There’s a saying my grandmother liked to use: little girls should be seen and not heard. I internalised that idea for much of my life, but when I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020, something changed. Cancer took a great deal from me, but it gave me back my voice, and now I don’t think I’ll ever be silent again.
I must have been a difficult child. Much of my childhood features people telling me to be quiet. Schoolteachers. Family members. The man who tried to rape me. The adult who, when I told her, and after having satisfied herself that nothing much had happened, decided that it would be best for me never to mention it again.
