My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.

I cannot shut you out the way I shut the others out, so maybe I can destroy you. Must destroy you?

In other words, I would be giving in to a myth of sameness which I think can destroy us.

It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others-for their use and to our detriment.

What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence.

What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heel print upon another woman's face?

Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now.