WE. DO. NOT. FORGIVE YOU

We are standing next to one another, all of us, who were impacted by the arrest of Josh Duggar by federal agents, yesterday.

We are the daughters. The sons. The sisters. The brothers. The wives. The ex-wives. 

We are the shunned. The fractured.

We are the voice that will not be silenced. 

We don’t believe there is any justice, and yet, we fight for it every day of our life.

We aren’t sure there is a way out of this tar pit called life, but we keep moving, and we hold every inch of progress we make.

We can’t stop crying today. 

We had put our crying on hold for a bit, bottled the grief up, put a cork on it.  But the cork got popped again, yesterday. Sometimes that happens. 

We are ok with that.

We  were children.

We stood over chairs, your lap, over toilets, with our pants pulled down, and you beat us with sticks. With belts. With electrical wire.

We held the books you bought at the conferences, that taught you how to do this without going to jail.

We dressed in tents, in jeans too big, dresses that tried to drown us in the rivers where we played. 

We were children. 

You taught us that our bodies were not ours to give. 

But you took what you wanted, and called that God.

YOU LIED.

We understood, we obeyed. 

You put the books of another Josh in our hands, and said those were God’s words. THEY WERE NOT.

We were children. 

You kept us from our grandparents, our cousins. You kept us from our neighbors and the world that longed to show us something more… not perfect, not always good, but something bigger,  something REAL. You hid books, and stories, and faces that looked different from ours, and called that GOD’S WILL. 

You lied.

Some of us were born with a uterus, with breast. Blood that came from our body in clumps, or a stream, a curse, and a gift.

We were named Jezebel.

We were called rebellious.

We stood in the shadow of shame, while you told us who we were.

We stood in the shadow of heresy, while you told us what God wanted us to be.

We read the stories of the witches, because we both feared and loved them.

I am a woman. But I know you have hurt my brothers just as much as you hurt me. And I will not dare speak for them, you spoke for them long enough. And you LIED to me about who they were. When you lied to them about who I was? You stole their future. You stole their success. You wounded generations, and you will answer for it.

WE. DO. NOT. FORGIVE YOU.

When you told her an education and  career would be a waste resources, because she’d be busy raising the children? You lied.

When you looked your daughter in the face, and told her “your husband didn’t commit adultery because his penis didn’t GO INSIDE HER VAGINA, and therefore God will NOT allow you to divorce him”.

When you learned your sons had molested your daughters, and you put them on farms, and in “restoration” programs, and NOT IN JAIL, YOU BETRAYED US.

When you saw bruised and broken children, and you “mentored” their parents and did not protect the children.

When you banned us from family gatherings, because we did not “submit” to your patriarchal rule.

When you gathered around one another, and created an echo chamber and egged each other on to further abuse.

WE. DO. NOT. FORGIVE YOU.