 Next year marks my 10 years making work as a visible CSA survivor artist activist. My first show, I Am Joan, spoke out about child sexual abuse and explored what it might be like to listen to the quiet, insistent voice inside, follow your intuition and back your own horse however scary, radical and countercultural that horse is. It was inspired by famous Joans who did just that: Joan of Arc, Joan Jett, Rivers, Baez … Kick-ass women who refused to be silent despite huge risks…
I talk about what it was like making and performing that show in my TedX talk. What I will say now is that it was scary and lonely - I had incredible support, friends and collaborators but I didn’t know any other CSA survivors who were speaking out - no role models, no peer artists, no route map - just intuition … In one scene, I enact burning at the stake as Joan of Arc and shout the following words in a comedy french accent - words that reflected my experience as a survivor but that I couldn’t yet say (let alone shout) in my own voice All I do is speak the truth I will not be silenced I will be heard It is you they will judge This is nothing to do with me This was me trying to say “I didn't do anything wrong - it wasn’t me - so why am I being judged, shamed, persecuted?” If you’re reading this thinking the word “persecuted” is too strong then you might want to consider how 11 million adult survivors in the UK are kept separate and silent. Not all oppression is overt. So much is part of our cultural wallpaper - institutionalised, systemic and semantic. Ours is oppression by omission. A huge community in hiding, stuck between the chemical cosh of mental health provision and a catastrophically broken victim blaming justice system - either way we are pathologised, stigmatised, discredited and overlooked. We are a population no-one has to think about until they do … Fast forward 9 years and change is exquisitely unfolding: I’m getting ready for my next project - a series of punk songs that will eventually form the spine of a new show where I will use my own gnarly, raging voice to shout loudly about abuse, survival, social justice and revolution. And I have peers! And we are role-models for each other - because there is still no map, we are writing the map together. But Viv Gordon Company sit within an international community of brilliant CSA survivor artists and activists connecting, collaborating and driving change in defiance of the many barriers we face. We are survivor-led not just by me but by 51%+ representation on all our teams. Our core belief as a company is that CSA survival is a creative act - we are inherently creative people otherwise we would not have survived. We champion voice, visibility, community and survivor leadership and this week - for Creativity and Wellbeing Week 2023 - we have been joyously celebrating some of the survivor artists and activists we work with on our board, our steering group, our emerging creative leaders and others - a Dazzle of Zebras! The zebra thing comes from our ABC of CSA project. The Z card is “feeling like a zebra in a world of giraffes” which initially speaks of feeling othered and alien as many of us do. But there’s a lot of us zebras and we’re pretty cool - each with our own unique stripe pattern and strong kick - together we are a super herd. Lots of us are starting to wear zebra print as a kind of survivor pride - we’re “rebranding” survivorship, unshaming and gathering as a community - it's all very empowering and beautiful, and undeniably bittersweet too. Our drive for visibility is about community visibility, not about all survivors being individually visible because those of us who are able to speak out are the tiniest fraction of our 11 million strong community. If you are reading this and you’ve not been able to tell anyone or you need to compartmentalise your survivor identity to specific spaces - I hope you know how dazzling you are, how much you matter, how happy I am that you survived and how none of this is your fault - the deficit is cultural. I hope one day it will be safe for us all to speak and gather freely - I will die on that hill (in a fabulous zebra print tuxedo) I’ve spent some of this week chatting to a brilliant wise woman who is not able to safely self-identify or attend any in person events, but is still very active in our community, about the role of creativity in her life. I want to give her the last word … “Torn in a world in which silence and speaking can both feel particularly violent and frightening to me, creativity points to a possible, initial, way through. In a world in which there is a ferocious attempt to control, obscure and re-write history, art stands in the way: fragments of non-erasable reality. Art speaks …” Illustration: Imogen Harvey-Lewis
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 Woo hoo! 135 miles and 4557 metres climbed (that’s over 7 small mountains!) and the South Devon Restless walk is complete. Today we did a shorter 11 mile stretch between Wembury and Plymouth, which was good because at times we were walking into strong winds and more importantly it gave me time to reflect on the week and drink in the wild, exuberant sea.
The project is named for her - the restless sea - she just keeps going no matter what - even when we fill her full of plastic or toxic shit - she carries on being her magnificent self. She is my role model and an object lesson in activism. Every single drop is significant, the sea is made up of millions and squillions of them and collectively they are powerful beyond measure. They change the landscape over time. And there are millions of us - adult survivors of child sex abuse - 11 million in the UK alone - 1 in 6 of us and we can change the cultural landscape over time. We just have to come together and be unstoppable - sounds simple - but (and it's a big BUT) there are sooooo many barriers to us coming together. We live in a society that doesn't want to talk about abuse, many of us have been threatened as children that terrible things will happen if we tell, many of us are trying to protect family members who will be devastated to find out what has happened, many of us have been shut down when we’ve tried to talk, called liars and been disowned by people we love and yet more of us have been diagnosed with mental disorders or criminalised or otherwise problematised in any way possible to shut us up. And as for being unstoppable? Well surviving is exhausting, keeping huge reality shattering secrets is exhausting, being in huge amounts of emotional pain is exhausting, sometimes just getting out of bed is impossible. People forget what the word survivor means - it means we didn’t die (and lots of children do) - it means we are still alive (and lots of us die by suicide, addiction, eating disorders, homelessness, domestic violence and the rest) And that’s why we need to take things one step at a time, keep putting one foot in front of the other and slowly, as we feel able to, as we feel safe to - we need to find our way to community where we can carry each other along as the drops of water get carried along in the ocean. If you are a survivor my message to you is - be incredibly nice to yourself there is no rush - we have a mountain to climb together and just by surviving this day you are defying the patriarchy - your very being is triumphant and I’m sending you all of my love. You can find out more about Restless here: https://www.vivgordon.com/restless And you can financially support the project and the work we do here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/vivgordonco  Ow ow ow - everything hurts! But most of all my poor little left toe looks like it’s been in an explosion - I am lying in bed with plasters and paracetamol. Today has been really challenging - it started beautifully with the Bantham Ferry then I walked up the cliffs outside Bigbury-on-Sea as the wind gathered pace. It was sooo strong. I stopped to ask the RNLI if people ever get blown off cliffs - they said that wasn’t something they’d ever had to deal with so reassured I pressed on.
I made it about 2 more miles along the coast - it was exhilarating but then having been blown over 3 times and every single step being a struggle I decided to head inland before the Erme Estuary. I’m glad I did because I’m safe but it involved a lot of walking on lanes which is more tiring than lovely footpaths and the landscape was beautiful but nowhere near as inspiring (particularly as it was often hidden by high hedgerows). I got lost twice, phoned my husband and had a little cry, nearly gave up but persevered. I’ve walked 23 exhausting, toe-crushing miles and climbed 900 metres. I thought about a lot of things that resonated with my journey as a survivor. It’s really hard when life is a struggle - hard to feel ok, hard to keep going, hard to be positive. Why should we be positive - it's shit being in so much pain - it's enough just to be. I also noticed how much I buzz on excitement and adrenaline - it makes everything very present moment - there’s no space to think about difficult feelings or painful memories. I tend to seek out heightened experiences and have to be careful how I channel that - I can easily veer towards addiction. I honestly couldn’t have been happier than when I was nearly being blown away and then I felt bored, petulant and frustrated when I took the safer option. I don’t really believe in recovery. I think we just learn to live with our stories and I do think we can get better at doing that, get to know ourselves better and learn to treat ourselves with the love we deserve - at least some of the time. I think being able to have a word with my inner adrenaline junkie and choosing to not be blown off a cliff was the more adult self loving option, but then I had to be very nice to the childlike bits of me that felt disappointed, cheated out of an adventure and missed my wild friend the sea. When I did catch sight of her again, at dusk in Wembury, my heart did a little leap. I wanted to shout “I’m coming to play tomorrow” but I was in a little housing estate and felt uncharacteristically self conscious. The wind is still blowing up a hooley out there and the forecast is for strong winds into tomorrow but I have everything crossed (except my ouchy toe) to be back on that path in the morning. You can find out more about Restless here: https://www.vivgordon.com/restless And you can financially support the project and the work we do here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/vivgordonco  Just a quickie today as it’s officially my day off - I have rested, been to the beach, hired a bodyboard and a wetsuit and spent a joyful hour and a half bobbing around in Bantham Bay. It was soooo great to get in the sea and feel its power, get turned upside down, ride the waves and come out all salt kissed to my hot flask of herbal tea. I’m quite bad at bodyboarding though and need tips!
I’m glad I’ve rested because tomorrow is a humdinger. We have to cross 3 estuaries (Avon, Erme and Yealm in that order) - only 2 of them have ferries and then only at very limited times. The Erme is only crossable at low tide which is at 6am but to get there you have to cross the Avon and the first ferry doesn’t go until 10am. There’s also a gale coming apparently which means the Yealm ferry won’t be running. You can see the problem. I spent this morning contingency planning - I feel like a stubborn mule but I just don’t want to get in a car. I messaged a lifeboatman I met in Salcombe to see if he knew anyone I could hitch a lift with by sea but he said it would be too “spicy” out there with the forecast winds! So the only option is to get the Avon ferry, walk to the Erme, head inland 4 miles up the estuary then pick up a path that takes me round the Yealm to my destination. It's gonna be between 22-25 miles but it will be more sheltered from the strong gusts predicted at the coast. I’m celebrating being adaptable and un-freaked out about it as that hasn’t always been a strong point. I feel strong and determined and like I want a good stash of both protein and chocolate for the journey. Wish me luck! It's a total joy and privilege doing this project. What motivates me the most is the messages I get from survivors telling me what it means to them and actually all the messages of support. I’m really moved by people’s #MyLineInTheSand contributions and feel proud to be part of such a kick ass community. And I’m incredibly grateful to those of you who have donated to the participatory work we are doing in June connecting with groups of Devon based survivors and allies to do creative walking activities in this incredible landscape. Thanks so much - we’re nearly half way to our target of £500! If you want and are able to make a donation you can do it here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/vivgordonco. Lots of love groovers xx  Today’s journey kicked off with a ferry between Salcombe and South Sands - because the boat can’t get to the shore you have to disembark via a sea tractor! I had no idea such things existed. It was a fun and splashy start to the day.
On the jetty I met a guy called Jack who is 2 weeks into his 630 mile walk of the whole South West Coast Path - he started in Poole and will end in Minehead in about 6 weeks time. I’m jealous - not only of his youth and long stride - but of the fact he can just keep going. I feel like I could walk forever. Yes my feet are a bit mullered but I just forget about that once I’m out on that beautiful coastline. He’s a philosophy graduate - so I got to philosophise to my heart’s content - waxing lyrical until the sea tractor delivered us to the path. Two ideas underpin a lot of my work and the Restless project in particular. First is the idea of Injustice. Our conventional understanding of justice is something that is sorely lacking for child sex abuse survivors - most of us never see anyone prosecuted or convicted for the crimes they committed against us. But survivors face injustice at every turn - we struggle to access appropriate support and are more likely to experience homelessness, addiction, emotional distress, long term health conditions, suicide and so on. And it runs even deeper than this. Philosopher Miranda Fricker formulated the idea of Hermeneutical Injustice - this is when we lack the language or framework to fully understand or communicate our own experiences because those experiences have not been conceptualised adequately in our culture. This is what it is like being a survivor. As a society we’ve spent so long burying our heads in the sand we just don’t know how to talk about this stuff. That’s why writing poetry and songs feels so important - to find non-medical, nuanced and imaginative language to gradually illuminate the complexity of our experiences. Second is the idea of Phenomenology. This is a branch of philosophy that is about describing how we experience the world. It moves away from stuffy ideas about academics being objective or scientific and acknowledges that we can only ever see the world through our own unique lived experience. It concentrates on the detail of what it’s like being human. This is how I write. I observe what it is like for me to walk uphill for example - the thoughts, feelings and sensations I have while I’m doing it and I write them down. Or I watch the waves crashing against a rock and think about what that evokes for me personally - it's not the truth - someone else watching the same waves will experience that in a completely different and personal way. What for me is exhilarating may be frightening for someone else or cathartic for another. Of course how we see things is shaped at least in part by previous experience and what “roles” we play - a doctor and patient will experience the same medical appointment completely differently right. So my experience of walking the coast path will be shaped by the fact that I am here very deliberately as a survivor writing about surviving - very different to Jack’s who has his own story and reasons for being here. I’m probably not explaining this very well. Jack would probably roll his eyes (he wouldn’t he was too nice for that). But I hope it gives you a bit more insight into what I’m doing and why. You can find out more about Restless here: https://www.vivgordon.com/restless And you can financially support the project and the work we do here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/vivgordonco  Today has been intense in a good way - we’ve walked from just outside Torcross to Salcombe - another 17½ miles and a mountain’s worth of ascent. We had to get a wiggle on as the Salcombe Ferry stops at 6pm. After that you have to get a bus or taxi round the estuary - a 15 mile trip instead of 2 minutes on the ferry.
The scenery today around Start Point and Prawle Point is wild, hilly and craggy - the coastline is a series of delicious themed names - Pig’s Nose, Ham Stone, Gammon Head or Grant’s Rock, Meg Rock and Abraham’s Hole. I love words and how they link with place and stories. Anyway, I’m determined this week to not get in a car unless I have to and this is not a matter of pride or some sort of athletic prowess - it’s because walking works for me as a way of creating and specifically to write. Neuroscientists amongst you will know there is something about the left right left cross body action of walking that enables new ways of thinking - it brings together the left and right brain hemispheres to make the most of both. As the days go on I can feel myself sinking into a different space where the things that preoccupy my mind on a day to day are falling away and a different sort of embodiment and mindset are taking shape. It would be horribly pretentious to say walking is my muse, or the coastline is my muse or whatever but it is something like that in a less pompous and more sweaty way that involves having lots of blisters… My brain is still obsessed with the Devonian placoderm fish and that is what I have been “writing” about today. I say that in inverted commas because I rarely get a notebook out on the walks, I amble or stomp along pondering prehistoric fish and abuse survival and little fragments of ideas form in my head, then I voice record them in my phone and let my mind amble some more. Now I’m tucked up in bed I’ll transcribe my rambling thoughts and hopefully they will start to formulate into a new poem or song. I have to tell myself there is no right way of doing this otherwise I would talk myself out of this weird and beautiful unfolding process I am immersed in. It makes sense to me that my body needs to be involved to get the words out - I see a lot of my work as being about my body telling its stories and my brain mainly needs to get out of the way. If left to its own devices my brain would find a million reasons not to do this - it might upset people, I have been conditioned not to tell and my brain loves distraction (wine, fags, masterchef, facebook etc). My body is where the abuse happened, it is where survival happens and now it is where the activism needs to happen too. You can find out more about Restless here: https://www.vivgordon.com/restless And you can financially support the project and the work we do here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/vivgordonco  I’ve found myself extraordinarily moved today - I’ve had quite a few little cries and feel a bit blown away. It's been a gentler day - only 15 miles and ¾ of a mountain... I started the day reading about the geology of this area. The rock here is a combination of slate, red sandstone and limestone from the Devonian era - a global geological period (so called because they were first studied in Devon) and the oldest rocks in the county dating from around 400 million years ago. I won’t try to explain it - I’m not a scientist and you can google it - but the thing that has stirred me is the fish skeletons that are found within these rocks that show the development of the first ever jaws. Let me explain.
This walk and the whole Restless project, like all of my work, is about nurturing voice, visibility and community for and with survivors of child sex abuse. One of the things I am doing as I walk is writing songs and poems, talking about my journey as a survivor, drawing on imagery and metaphors from coastal landscapes. Abuse took my voice away and I’m still in the process of finding it. One thing that preoccupies me is the fact that because abuse survival is still so taboo, culturally we don’t really have accessible ways to talk about it. The project is about finding the words and finding a poetic language to express my experiences in the hope that contributes to opening up a new cultural fluency that is desperately needed, if we are to become empowered as a community and make change. Particularly I have a debilitating fear of singing, I was late developing speech (because of early trauma), when I did I had speech impediments, I was bullied at school because my voice was nasal (because I couldn’t breathe freely due to trauma) and had various other restrictions and rejections around my voice. This project is about reclaiming my voice, letting it out, letting it be whatever it authentically wants to be. That is part of my activism. So today discovering that some strange twist of fate has brought me to a place known all over the world for these little fishes who had evolved jaws - without which there would be no speech and no song. That those fishes have been hidden for millennia - that has moved me to tears - the rightness of it all. I’m welling up as I write this and now I want to know everything there is to know about jaws - do I know any jaw experts? I may become a jaw bore - a mandible nerd - a maxilla geek… Oh it’s started - I’m just gonna go with it… You can find out more about Restless here: https://www.vivgordon.com/restless And you can financially support the project and the work we do here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/vivgordonco  Today has been another full-on day’s walking - 19 miles and another mountain climbed - through some of the most beautiful wild places between Brixham and Dartmouth ending with a sweet ferry across the Dart estuary. It was so hilly - I nearly cried when I reached the last climb - it's only just sinking in that this is an endurance challenge and people train for stuff like this - whereas I’ve been sitting in zoom meetings and smoking too many fags - eek.
My friend and Viv Gordon Company campaign lead Emma Bryson (an amazing survivor activist in her own right and co-founder of Speak Out Survivors) messaged me to say that being a survivor is all the endurance training you could possibly need and she’s right. That was in my thoughts as I struggled up the steep slopes - it's nothing really in comparison to the years of struggle. People underestimate us - surviving trauma takes skill - we’re a creative, intelligent and resourceful bunch of people. That’s why we should be put in charge of everything - ha! The day has been joyful too - I met up with Dave Parsons and Kristian Tomblin who both work with Devon County Council developing and delivering services for survivors - they are refreshingly radical and can see where current approaches aren’t working. We had a laugh, put the world to rights and were blessed with a pod of dolphins swimming off Berry Head. The rest of the day I walked on my own through stunning landscapes - I ran down hills whooping, saw wild horses, smelled the yummy gorse and ate wild garlic flowers, did some writing, watched the birds swooping around below me from heady heights and lay in the sun (yes it was even sunny some of the time). I think the point of surviving, at least in part, is to find joy, mess about and do what the fuck we like. We all know the struggly bits and it's important to keep it real about that because it really isn’t an easy journey. All the more reason to notice and celebrate the good bits innit xxx You can find out more about Restless here: https://www.vivgordon.com/restless And you can financially support the project and the work we do here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/vivgordonco Ok - I hold my hands up - turns out I’m a bit of a snob. I had all sorts of preconceived ideas about today’s walk and I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it. Today we walked from Babbacombe to Churston Ferrers just outside Brixton - another 18 mile stretch and my legs are complaining. I thought it would be all amusement arcades and chip vans and I was so wrong. The headland between Babbacombe and Torquay is incredible, then there is a bit of holiday hoo ha interspersed with beautiful beaches, coves, gardens and promenades. Sorry Torbay - it's not you, it's me - you’re lovely. It made me think about how we can think something’s gonna be one way and then it turns out another. Like conversations about abuse which we assume are going to be horrible and so often in my experience are just very beautiful, empowering and full of special surprises we could never predict.
On the yummy headland outside Babbacombe there is a cove called Daddyhole - I’d seen it on the ordnance survey map and it captured my imagination - read what you will into it - I’m still working it out. My dad was abusive so it's not rocket science… I sat for a while above it, it's inaccessible (more opportunities for analysis if that’s your bag) The name reminded me of “down the rabbit hole”. Lots of my life I’ve experienced distress, dissociation and dysmorphia - like Alice, my body has felt too big, too small and like I don’t fit anywhere - the world has felt incomprehensible and unnavigable. Sometimes I’ve felt I might drown in my own tears. Like Alice, I’ve self medicated with all sorts of things to try to manage all of that. That’s changing for me and activism helps - it's given me somewhere to channel my rage and brought me into community. My therapist sent me an article about post traumatic growth which I’m yet to read. I’ll report back. I do know that if we only try to support survivors by talking about mental health and what they can do to help themselves we are not getting to the heart of the issue - that abuse is wrong, society isolates and silences us, the justice system fails us, we face endless barriers to equal participation in life and the mental health system pathologises our distress and labels us as disordered, often with devastating consequences. Most of us never see anyone convicted for the crimes they have committed against us - my only chance of justice is social justice and fighting for that is gonna keep my tired, sore feet treading this path for as long as I am able. You can find out more about the project here: https://www.vivgordon.com/restless And you can financially support the project and the work we do here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/vivgordonco  The first day of our Restless walk has taken us from Starcross to Torquay. For various reasons the predicted 13 mile walk became 18 rainy miles (oof) and my phone tells me we’ve climbed over 2000 feet - the height at which a hill becomes a mountain. There’s something fitting about that. Our theme this walk is moving out of isolation and into nurturing connection, community and belonging, something we can all resonate with after the last year. And as survivors - boy do we have a mountain to climb. Many adult child sex abuse survivors remain very isolated, unable to share their experiences even with their nearest and dearest. The stats speak for themselves - there’s 11 million of us in the UK but we don’t have the community, visibility or collective voice that you’d expect a marginalised population of such a vast size to have. Gaining that collective voice is vital if we want to shake things up culturally and change the barriers many of us face accessing support, education, healthcare and well….. EVERYTHING.
In June we’re coming back to Devon to do some participatory creative walking events for survivors so we’re meeting local organisations to help us connect with different groups who may like to join us. Today we started our walk with Tom from Active Devon and later met Mair from Doorstep Arts. They both joined in with our #MyLineInTheSand campaign - survivors and allies sharing words of connection and community to help draw a line under the silencing of survivors. Tom’s words were “Movement is Medicine” which resonated a lot with the choice we’re making this week to walk and walk and walk some more. It's Mental Health Awareness Week and yes being active and out in nature definitely supports my wellbeing but even more than that, being part of a movement to make change is great medicine for me. Mair’s word surprised even her - she chose the word “Fleet” and shared the image of different ships coming together on a mission, sharing direction, purpose and momentum, having each other’s backs. Please share your words too using the hashtag #MyLineInTheSand - let’s build this much needed community together whether we’re a survivor, know and love a survivor or just a nice person who wants to see change. You can write on anything - get your crayons/fridge magnets/embroidery out friends. So my feet hurt, I’m in quite a strange B&B (there’s a shower next to my bed in the actual room???), I’m tucking in to a beer and some chocolate, there are clothes drying everywhere and I’ve climbed a mountain today. I think it’s nearly time for bed zzzz Previous Restless walks have taken place along the Dorset & Somerset coast in 2018 & 2020 and we even released a song (She walks...) in November during lockdown last year. You can find out more about the project here: https://www.vivgordon.com/restless And you can financially support the project and the work we do here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/vivgordonco |
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