#Metoo Is Deeper Than Sexual Assault, It Represents All of Us
#Me Too.
#TimesUp
#Silenceisnotspiritual
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Hashtags flooding our news feeds. From all angles women speaking out, raising their voices, being heard. Many being criticized and judged and exponentially more being hauled for their bravery and courage.
But the power of #Metoo is wider and deeper than simply sexual assault or sexual harassment.
I experienced my own powerful me too.
I published my sordid past in a memoir. I was terrified to have my story filled with an eating disorder, depression and a suicide attempt enter the world. Although I was telling the story of God's healing and restoration in my life, I was also sharing my most naked and vulnerable shame-filled parts of myself to everyone.
What would people think? What would people say?
Where did my story fit in the Christian pews when some Christian stores wouldn't carry it.
And what about the women?
I was mostly worried about other women.
Would they whisper about me as I sat on the sidelines of my son's hockey games? Uninvite me to the gatherings? Not let their children come to my house for playdates. Oh don't talk to her, I imagined them whispering, "She is crazy!"
I could no longer walk around wearing a tidy mask and pretty smile. The gig was up.
And the resounding surprise in all of it, they came out of the woodwork, these women, these women I feared. Not to torture me. Not to condemn me, but instead, they said exactly what C.S. Lewis figured out so long ago.
"Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . ." - C.S. Lewis. The Four Loves.
It didn't need to be the same experience. Just "Me too"!
Maybe not "me too I had an eating disorder", but "me too I struggle with anxiety". Or "me too, I feel alone."
There is power in numbers when we vulnerably share our hurts and shame with one another. When we admit we aren't perfect. When we allow another into our pain.
That is being the church for another. Not to fix, not to solve or respond with Christianese, but to grab another hand, look them in the eye and say, YES! ME TOO!
So many of us hide in shame not only if we have been sexually abused but if we struggle with faith, addiction, the mental health...the list goes on.
This is the breadth and power of me too. It is the collective joining of hands across religions, party lines and disagreements. Joining hands together. Collective joining hands recognizing we need each other and we all need a savior.
So why then are some in the church so afraid to admit these things? Why do we turn our heads or pretend we are immune. We aren't. No one is. We are all a mess in need of a savior. All of us.
Instead of trying to fix or hide or put on that mask. How about we, the church, hold out our hand, put it in another and say, "Yes. Me too."
Lee Wolfe Blum is a speaker, Mental Health Practitioner and author of Table in the Darkness: A Healing Journey Through an Eating Disorder and Brave Is the New Beautiful: Finding the Courage to be the Real You. She lives in Edina, Minnesota with her husband and three teenage boys. www.leewolfeblum Twitter: @blumlee Instagram:lblum
