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This episode is part of the series From Survivor to Leader, where the LTS staff member is having discussions about all things LTS and what it means to be leading the work in long-term care for survivors of sexual violence. It’s a mix of our own personal experiences, the work our team does, and how those two things impact each other. Our hope is that survivors feel seen and validated and supporters gain a deeper understanding of what this healing process looks like. Our episode today is I Am Jane Doe, Part 2. There’s a pattern that we see. A big story involving sexual violence breaks and from it, all sorts of opinions and perspectives rise to the surface.What we often see is that these opinions and perspectives that have bubbled up become part of the larger conversation. What becomes abundantly clear in these moments is that our society has not learned what it looks like to hold these stories well. That’s what we’re addressing today–some of the common questions that people have but don’t know how to ask or clarify what feels muddy and confusing when sitting with these stories as they arise. Since the four of us are all survivors, we know in our bones what it means to face trauma and get to the point where the reaction to the harm we experienced no longer rules our lives. It is from this place that we share what we know so that we can help shine a light into the darkness on the topic. Christi and Ciji recorded a shorter conversation about what delays reporting and why people decide to share years or even decades after the sexual violence happened, in case you haven't checked that out yet. Today, the four of us on the LTS staff are talking about what it even means to have the courage to share our stories and how lack of clarity and confusion have shown up in each of our own lives. For more info, to get help, or to donate, visit www.louderthansilence.org

This episode is part of the series From Survivor to Leader, where the LTS staff have discussions about all things LTS and what it means to be leading the work in long-term care for survivors of sexual violence. It’s a mix of our own personal experiences, the work our team does, and how those two things impact each other. Our hope is that survivors feel seen and validated and supporters gain a deeper understanding of what this healing process looks like. Over the past few months, we’ve been having conversations about burnout, codependency, and overfunctioning. If you missed any of those episodes, I highly recommend going back to check them out.  As we were having those conversations, it became clear that so much of what we were talking about was rooted in our expectations. We all have assumptions about how life “should” look and what “normal” is, and many of these concepts are challenged as we take steps forward in our healing.  This goes hand and hand with coming to terms with how sexual violence has impacted our lives. Sometimes it means delaying what we want to achieve. Sometimes, it means that we never achieve what we want to.  Today, we are untangling our expectations and what our understanding of achievement is at this point in our journeys.  If you want to find more information or support our work, visit us at louderthansilence.org

September 2026 audio newsletter Louder Than Silence is a nonprofit organization that provides long-term and trauma-specific care to survivors of sexual violence. For more information or to donate, visit us at www.louderthansilence.org

August 2026 audio newsletter Louder Than Silence is a nonprofit organization that provides long-term and trauma-specific care to survivors of sexual violence. For more information or to donate, visit us at ⁠louderthansilence.org

This episode is part of the series From Survivor to Leader, where the LTS staff have discussions about all things LTS and what it means to be leading the work in long-term care for survivors of sexual violence. It’s a mix of our own personal experiences, the work our team does, and how those two things impact each other. Our hope is that survivors feel seen and validated and supporters gain a deeper understanding of what this healing process looks like. Two months ago, we had a conversation about overfunctioning and how it’s manifested in our lives. Last month, we followed that up with discussing the connection between overfunctioning, codependency, and burnout. Today, we wanted to close out this conversation by exploring what it means to recover from burnout but also what it means to recover from the damage of trauma. We decided to weave these two together a little bit in this context, since many survivors have to unlearn a lot of messages around needing rest being bad or negative in some way. So, that’s where our conversation is taking us today, we’re taking a practical look at recovery. If you want to find more information or support our work, visit us at ⁠https://www.louderthansilence.org/

July 2026 audio newsletter Louder Than Silence is a nonprofit organization that provides long-term and trauma-specific care to survivors of sexual violence. For more information or to donate, visit us at louderthansilence.org

This episode is part of the series From Survivor to Leader, where the LTS staff have discussions about all things LTS and what it means to be leading the work in long-term care for survivors of sexual violence. It’s a mix of our own personal experiences, the work our team does, and how those two things impact each other. Our hope is that survivors feel seen and validated and supporters gain a deeper understanding of what this healing process looks like. Last month, we introduced the concept of over-functioning and how we’ve each seen it show up in our own lives. In having the conversation, we realized that there are so many interwoven pieces connected to over-functioning. So, today, we are having part two of the conversation about over-functioning, specifically talking about the connection with both codependence and burnout. It’s all one big, vicious cycle. Each of these is deeply connected to the others, and understanding the knot is the first step to beginning to untangle it. If you want to find more information or support our work, visit us at ⁠louderthansilence.org

June 2026 audio newsletter Louder Than Silence is a nonprofit organization that provides long-term and trauma-specific care to survivors of sexual violence. For more information or to donate, visit us at ⁠louderthansilence.org

This episode is part of the series From Survivor to Leader, where the LTS staff have discussions about all things LTS and what it means to be leading the work in long-term care for survivors of sexual violence. It’s a mix of our own personal experiences, the work our team does, and how those two things impact each other. Our hope is that survivors feel seen and validated and supporters gain a deeper understanding of what this healing process looks like. Our episode today is Addressing Over-functioning.For those of you who have never heard the term over-functioning, it means when we take on responsibilities for or on behalf of another person who is able to do it for themselves. Over-functioning often manifests with survivors of sexual violence because it can be a form of coping mechanism based on the idea that managing everything perfectly will help us feel safe and stable. Or, it can be a learned behavior from a controlling and abusive relationship that teaches us that we are responsible for another person’s wellbeing. So, this is the root concept of what we are discussing today–how we have over-functioned in the past and what we are doing to undo that automatic behavior in our lives.If you want to find more information or support our work, visit us at ⁠https://www.louderthansilence.org/

This episode is part of the series From Survivor to Leader, where the LTS staff have discussions about all things LTS and what it means to be leading the work in long-term care for survivors of sexual violence. It’s a mix of our own personal experiences, the work our team does, and how those two things impact each other. Our hope is that survivors feel seen and validated and supporters gain a deeper understanding of what this healing process looks like. Our episode today is Defining What Matters. In our work as survivors and as people, it’s important to understand what our values are. Our values indicate how we make decisions and what we prioritize. It takes time and introspection to navigate what it is that we come back to time and time again. This is the process that we recently went through with LTS, working alongside community members, to define what alignment in our work means. If you want to find more information or support our work, visit us at ⁠https://www.louderthansilence.org/

May 2026 audio newsletter Louder Than Silence is a nonprofit organization that provides long-term and trauma-specific care to survivors of sexual violence. For more information or to donate, visit us at louderthansilence.org

April 2026 newsletter For more information or to donate, please visit us at ⁠louderthansilence.org

This episode is part of the series From Survivor to Leader, where the LTS staff have discussions about all things LTS and what it means to be leading the work in long-term care for survivors of sexual violence. It’s a mix of our own personal experiences, the work our team does, and how those two things impact each other. Our hope is that survivors feel seen and validated and supporters gain a deeper understanding of what this healing process looks like.  For today’s episode, we heard from you about what you want to know, what you’ve always been wondering, and what would be helpful to hear. Like everything we do at LTS, we don’t make the decisions about what we discuss in a vacuum. It’s important that the survivors in our community have their perspectives represented in everything we do. We hope that this will be the first of many of these episodes. If you want to find more information or support our work, visit us at louderthansilence.org

This episode is part of the series From Survivor to Leader, where the staff has discussions about all things LTS and what it means to be leading the work in long-term care for survivors of sexual violence. It’s a mix of our own personal experiences, the work our team does, and how those two things impact each other. Our hope is that survivors feel seen and validated and supporters gain a deeper understanding of what this healing process looks like. Our episode today is Learning that Change is Possible. The belief that change is possible flows in good and easy times. But when life feels uncertain, when facing trauma, when what once felt normal becomes a trudge, it’s much harder to believe that change is possible. Even something like catching a cold or the flu can sometimes feel like it will last forever. After the trauma of sexual violence, everything feels upside down, painful, or overwhelming for months, years, or even decades. Hope for possibilities and conviction that we can do something to improve our lives can feel illusive. The ironic thing is that starting somewhere, anywhere, and sticking with even the smallest of habits makes it possible to see bigger and more profound change. It’s getting the momentum going that is so hard. This is our conversation today–what it was like for each of us to take those first steps and the impact they had on our lives. Visit us at ⁠www.louderthansilence.org⁠ to get help, find out more info, or to donate.

March 2026 newsletter For more information or to donate, please visit us at louderthansilence.org