8 Love Letters That Remind Sexual Assault Survivors They Are Not Alone

February 20, 2015
Los Angeles

“You are not what they took from you.”

So starts one of a adore letters Tumblr #SurvivorLoveLetter sex-education association imMEDIAte Justice Tani Ikeda

“#Survivorloveletter is a call to survivors of passionate assault and a desired ones to publicly applaud a lives,” Ikeda writes on a Tumblr’s homepage

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Ikeda told The Huffington Post in an email that Valentine’s Day is always tough for her since Feb. 14 was a date she was intimately assaulted. “I illusory what it would meant for my younger self to arise adult on Valentine’s Day and review summary after summary of open support for surviving,” Ikeda said. “That’s when we knew we wanted to emanate #Survivorloveletter.”

“After flourishing my rape we spent 10 some-more years flourishing ongoing basin and a incessant feeling that we had to continue to quarrel for my life,” Ikeda told HuffPost. “This is my survivor adore letter. Don’t give adult on your possess happiness.”

The letters enclose absolute messages of support from kin and friends of survivors, and some of a many impactful letters are created by survivors to themselves. People contention their letters or images of handwritten letters to Tumblr or Ikeda’s personal email address. Ikeda pronounced she’s perceived an strenuous volume of certain feedback from a project, with many people thanking her for formulating such an critical and protected space for survivors.

“That form of support and confirmation from desired ones of survivors felt unequivocally critical to me as good since mostly times a milestones of recovering go underneath a radar,” Ikeda said. “Part of violation a tarnish of contrition surrounding being a rape survivor is for others to acknowledge that it happened and respect what that tour looks like.

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