Pulling Back the Veil.

Sexual assault. Sexual harassment. Psychological manipulation. Gender discrimination. That's the short list of what my nervous system has absorbed in the workplaces I've walked through in my life. This piece isn't about calling out any one company or manager. It's about what was left in me after all of it, in my body, and what I've come to believe that says about what women carry that never gets properly tended. I trace the line from an assault the summer after I graduated college through years of vigilance most women learn to carry without ever naming it, to a lunch table with old colleagues where we realized we weren't telling similar stories. We were telling the same one. What I land on is this: women don't need better policy. We need care, real repair, and the chance to finally stand down from a watch we've been keeping since we were teenagers.