For too long, people have treated women’s safety, children’s innocence, and the peace of vulnerable people as something small — something optional, so
For too long, people have treated women’s safety, children’s innocence, and the peace of vulnerable people as something small — something optional, something negotiable, something we “shouldn’t make too big a deal about.” But there is nothing small about harm. And there is nothing harmless about people who consistently disturb the peace of others.
When someone crosses boundaries, threatens, intimidates, manipulates, coerces, or harms, they are not simply being “messy,” “dramatic,” or “too emotional.” They are violent.
And history shows us exactly what happens when society downplays the behavior of people who violate others: we end up with serial offenders, colonizers, torturers, thieves, traffickers, corrupt leaders, and abusers who grow bolder because no one called their violence by its name.
Violence doesn’t begin at the extreme level that makes the evening news. It begins with a mindset — a belief that other people belong to me, that I have the right to take what I want, that your peace is irrelevant if it stands in my way.
That belief has shaped entire empires. It has shaped entire systems. And when we ignore the small ruptures — the intimidation, the coercion, the entitlement — we feed the conditions that allow greater harm to take root.
Some of us were raised to minimize. We heard phrases like “let it go,” “don’t make a scene,” or “other people have it worse.” But minimizing harm does not make it disappear. It only empowers people who already feel entitled to disturb the peace of others.
People who cause harm are not confused. They are not accidentally disruptive. They are acting out a long legacy of domination, taking, and control.
And the truth is simple: people who are willing to disturb another human being’s peace are capable of far more than a moment of anger or a lapse in judgment. Their actions echo the historical patterns of those who have taken land, taken labor, taken lives, taken children, taken safety — all while insisting the victims were “overreacting.”
When a woman says she feels unsafe, she is reading patterns.
When a child becomes withdrawn, they are responding to danger.
When communities ring the alarm, they are naming a history that has repeated itself across generations.
We have every right to insist that harm is harm.
We have every right to reject minimization.
We have every right to call violent behavior what it is before it escalates.
Creating spaces with boundaries, healing rooms, and protected environments for women and children is not overreacting — it is wisdom. It is prevention. It is survival with clarity. When someone disrupts your peace, they are showing you that they do not value your humanity. And people who do not value humanity have always been capable of great harm.
So we stop minimizing.
We stop doubting ourselves.
We stop pretending that harm is just “personality,” “stress,” or “a misunderstanding.”
We reclaim our full authority to name what we see, protect what we love, and honor the peace that was always meant to be ours.
Dedicated to Ash who was sent death threats online and to her home.
She could not simply “log off”.
Create more sacred healing circles where Black women and girls can be embraced and loved.
Create more villages with boundaries that protect what is life-giving, sacred, and beautiful about women and girls.
May she rest in power and peace. …..I pray that this perfectly lovely and beautiful young lady is somewhere over a rainbow where she can cosplay among angels. Young Lady, we will never get another YOU. We love you.
