"Why I Am Rising" Keynote Speech

This is how I transformed from survivor to thriver and shared my story as a featured keynote speaker at One Billion Rising on February 14, 2013.

The defining moment of this radical shift was finding the courage to press charges against my former dance teacher, enduring a 2 year legal process ending in court. He was convicted, safeguarding his future victims from harm (my intention). And I found my inner strength and my voice to advocate for myself (9 years before the #metoo movement gained traction).

Listen to it here or read on for the transcript...

My name is Erin Parsley. As you know by now, I am a dancer, a choreographer, a dance educator, a poet and writer, an organic gardener, a whole food cook and a passionate lover of nature and animals.

I'm also a victim of past sexual abuse, but I don't let that define me.

I'm here today to share some of my story, how it has impacted me, how I have moved through it, and how I am committed to empowering other girls and women to stand up to abuse in their lives, in their communities and for all women around the world.

So I met him when I was 11 years old at a summer dance workshop. He took an immediate interest in me and he started spending lots of time with me working one on one in private lessons. I was so excited to be receiving the training I needed to follow my dreams of becoming a professional dancer. That was my number one goal in life and I spent nearly every day in the dance studio perfecting my technique.

By the time I was 14, he started the molestation, incorporating his inappropriate contact into my training, telling me it would make me a better dancer and help to be more expressive. I was completely innocent and naive and trusted him implicitly and for the next five years was subjected to his abuse as I remained confused and sad and silent.

What a journey this has been, a journey that has taken me through many feelings and states of being…from numbness to shame, to a sense of invisibility and the need to hide, to isolation and erecting walls around my heart in a desperate need to protect, to feeling forgotten by spirit, uncared for not valuable as a human or a woman all these difficult and demoralizing emotions.

I had to carry around like an anchor on my soul. Chaining me to a state of quiet desperation. Heavy stuff to deal with, especially as I was dealing with it alone, without any means of emotional or therapeutic support in my life.

I told my family, I told some friends what had happened to me. But after my sharing the silence felt like an impenetrable mantle around me, leading me to feel even more isolated. This terrible secret had been revealed only to be ignored and seemingly forgotten by those I was closest to.

This made me feel like I truly should be ashamed since no one would talk about it or help me. So I carried this burden deep in my heart for several years until I couldn't do any more.

In January of 2008 I decided I had had enough. I needed to try again to find some healing around this issue for myself. That's when I found out my abuser had opened his own dance studio working with young students. And I knew I had to take action.

There was no way I would be able to live with myself knowing what I knew about him and knowing he would have unrestricted access to starry eyed young girls looking up to him as their mentor just as I had because of the pain I was so sick of being imprisoned by and with a determination to do what I could to save even one girl from going through what I had.

I filed a police report that resulted in an intensive, all consuming and soul wrenching process of legal proceedings for the next two years that ultimately led to his arrest.

And then several days in court where I had to fight for my case in a legal environment that was not very interested in spending the time or money on the alleged sexual abuse of a young girl 14 years earlier.

However, due to my fierce determination to see it through and stand up for my rights, as well as the rights of other young women and potential victims, and with the assistance of the police investigator, and the public defender I was assigned to who both believed in me and fought for my case.

In the end, my perpetrator was convicted of a felony as a sex offender spent nearly one year in jail and is unable to ever work unsupervised with minors again.

That process, the process of taking legal action of standing up and speaking out over and over again in the form of the statements I had to give and the pages I had to write, laying out in extensive detail the occurrences of my abuse, their effects on me and the way my life changed as a result was exhausting, overwhelming and anxiety producing and yet while it was the hardest thing I ever had to do, it was ultimately the most empowering thing I have ever been through.

The change that occurred through claiming it, naming it and speaking out against it. Standing up for myself and only my right to be free of what he had done to me was life changing.

I was able to shake up the shame, the guilt and the fears that hadn't trapped me and find a new strength in myself, I never knew existed. I found my voice. I found my power. I found my worth.

And through that process, I declared it to the world. I let go of being a victim and stepped into my new role as a warrior. A warrior for truth and love and transparency. A warrior standing up to the misuse of power by a selfish and weak man. A warrior committed to breaking the chain of silence which empowered the abuse to continue in rising from victim to warrior my healing began.

This was not an easy process or instant process that has finished but it is happening and that is because I rose and claimed my place. I rose and claimed my worth. And in doing so my spirit was allowed to open up to her cells and be amazed at the strength, beauty resilience, love and true power she possessed.

My voice also rose up within me uncensored for the first time in my life. And the floodgates of life force burst open and became a mighty river of creativity, self value and emotional freedom.

In standing up for my right to be free of oppression, I stand up for the rights of all women to be free as well. I stand up as an example of this truth that all women are valuable, Sacred Divine expressions of pure life and the creative force of the universe and deserve to be honored as such.

Thank you for reading to my story. And so to sum it up, let me share why I am rising.

I am rising for myself.

I am rising for the innocent trusting girl that was me, that was manipulated and sexually abused by my dance teacher.I am rising for the other girls who are affected by that man in some way.

I am rising for all victims of emotional sexual and physical abuse.

I am rising for the pain they endure and the shame and the silence they are trapped in

I am rising for the families, friends and communities of these victims who may not know how to handle their own grief, shame and remorse.

I am raising for all victims of abuse who have not been heard, who have not been embraced, who have not been supported, who have not been healed.

I am rising with this message. You are worthy. You are valuable. You are beautiful. No matter what has happened to you. Your essence is innocence and infinite perfection.

Rise up with me and claim the sovereign being that you are rise up with me.

Take a stand for yourself. and for all women.

Rise up with me and Dance and shake off all the lies you have been fed.

Rise up with me and dance and let your worthiness rise as you do

Together, we are rising.

Thank you.