Whew, so here we go:
I am a survivor of honour abuse.
Only those who have been through it can understand what it’s taken me to write that sentence in public. I’ve been gathering the courage to speak out about my experiences for some time now; a couple of years in fact, and it feels as though everything I’ve done in the last decade has led up to this moment. Continue reading
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that the brain can be an incredibly mutinous organ. Having been in and out of therapy since I was thirteen years old, I am constantly awestruck by the amount of life-changing information my own brain has held back from me; information, in the form of memory, that has quietly dictated my strongest beliefs about life, relationships and the world.
So Shafilea Ahmed’s parents and killers have now been handed a minimum jail-term of 25 years. Although I’m glad to see awareness being raised about honour-based violence and forced marriage in national news coverage, I’m also deeply angered by the systematic failures that allowed Shafilea’s murder to happen in the name of ‘cultural sensitivity’ and fear of being branded racist.
Image courtesy of The Independent