Shabana  00:09

My memory had blocked it out completely. So I was just standing there. And then it all came flooding back. And I was like, “oh, my goodness, you’re right. I did have it done to me.”

Mariya  00:23

(Shabana and her brother were in their 20s, living at home with their parents in Bahrain. He’d watched a documentary about khatna and mentioned to her that he was angry it was still happening in the Bohra community.)

Shabana  00:35

It’s really funny how your brain works, where everything just comes back, it just rushes in and so many memories flash before your eyes and you start thinking so many things.

Mariya  00:46

(I’m Mariya Taher. Welcome to Episode One of the Voices Podcast, Anger and Healing. As a reminder, this podcast includes frank discussions about what female genital mutilation and cutting is and how survivors can be affected in terms of their physical and mental health. The current episode also includes brief content about child sexual abuse.)

Amy  01:13 

(I’m Amy Hill, I work with Mariya on the Voices project. We offered this definition in our introductory episode, but in case you’re new to the podcast and aren’t familiar with the issue, FGM/C is a harmful practice that involves the partial or total removal of external female genitalia, or other injury to female genital organs for non-medical reasons. We’re going to get into more detail about the different forms of FGM/C in our next episode. For now, let’s get back to Mariya’s conversation with Shabana.)

Mariya  01:49

I know many women have forgotten their own experiences, and some have blocked it out, like you said, but for you, it came back. I think there’s also this idea that if you don’t really remember it, that, then it must not have harmed you or it wasn’t as significant. And I just kind of wonder what you think about that. I think I’ve heard this many times from survivors who say, “oh, it wasn’t, I don’t really remember it.” So I don’t really have a right to share my story, or to complain as much as those who do remember it and had trauma, physical and emotional, from the moment it occurred to them.

Shabana  02:34

My memory blocked it out, because it was so damn painful on so many different levels. Let me give you an example of this. My memory blocked out my child sexual abuse. And that came to me completely another year, then, you know, like I felt just chills and fever running down me and the memories came back. Your mind is not blocking it because it was insignificant. Look, I know that there are memories that we forget. But I feel like that’s just like, you know, you’ve done so many things in life that you forget. But this is something that your memory actually blocked. I feel like it’s a very conscious thing that your memory or your brain or your mind does to protect you.

Mariya  03:23

(Like Shabana has said, disassociation is one way the mind copes with too much stress, such as during a traumatic event. She’s not the only sexual abuse survivor we talked to for this podcast.)

Joanna  03:37

I’m sure I would never have become involved in FGM had I not been sexually abused myself.

You know, that opening would have not existed … My name is Joanna Vergoth. I’m a licensed clinical social worker and a trauma therapist. And for the last 15, almost 20 years I’ve been dedicating my time and energy to the issue of female genital mutilation.

So I remember when I first learned about FGM, I said, “oh my God, I’ve had 25 years of therapy,” and so much of it was bodywork therapy. What do you do when you’re missing the parts? How do you heal?

Amy  04:21

(I’m going to weigh in here too, because I had a long conversation with Joanna. She told me how she first learned about FGM/C when she was traveling in Egypt many years ago.)

Joanna  04:31

I first became aware of female genital mutilation in Cairo, in 1998. And it was a dream vacation, dream of a lifetime, and I’m sitting on the balcony overlooking the Nile, reading the newspaper having breakfast, and I read this article about female genital mutilation. I didn’t know what it was; I couldn’t, I couldn’t understand the concept. I couldn’t believe the concept. And the article spoke about what it was and the fact that 97% of the women in Egypt had experienced FGM, and it was like a thunderbolt went through me. I vowed to myself, I would donate my time and energy to survivors of this practice. 

Amy  05:16

(Over a decades-long career, Joanna was a therapist to hundreds of women who’ve been cut. She started small and gradually built up a private practice in Chicago. At first, it was hard. The refugee resettlement agencies she reached out to were skeptical about why she, a white woman of Greek descent, was interested in a culturally rooted tradition she couldn’t even imagine. They were, and still are, also reluctant to acknowledge that FGM/C might be an issue for some immigrants. But Joanna persisted, she even started an organization. And through it all, she heard women’s stories.)

Joanna  05:54

I remember working with a woman who had been cut at the same time her sister, her mother, and her aunt were cut. This was in Liberia during the war. For over 20 years, not one of them ever spoke to the other about the experience, even though it happened to all of them at the same time, in the same room. Everybody who comes to me comes to me with a different presenting problem, they may have all undergone FGM. But one woman I worked with had scarification as well as female genital mutilation happen to her.

Amy  06:30

(If you’re not sure what it is, scarification is a form of body modification involving the intentional scarring of the skin. Traditionally, in indigenous cultures, scarification is performed for ritualistic purposes, for instance, as a rite of passage to prepare children for adulthood, or to signify tribal identity and protection. The process can involve using a wooden hook, a thorn, or a heat source on the skin. The scars that remain form raised lumps known as keloids, to create delicate patterns over large areas of skin. Scarification has kind of a cult status in non-indigenous cultures, which use laser branding or cold liquid nitrogen branding. But the difference between these newer practices and what Joanna’s client went through has to do with free choice.)

Joanna  07:05

The scarification was worse than the cutting. She didn’t want to wear anything strapless because she didn’t want to reveal her back. Now that’s not something anybody thinking that I’m working with an FGM survivor with imagined I’d be working on, but that’s what we worked on. 

Amy  07:36

(Joanna’s client was actually subjected to scarification and FGM/C on the same day, when she was five years old. When she came to Joanna, she was having a lot of social anxiety and feared being shamed and ridiculed because of her scarred back. When she was triggered, Joanna helped her learn how to remember without reliving what happened. She uses a compassion-based approach to help her clients name and then label and then let go of negative beliefs and transform their experience. Before we continue with Joanna’s story, let’s hear more from Mariya and Shabana. By the way, Shabana came together online with a group of women from countries around the world to make a video in one of our Voices digital storytelling workshops.)

Mariya  08:22

You know, in your story, you actually mentioned you wondered about what your life would be if you haven’t had a piece of yourself cut off. And I wondered if you might be open to talking about your own relationship with your body. After you learned that happened. 

Shabana  08:39

I really feel like it affected me a lot, because especially once the memories came back, I realized that no wonder I have such trust issues with people you know, and intimacy issues. And literally, I felt incomplete. Because I was like, there was a piece of my body cut off for no good reason. Then like I say, in my story, I actually mourn for that piece because I was like, I want it back. I wish I could go and find it, but it’s somewhere and take it and get a doctor to put it back on me. And then as you come to terms with the fact that okay, even though I don’t have that piece, I’m okay.

Mariya  09:25

(That physical sensation of feeling incomplete is something I’ve heard other survivors talk about. It’s the kind of experience of loss, of grieving, that Joanna is so good at being with in her therapy work. Here’s what she said when Amy asked her how she was able to connect in a deep way with her clients.) 

Joanna  09:43

I think it goes back to my grandmother, who raised me and actually came from Turkey. And she was forced to marry a man she never even met and had a very miserable life, actually. But she would say to me, “the Red Cross came to me when I arrived,” and told me that she understood that they wanted to help teach her English so that she could function in America and she said, “no, I’m going back to my country,” but she never did. I remember actually for her 75th birthday, taking her to see Fiddler on the Roof, which I had seen and thought was an AMAZING film.

Amy  10:31

(If you don’t know the story, Fiddler on the Roof is about a milkman in a rural village who attempts to maintain his Jewish religious and cultural traditions as outside influences encroach upon his family.)

Joanna  10:43

So I took her to this theater, and she has a breakdown and I brought her home immediately. She was hyperventilating, sobbing, crying, I didn’t know what to do. Nobody was home, and I just kept holding her trying to pacify her.

Amy  11:02

(At the end of the film, most of the family members are emigrating to the U.S. Even though the experience of Joanna’s grandmother was quite different, geographically and culturally, clearly, this theme of exile touched a nerve for her.)

Joanna  11:16

And then I found out that she never talked about her exodus from Turkey, because when the Armenian genocide was going on, it was happening to Greek people as well. And so as they’re marching out in the film, she remembered her own march out. So she’d never spoken about it. 

Amy  11:37

(Joanna held her grandmother, and in that holding, she understood her ability to hold other silences. She saw that silence can be oppressive, but that remaining still and quiet in its midst can sometimes create an opening for something new to emerge. Listening to her talk about it made me realize that this is kind of the essence of what we hope the Voices workshops can do.)

So as you know, we are not therapists. And we really do our best to make it clear that our digital storytelling approach is not therapy. At the same time, we do our best to be very careful about how we work with people, in terms of helping them decide whether or not our workshop might be something they could benefit from. And then in terms of supporting people through that process of sharing and making a story. And of course, in terms of follow up. I’m wondering, particularly given the lack of adequate resources for trauma therapy, what your views are about the role that community storytelling projects like ours can play.

Joanna  12:45

I think it’s enormous what you do. Really, it’s, it’s a beautiful, wonderful program. It allows survivors to share their stories, to build their community with other survivors to create a network that gives them support, encouragement, and solidarity. They have to prepare, they have to think about what they want to say; even though they know that just a small portion of this story is going to be told, they can re-envision what happened to them. And then they can understand it from a different perspective. Now they’re adults, they’re looking back, they have a different understanding. More anger may come up, more compassion may come up. But whatever it is, it’s still there and hidden until an opportunity like yours offers them the chance to explore and process what they’re feeling and thinking.

Amy  13:45

(My ears pricked up when Joanna mentioned anger. That’s actually the title of the video that Shabana made. Here’s a short excerpt.)

Shabana digital story excerpt  13:54

I was seven and my mother took me to a house in Hyderabad, India, and a lady cut me with a blade. I was 31 when the memory finally came to the surface.

I felt shock, and immense anger. I was so angry for weeks and weeks. It was very difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that a piece of my body had been cut off. Without my permission. I missed that piece of my body. I grieved over it. And I mourned it.

This anger was the worst I’ve ever felt. Because there was no one I could actually scream and yell at. Who should I rail against– the lady who cut me? My mother, who’s only following a ritual passed down for generations without questioning it. The entire Bohra community? the patriarchy? Who? I still don’t know.

Mariya  15:02

I feel like, you know, it’s really important for women to get in touch with the anger that they feel about being cut. And to understand that that’s a perfectly acceptable reaction as well. So even though it can be consuming, it can motivate you to speak out, it can motivate you to take action. And I’m really wondering, you know, in the years since you told your story, if you’ve just gained maybe more clarity about where this anger came from. And how you’ve worked with that anger in your own life, in your activism against FGM/C.

Shabana  15:42

I think in the beginning that my anger was directed towards my mother, because I was like, “you’re an educated woman, you should have protected me, it doesn’t matter what your mother-in-law, which means my grandmother said,” etc, etc. And then the anger, it went towards the community, and the community leader, because I was like, okay, fine, you know, the way these women behave as if it’s tradition, and a ritual that needs to be followed without questioning is because it’s trickling down from the top. So then that needs to be challenged, and that needs to be stopped. And of course, it’s not like you can just do one thing, and that’s going to stop, I know that there is a lot of work involved. And I think just putting myself into that work, trying to volunteer and help the movement, help the cause, has helped me channel the anger in a much better way. And where I’ve even seen results, like the passing of laws, some numbers decreasing, that felt a little good that okay, my help, my volunteering has been a drop in the ocean, at least.

Mariya  17:05

(This issue is so complicated. There’s no quick fix. We really need each other to stay connected, stay resolved in our commitment.)

Amy  17:18

(And to heal, too. Here’s Joanna.)

Joanna  17:22

Our woundings become generative. And so we grow from there, we shine from there, we heal from there. FGM, a culturally sanctioned trauma. Unlike any other. You’re supposed to never talk about it. And that’s why so many girls don’t know what’s going to happen until it happens to them, because no one’s allowed to talk about it. So to be able to give voice to an experience that a whole group has had, even though they’ve had different reactions, different ages, different communities, they’ve still gone through the same experience. And that is such a bonding for them to have. It’s remarkable. And so they gather strength from that. And there’s a solidarity that comes from that. 

Amy  18:16

(And then the solidarity can lead, bit by bit, to action, large or small.)

Mariya  18:21

I think we oftentimes think advocacy is like going to a protest or something like that. But it doesn’t have to be that big. 

Shabana  18:29

My video, my story, had a really, really huge impact than what could have been if I went and stood in a protest, because that video was through such a beautiful way of depicting my story. Once I shared it on my social media, the response that I got was amazing. Because a lot of my friends or acquaintances, contacts, they one, didn’t know that this happened in the world. And second, they were just, they were in utter disbelief that this had happened to me. So I think that doing such advocacy work of sharing your story, on different platforms in different ways, is really, really important for people to realize that this is not something that happens in some far off nation somewhere. It’s happened to your friend.

Mariya  19:27

What do you think accountability looks like for others who are perpetuating the practice?

Shabana  19:37

I really feel that something strong needs to be done. I do think that it’s a twofold way that it needs to be approached. One is to really gently talk to them and try and get the knowledge and the information through to their heads that there is no benefit to it, because they genuinely believe that it’s beneficial. Right? And to tell them that it’s a medical, medically harmful practice, not required by religion, etc, etc. And on the other hand, I do also think that at the same time, we need very, very strict laws. If we don’t have the laws, it’s going to take us a very long time to get this through their heads.

Credits  20:22

To watch Shabana’s story and the other Voices digital stories, visit our website at voicestoendFGMC.org. 

Next on the Voices to End FGM/C podcast, an activist talks about why everyone, not just survivors, should care about this issue. This episode was created by Amy Hill and Mariya Taher, with editorial and production support from Kristel Mendoza Castillo. Featuring the music of Blue Dot Sessions. Special thanks to Shabana, Joanna, and everyone who has told a story in a Voices to End FGM/C digital storytelling workshop.