Dear Daughter:

When I read about Daisy Coleman’s death last week, I sat down and tuned into her 2016 documentary on Netflix; Audrie & Daisy. My mind was racing the entire time, eyes glued to the TV, remote in my hand. If you haven’t seen it, I strongly urge you too. The profiled victim, Daisy, was raped by a 17-year-old boy while she was unconscious at 14-years. After years of intense struggle with the aftermath of her trauma, she committed suicide last week.

Between the bouts of anger and pausing or rewinding the film, taking deep breaths to really hear the ignorant remarks made by local police and justice system representatives — I had a repetitive thought — How am I going to explain this to my son and daughter one day?

How do I tell my daughter she is always in danger? That one out of nine girls under the age of 18 will experience sexual assault and I have to teach her how to avoid it?

How do I explain this scenario: When a young girl tries drinking or smoking weed for the first time, she puts herself in a vulnerable and dangerous position. But when a young boy tries it his first time — he is just being a boy. So when a girl is assaulted, it’s her fault, because she put herself in the position of vulnerability. Regardless of the conscious state of the boy who is making the decision to assault.

Society has this deeply backwards. Without consequence to their actions, the protection of young abusive men allows them to continue abusing as they get older. While the young women literally lose their lives, because no body believed them. On a national scale we have seen Larry Nassar, Jeffrey Epstein, Brock Turner. All of these cases had eyewitnesses, but how long did it take to be brought to justice? If at all — in Brock Turner’s case. These poor young girls who are silenced, slowly self implode without the ability to love and trust themselves nor anyone else. Struggling to rebuild and make sense of it all.

So I just started typing. This frustration had to be filtered out of my body as I literally could not sleep. So at 1 a.m. I did a practice run of how I might attempt to explain this to my future twelve-year-old daughter…