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Lessons Learned with Komal is a place to explore life's greatest lessons. The ones we've learned, and those we are still in the process of learning. Episodes are a mix of interviews and personal reflections from Komal. Lessons Learned is a space for you to chew on life's lessons, big and small, and hear from the people we admire most in the world.
Welcome back to Lessons Learned and our weekly audio essays
I struggled this week to write
I was intending to write my first essay with humor infused in it
because I am doing comedy writing classes
and humorous essay writing classes
however
the news of the Cornell 7 and the topic of this week's essay shifted
because of how intense all of the things felt this week
and so I'm just gonna dive into it
Giving women PTSD is part of the plan
I studied rape as a weapon of war
during my undergrad degree in human rights
journalism and political science
I spent five years coming in and out of depression
while learning about and hearing
accounts of some of the most depraved acts humanity could muster
I was convinced that
through witnessing and naming the patterns of abuse
and strategic
and systematic approaches to inflicting violence on communities
specifically through their women
I would help unravel
and show how important it is for humanity to change course
then I was forced to grow up and ditch the naivete
I experienced my first assault in second year university
then the continued onslaught of trauma that my 20s and 30s would hold
I slowly realize that part of patriarchy's plan
is to cripple women from the traumas we've endured
to give us chronic mental
and physical health burdens that keep us from being fully expressed
functioning at our highest capacity
and fighting back against the tidal wave that is misogyny
and men being men
as news broke of Cornell's disciplinary actions against the Cornell 7
last week
I felt the emotional equivalent of a long delayed hangover
I was thrust back into my own assaults
and the conversations with countless women in my life
who confided about their abuse to me
and who I did my best to hold
while the cracks in my own foundation began to grow
I thought I could hold it all
but I simply can't
it's taken me almost 20 years to call what happened to me rape
there's something completely disembodied about revisiting a memory
you thought you reckoned with
decades later
and being able to see it in its reality
instead of what you crafted it into to survive
I felt my memory adjust and get taped back together
by old journal entries recounting what happened
and empathy and a willingness to accept what happened to me
I'm also so grateful to have people in my life now
who helped me fight the urge to overexplain
to prove what happened and to doubt what I experienced
it really happened and it really was rape
in one national study of US college students
1 in 3 women reported experiencing rape or attempted rape
one in 8 men reported perpetuating it
my hunch is it's a lot higher than that
something freeing about being 36 is
I don't have to give men the benefit of the doubt anymore
my starting point is distrust
I'm too old and I've known men far too long
to borrow their weaponized incompetence
and not accept the reality that they are the majority of perpetrators
and that keeping things status quo
would enable the continuation of their sadistic
centuries long non consensual conquest of women's bodies
if that hurts your feelings
know that you're in a part of the internet
where you have to prove why I need to respect and believe you
if you're a man
I believe women and I believe Jane Doe
I believe you and what you went through
I feel the pain you may have felt this week and throughout your life
in trying to reconcile the reality of how little so many men
and their enablers think of our agency
humanity and reality
the other part of being 36 is having more robust support systems
approaches to well being and self support
that can help me process and move through weeks like this one
I want to share some of what's been helping me
in the event it might help you right now as well
early in the week
I let myself take in as much as I needed to about the Cornell 7 case
and the stories women were sharing globally
about their experiences and rage
I saw my algorithm and feed shift
and got to a point where almost every video I came across
was related to the case
I noticed myself flinching as I would go to open my feed
and it was then that I started to search for
and reengage with my favorite accounts
hobbies and content that makes my feed a friendly place for my mind
I retrained my feed to include the business music
film and television and humor content I needed to survive the week
I intentionally
had to make the decision to decrease the amount of Cornell 7 content
I was taking in
and remind myself that I am not the audience that needs to be educated
or informed about this case
and the implications of it
and that it was okay to adjust to not retraumatize myself
in my weekly therapy session that I have booked in
in anticipation of my upcoming IVF retrieval
my therapist
and I dove head first into the process of revisiting these memories
and finding a sense of safety in the present again
she helped me remember that I don't have to stay in the past
but that I can lean on the work and effort I've put in
over the last 15 years
to be the kind of adult I wish I had back then
to lean on
I can care for myself now and can trust the life I've built
the mind I've cared for and cultivated
and the habits and rituals I have chosen to heal with
I had hard conversations with my husband
Mitch about how to navigate this moment with his friends
and how we can continue to work to ensure our relationship
and the decisions we're making together protect us both
as we've been going through this IVF journey
I've at times felt pressured to keep going
and this pressure can feel disconnected from my own wants and needs
and somehow this week and the conversations it's led us to have
has helped us re
establish our boundary on my ongoing consent in this journey
for us
I've also just let myself feel like shit and fall apart
in the moments I need to
and say and write
hard things that I need to release into my journal or safe containers
with people I deeply love and trust
movement has also been helping
a body in motion stays in motion
and continuing to go for walks
and workouts that help shift some of this rage
and pent up energy has been critical
to not having this week feel harder than it has been
I'm also exploring organizations
and mentorship opportunities to donate time and money to
in order to support the infrastructure that does exist
to help girls and women who have been abused
and to support prevention initiatives
where they exist and are effective
this isn't my usual tone of content
but living a good life is living a real one
and reckoning with real things
my mindset and life have been upended in some ways this week
from the severity of what has come to the fore
and I needed to reckon with it on the page
I learned to live
with the forever hum of this reality in the background of my mind
now this hum is so loud that it's piercing the mainstream
I hope the resonance of this moment
leads more women to pull themselves out of the vacuum of prioritizing
men and their need to be perceived as good
and instead better protect themselves and those younger than them
for the reality of what it is to be a woman
a forever target
now here are some prompts for this week
what care do you most need today and this week
how can you give that to yourself
is there something you need to share with someone you love
who and when will you reach out to them
so much of caring for ourselves
is not denying ourselves the opportunity to be exactly where we are at
and processing in the ways that we need to
and exploring the corners
and crevices and dark parts of our minds in healthy
supported ways
and this week has really been that for me
I am someone who when I create
it has to come from a real and authentic and true place
and that's been me for most of my career
and so when I sat down to write this week
over and over again the page would be blank
I would be procrastinating or avoiding actually writing
because the things I wanted to say
weren't the things I was letting myself say
and so finally
when I gave myself permission to just say what was in me to be said
these words poured out of me
so I really appreciate you being here this week
because writing this was really important to me
and saying it aloud cemented something within me
helped me lock something in in my own healing journey
and sometimes
we need to see others go through this process to help us do the same
and so if that's the boat that you're in
I'm so grateful that this landed for you when it did
and I really hope that you have the nicest loveliest
kindest gentlest week
and that you are very good to yourself and that you take really
really good care of you in all of the ways that you need to
so until next time I'll see you in the next one