As I stare at an image of Saffie Rose Roussos on my screen I can’t help but notice that my daughter wears the exact same school uniform every day….
As I stare at an image of Saffie Rose Roussos on my screen I can’t help but notice that my daughter wears the exact same school uniform every day. A red shirt, navy blue skirt and white tights. They’re both 8 years old, the only difference is my daughter is still alive while Saffie was murdered in Manchester this week by a suicide bomber.
I cannot imagine the pain of her family and all of the other families who lost loved ones to this tragedy. I’m sure many of those Ariana Grande concert tickets were given as birthday gifts or special surprises from mothers to their daughters. I have two girls, one 8 and one 11, both in the age range of those targeted during this event. Anytime we go out on mother-daughter adventures they usually can’t quiet their excitement afterwards. Whether it’s to a movie or a play or a trip to the circus, they’ll talk the whole way home about what a magical night it was.
So many families only hear silence now; their daughter’s voices snuffed out by a miserable coward.
Saffie’s parents surely had the same dreams for their precious daughter that I have for mine. I want them to grow up to be strong, capable, world changing women. However, fear enters the picture all too often. Women, whether we like it or not, are required to play by a different set of rules than their male counterparts. We’re taught to be bold but cautious; strong but always on alert for danger.
Growing up female you quickly learn to compensate for your lack of physical strength with extra vigilance. You have mere seconds to assess whether someone is a potential predator, because if you wait any longer that person will be close enough to overpower you. I learned this when I was about 7 or 8 myself. I was walking home from the park with a friend when a car pulled up next to us. In it were two grown men offering us a ride. When we said no they persisted then began to grow frustrated. My friend looked at me, then she subtly nodded toward the space between two houses. Immediately we took off running without looking back, only to hear the car screech away.
Once you know this type of fear it never quite leaves you. You learn to live with it, manage it, plan for it. It’s always there. You walk through parking garages constantly scanning the shadows, standing back from parked cars lest someone be hiding behind one. You keep your car key clinched outwards from your fist so you’ll be able to use it as a make shift weapon should all else fail.
As you walk down city streets you notice the men loitering 30-yards ahead and make sure there’s a safe place to duck into if need be. You travel in packs when you go out at night, and you never leave your drink unattended. When you are forced to walk down a dark street alone your entire posture changes, every last drop of femininity draining from your gate. Look tough. Look bigger than you are. Look like a man so they’ll leave you alone.
We live with such a constant hum of fear echoing through us, reverberating through our brains, that many women probably no longer even recognize it. We don’t even call it being scared anymore, we call it “being smart.” It’s wise to know that there’s always a target on us, to some degree. That is the price we pay for being born female.
But last night women and girls were very real, very literal targets. They were in one of the few places besides their own homes where they could finally let their guards down and enjoy the night, surrounded mostly by other women. The music was loud enough to drown out that quiet whisper telling them to be on the lookout. And that’s when he struck, the coward who wants us to let our fear grow louder than the music. The coward that silences women.
When you are truly strong, you look for ways to protect others with your strength. But when you are weak you look for ways to make others weak too.
That was always part of the coward’s plan, part of ISIS’s plan, to fill us with more fear.
But I refuse to allow fear to take up one more iota of my being. The only thing growing now is my voice, and the voices of my daughters. These cowards cannot – they will not – silence us. Because now we must also be Saffie’s voice and the voices of all of the other fearless human beings we lost last night.
Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa is a writer in Richardson and the founder of the pro-life group New Wave Feminists. Email: Destinydelaro@gmail.com What’s your view?
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