Why Every Single Woman You Know Is Posting About the Cornell 7
Written by: Amber Robinson, LMFT-SIf it feels like every woman you know is posting about the Cornell 7, I want you to understand something: for many of us, this feels personal.
We are thinking about what happened to us. What happened to our friends. What we hope never happens to our daughters. We are watching the conversation unfold and hearing questions women have been asked for far too long.
And we are angry.
I am angry, too. Enraged, honestly. By sexual violence. By how quickly a conversation can turn toward what a woman should have done differently. By the thought of someone reading those comments and deciding, once again, that it is safer to keep her own story to herself.
If this is hitting you hard, I want you to know where I stand before you read another word: I believe women. You will not have to convince me that your pain deserves care.
I was five when my mom told me about sexual assault
She told me because it was very real. Because she loved me and wanted to protect me. And she probably did.
But in some ways, she also took a piece of my innocence away. At five, I was learning that someone could hurt me in a way I barely had the words to understand.
Was it necessary? Yes. Was it sad? Absolutely.
I can love her for trying to keep me safe and still wish that conversation had never needed to happen. I wish she could have let me be little for longer. I wish protecting her daughter had not required introducing her to something so frightening. But my mom did nothing wrong. Society was wrong and she knew that, so she made a choice.
I keep thinking about how early these lessons start. Be careful. Stay together. Watch your drink. Text me when you get home. So much love gets communicated through warnings.
And then, when a woman is hurt, people go back through the list to see which instruction she might have missed.
That makes me furious. We can teach every safety rule we know, and the responsibility will still belong to the person who chooses to cause harm. It was never a little girl’s job to prevent abuse. It is not a woman’s job to make herself impossible to assault.
This is closer to home than people want to believe
Half of women in the United States have experienced contact sexual violence in their lifetimes. One in four have experienced this before the age of 18. More than one in five have experienced completed or attempted rape.
Think about the women you love. The women you work with. The friends you have known for years.
You know someone who has been sexually assaulted. You may have been yourself. And if you think you do not know anyone, consider the possibility that someone you love has simply never felt able to tell you.
There are so many reasons a person might keep that experience private. We do not get to mistake their silence for proof that it has not happened.
This is part of why the Cornell 7 conversation reaches so far beyond the people directly involved. For some readers, the story brings up a memory. For others, it brings up a fear they have carried for years. Sometimes it brings up the face of the friend who finally told them.
There is often much more behind a repost than you can see.
We are all Jane Doe
Because so many of us see some part of ourselves in her. The younger version of us who trusted someone. The one who felt something was wrong but did not yet have the words for it. The one who needed someone to listen and say, “I believe you.”
We think about our friends, our sisters, our daughters. We think about the things we have told each other in private and the things we have never said out loud. Jane Doe does not feel like a stranger. She feels painfully close.
We want her to be heard and cared for. And somewhere in that wanting, there may be a part of us wishing someone had shown up that way for us.
When I say, “We are all Jane Doe,” I mean: I see you. Your pain matters to me. You should not have to carry this alone.
You do not have to share your own story publicly to be part of that. You do not have to post anything at all.
This is why I became a therapist
I became a therapist because I wanted women to have somewhere to bring the things they had been left to carry alone. Somewhere they could be believed and supported, without having to make their pain easier for someone else to hear.
I care deeply about believing women. About what happens when someone finally says something she has been holding inside and is met with care. About making room for the anger, grief, and confusion that may come with it.
That commitment is personal to me. It is at the heart of why I do this work.
Being a therapist does not mean I read stories like this from a comfortable emotional distance. I am a woman reading them, too. I feel the anger. I wish so much were different.
If the Cornell 7 coverage is bringing things back
Sometimes a story brings up feelings you thought you had already worked through. Trauma reminders can stir old memories and distress, even when the experience itself was a long time ago.
Maybe you keep reaching for your phone, hoping the next update will give you some relief. Maybe you cannot bear to read any more. Maybe what hurts most is seeing someone you know respond without compassion.
You do not have to force yourself through every detail. You can close the app. You can ask a friend to stop sending updates. You can care deeply about what happens and still need some space from watching it unfold.
And please hear this: being affected now does not erase the work you have already done to heal.
You also do not have to turn your anger into something productive today. You are allowed to need comfort. To want someone beside you who understands why this hurts.
You do not have to hold this alone
If you are triggered by what has been reported in this case, or by what continues to happen to women, we are here to help.
At A Road Through Therapy Group, we offer trauma-informed therapy in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, and online throughout California. But what I most want you to know is that there is room for you here, exactly as you are showing up.
You do not need to know what to call your experience. You do not need to tell us everything in the first session. You can begin with, “Something has been coming up for me, and I think I need some support.”
We will take it from there, together, at your pace.
I wish we did not have so many reasons to see ourselves in Jane Doe. I wish fewer mothers had to have the conversation mine had with me.
I am angry that we are still here. And I am committed to being here for the women who need somewhere to bring that hurt.
