Photo of the Day: Survivors thriving in numbers

image via http://survivinginnumbers.tumblr.com

At Surviving in Numbers – a sexual assault and domestic violence awareness/prevention project featuring posters from survivors – a new batch of signs are up that are noticeably different than those posted before. These signs focus on life after the assault, with survivors sharing their journeys after violence and how they’ve found their way to healing and thriving.

Director Ali Safran explains why she decided to post these types of signs:

Often, in the media and within communities, sexual assault victims/survivors are portrayed as “broken.” People expect a survivor’s post-assault world to have sharp edges: we are expected to exist only as shattered pieces of a former self; we are expected to be afraid of the world, afraid of intimacy, afraid of everything.

Alexandra previously wrote about the “Dementor Theory of Rape,” where many people assume that survivors’ happiness is somehow permanently sucked out of them after experiencing sexual violence. Surviving in Numbers’ images continue to debunk this myth. In light of the recent announcement by President Obama about the creation of a taskforce to address campus sexual violence, it is important that we allow space to hear a wide range of survivors’ experiences to shape the dialogue — including those that break the stereotype of the irrevocably broken person.

View the rest of the signs at the Surviving in Numbers blog.

Wagatwe isn’t broken or afraid. She strives to thrive every day.