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Picture this. The last time you saw your mother, you were 12 years old and standing in a courtroom. Forty-eight years later you turn on the TV, and there she is, in your opponent’s campaign ad, telling the whole state you made it all up.
That’s what happened to Dr. Amy Acton this fall.
I’ve been sitting with this one for a couple of weeks. I probably should have written it sooner. But I’m learning something a lot of us were never taught as Survivors of abuse in childhood: I’m allowed to feel what I feel, all the way through, before I hand it over to anybody else. So I let it simmer in the background. Now I’m ready.
In case you missed it
Amy Acton is running for governor of Ohio. You might remember her as the doctor standing next to Gov. DeWine during those early COVID briefings, the steady voice explaining things to a scared state.
Long before that, she was a little girl living in a tent with a mother and stepfather who were hurting her. She testified before a grand jury as a child. The adults were arrested, then skipped bond and left. Years later she learned there were other children. Eleven of them.
She grew up anyway. Medical school. A career in public health. Running a state health department through a pandemic while protesters showed up at her house for doing her job.
Then a campaign decided her childhood was fair game.
Her opponent’s team ran an ad with her estranged mother calling her a liar. Local reporters went and pulled the court records. The records back up much of what Amy has said. Her brother Phil answered with an ad of his own. He said he got plenty of abuse too, but Amy always got the worst of it.
Let that sit for a second. The adult from that house got a microphone. The child who lived through it got called a liar. Again.
Survivors know this move by heart
If you’re a Survivor (and yes, I always capitalize that S, because we earned it), you already know how this goes. You can climb as high as you want. Somebody will still reach back into the worst years of your life and try to use them against you.
It’s never really about the facts. It’s about planting doubt. They don’t have to prove you’re lying. They just have to make people wonder.
Here’s what I want people to understand. Most abuse doesn’t come with a paper trail. Amy happens to have court records. Most of us don’t. Most of us have a memory, a body that keeps the score, and a family that would rather we kept quiet. If a woman with grand jury testimony behind her can still get called a liar on statewide TV, think about what the rest of us are up against.
About those “check on your strong friends” posts
You’ve seen them. “Check on your strong people.” Your strong friend is tired. Sweet sentiment.
But plenty of the folks sharing those posts will turn right around and use everything it took to become strong as proof that something is wrong with you. Your survival gets rebranded as baggage.
I’ve heard men with radio shows call Survivors “damaged goods” like it’s a punchline. Women like Amy hear that and keep going. A lot of little girls hear it and believe it.
And here’s the part people skip. So much of what Survivors struggle with later isn’t only what was done to us. It’s what got said about us afterward. The shame. The blame. The constant hint that we “brought it on ourselves” or “made it up.” The abuse is the wound. The shaming, blaming, and lack of care and concern is what keeps it open.
So when someone turns a woman’s survival into an attack ad, they aren’t only hitting her. They’re telling every kid in a bad house right now exactly what happens if you ever tell.
What I see when I look at her
I see a girl who told the truth to a room full of adults and then watched the people who hurt her walk away.
And I see a woman who didn’t let that make her cruel.
That’s the part that gets me. She could have come out of that childhood hard and shut down. Instead, she went into medicine, and then public health, which is basically the job of keeping everybody safe, including people who will never thank you for it.
She’s bringing that same sense of fairness into this race. She has said plainly that she opposes boys playing in girls’ sports, and she’s taken heat from her own side for saying it. The way I read it, that’s what it looks like when someone who knows what it means to go unprotected refuses to trade one group’s safety for another’s. Girls deserve safety and a fair shot. Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity. She isn’t willing to give up either one.
For those of us raised to go last
A lot of women reading this were trained from childhood to put everyone else first. Keep the peace. Don’t make it awkward. Protect the family name, even when the family didn’t protect you.
So here’s the logic I want you to sit with. When someone goes after a Survivor and we stay quiet to keep things polite, that politeness isn’t protecting her. It isn’t protecting us. It’s protecting the person doing the attacking.
You’re allowed to be angry about this. Anger is just love with its boots on.
And you’re allowed to take your time getting there. I did.
Dr. Acton, from one Survivor to another: You made it out. You built a life that helps people. And when they came at you with the worst days of your life, the truth stood right there beside you.
That’s a champion.
Image credit: Wikimedia commons, Ohio Department of Health lead Medical Doctor Amy Acton discusses healthcare with U.S. Air National Guard Lt. Col. Timothy Stuhlmiller, Dentist from the 179th Airlift Wing Medical Group, during GuardCare Weekend Aug. 11, 2019, at the Buckeye Career Center, New Philadelphia, Ohio. During the event both service members from the Ohio Army and Air National Guard provided health services to the local and surrounding New Philadelphia population. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Senior Airman Gwendalyn Smith)
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