapologetic and free. It also invited me to be patient, and empathetic, and gentle, and wise. Thank you to all of you for modeling the best in yourselves and believing in the best of me.

Now, it's time for the next chapter of my life.

In July, I begin the next decade of my life. As I approach 40, my body is quietly requesting that I pass the baton. That I spend more time being with a body that feels safe where it landed, that loves their chosen family deeply, and trusts it will find new ways to participate and contribute their creativity to community in a way that feels just a little lighter than holding and healing the history of all off this.

Now the movement is ready to scale, and this will require the labor of the next generation of organizers.

I’m so proud of those who are taking the baton from me: the new Incest AWARE board has the confidence and competence to keep the foundation we built together strong and scale it at a pace that works for their resources and constraints. I will continue to educate and speak when I am invited to do so.

At the conclusion of my tenure, I want to thank you all for your confidence, contribution, and care these past years. Thank you for sharing with me so many safe memories and reshaping the world into one a little bit safer for the next generation.

Thank you for entrusting me with this work and thank you for doing it too.

All my love, always,

Josephine A. Lauren