Speakmyname Collective

“When you stand and tell your story in an empowering way, your story will heal you and it will heal somebody else.”— Iyanla Vanzant

Speakmyname is about…

Finding Your Voice

Your voice, which is uniquely yours, is your power. From the power of your
words/voice you speak your reality into existence. What reality are you creating
with your voice?

Connection

It is in sharing our stories (both the good and the challenging) that we strengthen and empower one another. Stories of triumph, resilience, and hope will be shared through our “Life-Support” Groups. Sisters will also be trained in “Life Support Principles”

Freedom

By standing in the truth of our experience we are now free from bondage and can now uncover and embrace our authentic selves. We rely on a power greater than ourselves to restore our minds, our spirits, and our bodies.

Wholeness

Moving beyond healing where we are most often stuck fixing the pieces that we feel are broken about us, we instead get in alignment with God’s view of us and his love and mercy and we are able to move into wholeness. Wholeness is our spiritual inheritance. This wholeness requires the total integration of mind, body, and spirit. This is where we can meet and embrace our divinity.

THE SPEAKMYNAME COLLECTIVE

The Collective is the first national revolutionary non-anonymous radical-self love and liberation organization for black women survivors of sexual abuse who have disclosed or who may desire to disclose.
The Collective is about supporting and giving black women survivors the tools to liberate themselves through speaking their names and breaking the strongholds first of the perpetrator(s) who admonished them not to tell, perhaps family members who corralled them into silence, and by a society that has deemed little black girls are not innocent and therefore, cannot be victims. It is about providing a steady ground for survivors to stand and reclaim their voices.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”— Maya Angelou

 

Our Goal

● To amass the largest number of black women survivors (5 million +) who are out and those who desire the support and tools to come out from the shadows by first disclosing to someone they love and trust.
● To create a spiritual movement grounded in radical self-love that not only transforms survivors but also the people around them and society at large.
● To help survivors transcend their lineage of survival and suffering, and move into and live through a legacy of mental, physical, and spiritual wellness.
● To provide nourishing connections and practices to combat and alleviate the impact of oppressive systems of domination that feed sexual abuse.
● To embrace radical self-love as both liberation and as a stand for justice in an effort to end the sexual abuse of black women and girls.

Our Mission

● To provide a steady ground where black women can break the shackles of shame, guilt, fear, and depression and gain the strength to reclaim their voices.
● To provide a safe, confidential, judgment free space where sisters are affirmed and can grow and move beyond healing.
● To create an alternative and viable community of support for survivors who are out or who may wish to disclose.
● To provide radical self-love practices and tools to help women to uncover and embrace their authentic selves in order to access their divinity and tap into their spiritual wholeness.

“And when we speak
we are afraid/our words
will not be heard/nor welcomed/
but when we are silent/
we are still afraid.//
So it is better to speak/
remembering/we were never
meant to survive.”— Audrey Lorde

And when you speak, you speak for a million and a million mothers. You speak for a million and a million daughters.