Interview on Surviving Sexual Abuse with Allena Sindler

This interview was conducted in 2018 by a Northwestern University student who was 

using it as source material to create a performance piece. Allen Sindler's "Heal CTA" 

premiered at Chicago's 2018 PEACEBOOK festival and was recently accepted for the

2019 "Mother Moon" festival in NYC. I am honored to have been part of her healing

art. It was also healing for me to reflect on my own journey and theorize

 from a place of pain. 

Note: I made some minors edits to the original transcript but kept it as close to the 
original as possible.

Dr. Sekile Nzinga-Johnson Interview

INNER PEACE

Inner peace, for me, is really not a destination but a process and a practice, it is something 

you claw at everyday. The reason I say claw, is because life is really hard. You have to fight 

to stay alive. You have to fight to decide to stay here. For me, one of the ways I fight is trying 

to figure out what is joy filled in my life. Not foregrounding my pain, not backgrounding my 

pain, but just letting the pain live right there and out loud. I’ve also been really really fortunate 
to have my life since those traumatic events be very joy filled. For me, that’s what has been 

my inner peace. 

I know that I’m lucky because for someone else, they might have had another round of trauma. 

It’s difficult for me now, so I can’t imagine what it would be like if I got hit with something else.

 I live often in a state of terror because I have a daughter, and I say to myself “please don’t let 

anything happen to my daughter,” but knowing there’s a high chance that it could because of the 

world that we live in. So, I live in this state of terror, praying, because that would undo me. 

I’ve put myself together well enough to make it, but if another round hit me, then my fragile 

notion of inner peace would surely be dismantled. 

That's what I mean when I say we have to claw at life and fight at life. I don't know if it’s peace 

so much as it is struggle to stay here. I’ve had some really shitty things happen to me, but I’m 

still here. Right? And I want to live. And if I want to live, then I got to find some other stuff to help 

me stay sane in all of it. I really don’t know, but I can’t necessarily say that it’s a peaceful place 

so much as a place of acceptance and contentment. But I also think that space of inner 

peace is really hard to get to when you’re hit over and over again by violence. So maybe it’s 

not sexual violence but the violence of poverty, the violence of racism, violence of homophobia. 

There are so many forms of violence, and we tend to forefront one or the other, but so many 

people are being hit by so many forms of violence that it’s hard to reach this notion of inner peace. 

There’s a line from this movie called Sankofa and there’s a woman, an African woman who was 

enslaved and her name was Nunu. There was, I think this line she would say, “this is just the flesh, 

you can’t touch my spirit, my spirit is in Africa.” So when she, well I won’t spoil the thing, but I 

remember that really stuck with me. That distinction between what happened to my flesh and

what happened to my spirit. And I don’t practice any religion but I think about that, and I use that 

metaphor in my life. 

When I think about being a professor and what it was like for me struggling to get tenure and all, 

navigating this often hostile climate as a black woman, I would think about what happened to me 

in my childhood. What I was going through and I would put it in perspective. Like actually this is 

not real, this is the Matrix--fiction, a fabricated world! This is not pain, that was pain. Like this feels

 painful because it’s horrible and people are ridiculous and assholes for no reason but this is not 

real right? That was real pain. So I use it, I use the pain to ground me, too. All this other stuff is 

smaller than that. 

I think people can find inner peace by tapping into this spirit and also thinking about taking things 

into perspective. Those are kind of like strategies that I use, but I think inner peace is a practice. 

Like you literally have to practice it, remembering the joy, because sometimes the pain is so big 

and so multifaceted that it can make you forget. And that’s why it makes sense for some people 

to have spiritual practices to kind of remind them, like “what do I have to be grateful for?” And I 

guess the challenge for me in saying what I’m saying to you now is, that some people say you 

should only focus on that. “Well look you’re still alive! Look you didn’t die” So sometimes people 

use spirituality and religion to minimize people’s pain. I don’t want you to think that’s what I’m 

saying. I think your pain gets to sit right where it needs to sit, and no one can tell you where 

you’re supposed to put it because it hurts. Anyone who is like “I wish you could talk about it 

and move on,” No. It takes a lot of work to put that pain in perspective, especially if it’s happening

 multiple times. And for most women it’s happened more than once in their lives. And so they hold 

all that guilt because they think well I did something. So inner peace is very you know um, 

hard to get at. It is an active practice, it is not a destination. And I don’t blame anyone who hasn't

begun their journey yet because there’s a lot of shit that folks are working through to hold onto it, 

you know? Yea. 

HEALING 

Sexual trauma can look different for different people. Everyone has a different experience, and no

two people’s healing looks the same, but I think that healing, in general, from trauma, sexual or

other forms of violence is cyclical and enduring. I don't think that we ever quite heal, I think that 

you can be feeling very well for a decade, and there can be a moment that takes you back to the 

moment of victimization. And so part of it is knowing, and being aware of what your experience 

has done to you psychologically and physically. Having the support to be able to heal and to be 

authentic about what is troubling you and being able to name your pain and to friends and to 

family and to the world, to not be shamed for your experience and to know that that support is 

ongoing. 

The more support we have early on, the more likely we are to be stabilized. The less likely we are 

to have support, to be believed, to be affirmed and to name our pain, I think the longer that 

healing process takes to begin, and to take root. I’m a survivor of sexual trauma, and it is a 

process. I describe it as an ongoing process. There is no end point. I will be living with this pain for 

the rest of my life, and so for me, and for others, I think it looks like trying to figure out how to live 

and hold both your pain and joy in life. How to hold them at the same time. I think that is part of 

the healing process, finding ways to hold both pain and joy and to continue to claw at life and to 

live. Doing this though, you are going to need to be wrapped in resources informal and formal. 

Informal is your family and friends and formal may be therapeutic, or faith based forms of support, 
or it may be your hobbies, or exercise. All these things have to be with an eye on healing. Nothing

detrimental to your experience. But you could enter those spaces for healing and experience 

secondary forms of trauma. So those spaces have to be safe, and take up your quest in the 

healing process. 

So I’ll give you an example of someone who might have survived a rape and might go to the 

hospital to report the rape. And they're interrogated,” where were you?” “Why did you go there?” 

All these questions that begin to target you as the person, you who made a poor choice. What 

we call victim blaming. And somehow all of it has gotten away from the person who victimized 

you, to “what were the conditions surrounding the victimization and what role you played.” And 

so that is a secondary form of trauma. Because now you’re made to feel guilty or question your 

role in all of this. That is an additional traumatic event. The same thing happens when you go to 

the police. There’s often this notion that the police are this safe space, but that may not be true. 

Many women and femmes are victimized at the hands of law enforcement--sex workers, trans 

women, working class women, femmes/women of color, and femmes/women who are 

incarcerated are more likely to be victimized again when they come into contact  with law 
enforcement. These are compounding forms of sexual trauma. Maybe they’ve already experienced 
some form of sexual trauma in their life and then they come contact with this organization that is 

supposed to be supporting them or even rehabilitating them, and it becomes a site for more 

violence. Maybe you go to your minister looking for support, but that becomes a vulnerable space for 
many people who have been victimized. So, trust in that person who is in power, also becomes a 
vulnerable space to be in. So, I think we don’t really talk about that. There are so many forms of 
secondary violence and complex trauma that happens when we are told to go to these spaces 

that are supposed to be helpful. 

SUPPORT 

I feel that we need to be heard, I think we need to be validated, our experiences need to be 

validated. I think we need to know that our communities are safe and affirming and welcoming.

 I think that communities need to hold people who have victimized others accountable. I think that 

whatever accountability looks like it has to evoke their humanity and not compromise it. 

If you put someone who’s victimized someone in a more inhuman setting, we can’t 

necessarily say that that’s going to make that person a better person at the end of the 

accountability process. I would want that person to become a better person. To somehow 

be able to recover and to be able to think through the harm they have caused to the person 

they have victimized, to themselves, and to their community and to think through “how do I 

become a whole person after this?” I also think that person who is a perpetrator is also a 

victim, because they have now compromised their humanity. I think that the person who has 

been primarily victimized needs to be prioritized and protected and needs to be empowered to 

know that they can move forward. We are stronger than we think we are. And how do we 

remember to hold pain and acknowledge that still there is opportunity for joy. But it’s really hard, 

depending on how violent the attack was and depending on how much you trusted the person 

who attacked you. The conditions make it really hard. 

I feel like that person needs to be loved, protected, and affirmed, listened to but we have to be 

really patient with survivors. Because we want people to get over it, we want people to snap out 

of it, but you can’t! It has shaken you to your core, whatever that thing is that happened to you.

And you need time to put yourself back together. If you were told that it didn’t happen to you, 

if you were told or received societal messages that said it was your fault, it can take a really long 

time. If you haven’t been given the resources and you have to show up at work or school the next 

day, if it happened to you at work or school--because we’re assuming that these things are only 

happening in dark alleys and parking lots. No, it’s happening at home, most people who have 

been sexually victimized are being victimized by their partners, or people they know. Married 

women are victimized by their partners, girls are victimized by their boyfriends, right? Children 

are victimized by adults that are supposedly protecting them, teachers, priests, coaches, parents, 

aunts, uncles, older siblings. Then you get to college and it happens on a date or after a party. 

So I think that there’s also an assumption that its only happening once in someone’s life, or that 

we should get over it when it’s really persistent and chronic. And so if the attacks against our

 humanity are persistent and chronic then I think the affirmation in support of our humanity 

has to be persistent, consistent and loving. 

You Too

So the majority of women I know and love, who are on social media (and many who are not),  have been victims of sexual and other forms of gender based violence. Men and people responsible for raising men, are you fucking telling me that our daughters do not stand a chance in living lives without being preyed upon?! Are we expected to warn them that their bodies & spirits will always be under attack by you, people who look like you, and the sons of the world?! Please tell me this is NOT normal but our testimonies, both spoken & unspoken, say that sexual assault & rape are expected, normal, pervasive & chronic! Do not respond to this post, just go do the work of humanizing manhood and masculinity.

And if anyone even tries to come for me with that “not all men” bullshit I will quickly shut that shit down by saying, I’m not a fucking idiot. I live with 3 beautiful feminist men. I know what manhood and masculinity can look like and I have faith in men’s capacity to grow and evolve. Having said that, it is up to ALL MEN to address rape culture head on with all the other men they are connected to. We are tired and many of us are assaulted just as much by your silence & apathy  as your son’s, brother’s, uncle’s, father’s, grandfather’s, teammate’s, frat brother’s, pastor’s, coach’s, friend’s, neighbor’s, colleague’s, coworker’s, favorite athlete’s, and your boy’s attack on our humanity.

on the balcony

 I shared my trauma story with my daughter yesterday. I shared it with both of her brothers in the past. My oldest son came into my room one time when I was sleeping and his presence triggered a flashback. I screamed at him to get out of my room. I decided shortly after to share with him that my father would molest me at night and that I got freaked out a bit but was truly sorry. He was understanding. my poor baby! I shared my story with my younger son out of anger and frustration. He was angry with his dad about our then upcoming move to Chicago and I had had enough of his jabs at his dad. I confronted him and shared that while what he was going through was tough, that is was not trauma and that his father was trying to make a better life for him. I shared what having an abusive father was really like and said I wished I had a loving dad like his. yeah, I went there. He soon chilled out and he is the most adjusted of my 3 children since we have moved. Our talk will probably will have him in therapy later in life but my buttons were pushed. (note to self: have a 2nd talk with him) My poor baby!!!! But yesterday was the last time that I shared my story with one of my children and it was the one I dreaded the most. Telling my daughter...

After a week long hectic move, it was the 1st day Z and I were hanging out on our new balcony. She was sharing how she and some girls from her school were organizing a protest against the school's sexist dress code. We talked double standards and respectability politics. She mentioned that it is just the older women, particularly black women that say something to her. I told her I had her back but also explained that some black folks are conservative and some may mean no harm and think they are protecting you from men's/boy's advances. I explained that black women's sexuality has historically been exploited and our responses (good and problematic) have been attempts to reclaim our dignity. I explained that even with those histories of racism and sexism, black woman and girls should demand their bodily autonomy. We agreed that what someone is wearing has nothing to do sex or enticement and people should not police a girl's/woman's body. I noted that men and boys should be in control of themselves. We discussed rape and rape culture. We both acknowledged that people rape people and that it is wrong. 

 But I also confessed that even I had to get used to her wearing leggings, short shorts and bikinis once her body started filling out. I told her it was hard and that I too wanted to protect her/cover her up. I then shared how it has been a struggle watching her do her thing as she grows up but I know that I have to let her go. I finally took a deep breathe and said that "it happened to me" and that I wanted to be sure it didn't happen to her. If you could have seen my baby's face when she realized what I was saying and as the tears welled up in her little eyes as my voice quivered. my poor baby!!!!! I kept going before I lost the nerve to get it out and shared that it was my father. She came over and hugged me.  I told her it was a scary time in my life but that I was ok. I told her I was her age. I told her I was proud of her for knowing that her body is hers and that no one should tell her what she can and cannot do with it. She said, with tears streaming down her face that she was sorry that IT happened to me. I thanked her and we comforted each other. 

The moment was both incredibly heavy and somehow also very light. If felt like we saw into each other's souls when we looked at each other with shared love and concern. I asked her if the balcony could be our "spot" for sharing and connecting and she said yes. Then Cabral called us for breakfast! Perfect timing, pancakes sooth the soul! 

p.s. School District 97, you'd better look out because my daughter and her crew are coming for ya!!  

Q: What's in a name? A: freedom

I am the first born daughter of Deborah Wilson and Wash Wilson, Jr. They named me Monique Antionette Wilson. I liked my name growing up, despite being called almost last at every school event and ceremony because my last name was at the end of the alphabet. I also tolerated being corrected by others because my middle name, Antionette, was spelled incorrectly since my version had the "i" before the "o".  My name sounds French and that made me feel fancy and sophisticated. I had many nicknames, some I loved "Cover Girl" (my older male cousins Butch & Teddy said I was as pretty as a Cover Girl! I love me some them!) and some I grew to despise "Crow" (because of my skinny bird legs). Then there were the school years of being called "dead eye" because I have a lazy eye and being called a "slut" behind my back. Ahhhh, names, they carry weight. 

Over the years, I created physical distance between my sexually abusive father and me by going to college and not returning home, but I found myself still wanting to "free" myself from his surname. Initially I thought that I could easily just change my last name to my mother's maiden name of Wilkerson. It would mean just adding three letters, KER, in the middle of Wilson. Simple enough. I was also reading more and more about the Black experience in the US during that same time period. I had recently read Kwame Toure's (formerly Stokely Carmicheal) book "Stokley Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan Africanism". It included a speech he gave at my alma mater, Morgan State University, that resonated with me politically. I also read "The Autobiography of Malcolm X". He too, changed his name from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabbaz as part of his political and religious journey. "Assata: An Autobiography" by Assasta Shakur (formerly Joanne Chesimard) crystalized my understandings of the gender politics within the Black Panther party as well as the criminalization and surveillance of Black bodies at the hands of the US government. These revolutionaries and authors sharpened my emergent thinking on black and Pan African politics but they also influenced my thinking on naming.

I learned that your name is yours. I also learned that your name can shape your identity and your politics. Or did I learn that your identity and politics can influence your name? This is a cart-horse debate that I don't wish to take up here but I do believe that my search for self, a self independent of my father's unwanted advances and a self free of white men's chains were emerging simultaneously.  I descend from a long history of racial and gender oppression and a long history of black women pushing back against these histories in an attempt to chart their own destinies.  Although, I lacked the sophistication to name exactly what I was doing when I decided to change my name at 23 years old, I know that these histories informed my act of resistance.

So, while I was in my master's program, I went to the Black Studies library at Ohio State University one day to do research and checked out 2-3 books on African names. I eventually found two names I liked Sekile (again with the missellings, I think it is actually spelled Sakile) and Nzinga (also spelled Nzingha and Njinga, sigh). I had decided I would change my sur/last name to an African name but I was not sure which one to go with. Sekile/Sakile was from the southern region in Africa, a Zulu name that meant "peace" and Nzinga/Nzingha was the name of a fierce 16th century, warrior queen who ruled a region in Africa, which is now Angola. http://www.blackpast.org/gah/queen-nzinga-1583-1663. I liked both names. One evoking peace and one evoking independence, resistance, and strength. Monique Nzinga? Monique Sekile? I liked the names but neither had a ring to them when combined with my birth name. I mentioned my struggle to someone and they quickly suggested, why not use both? Nzinga Sekile? Sekile Nzinga? Sekile Nzinga. yes, Sekile Nzinga!

I shared my name change decision with one of my childhood friends. Interestingly, her name was Monik (pronounced, Monique), too. She was actually in the process of changing her name to Akilah Njeri. We cracked up at the similarity of our name choices and at the coincidence of our timing. Our friends and family weren't as amused. As I shared my new "radical" name with friends and family, I was met with backlash and disapproval by some. "So, what do you think you're blacker than me?!", one friend asked defensively. "I understand you wanting to connect with your African ancestry but what about your white ancestors?!", a family member quipped. Those were the statements from those who were brazen enough to have face to face conversations with me. Eventually, most came to call me "Monique..I mean Sekile!" and then later, just Sekile. Anyone over the age of 60 got a pass, my Grannie still calls me Monique and I still answer to it.  I never told anyone that I was changing my name not only to identify with my African ancestry but also to symbolically sever my connections to my child molesting father. 

Over the next few years, I met co-workers and former classmates who were going through the same name changing process and they encouraged me to not just "go by" Sekile but actually change my name legally. I married in 1996 but had not begun the legal name change process.  So our marriage license says Monique. However, my pregnancy with my first child served as the catalyst for my official name change. I wanted my chosen name on his birth certificate and filed the necessary paper work at the court house in Prince George's county in Maryland in 1997. 

It was at that time that I made the difficult decision to also take my husband's name. I had just spent the last 4 years claiming my independence from histories of violence and trauma but in this case, this was a man that loved and respected me. This was joy. It was a confusing time, so I succumbed to the societal pressure that most US women face to take their husbands' names. My partner said he didn't care but I was not sure. He loved me and I wanted him to know that I loved him.  I became Sekile Nzinga-Johnson legally in 1997.

I feel like I lost a little of myself in that decision but I later began to appreciate having a name that was connected to the Black experience here in the US. That is where my closest ancestry lies and I am deeply indebted to all those ordinary blacks folks, like the Johnsons of Mobile, Alabama, who worked hard, struggled to stay alive and contributed to this society with little recognition. Maybe this is me rationalizing my heteronormative decision so that I feel less gendered but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I am still in the process of healing from my child sexual abuse. It is lifelong. I have accepted the infinity of its pain. Yet, in the past year, I've also have found myself circling back to appreciating the name Monique. Monique lives. Monique symbolizes the innocence that should have been my childhood. Monique is joy. She coexists WITH and IN Sekile. Yet she has stayed hidden, dormant within until she felt safe to come back out and play. It's taken years, decades for her to feel secure in this world. As Sekile, I find myself calling upon Monique quite often these days. Monique reminds me what real pain is and to not let the small things in life take up more space than they deserve. Monique reminds me that I need and deserve time to play and be free. Monique makes me speak on it and act on it. injustice. speak, Sekile! Monique, with her working class reality, reminds PhD'd Sekile to remain wild and untamed by middle class respectability politics and fired up about inequity. I am Sekile. I am Monique.

Been thinking about another name change these days....Sekile Monique Nzinga-Johnson. I know, it's kind of a mouthful! Until then, I'm going to go drink a glass of sweet tea and hula hoop with Monique.

-Sekile M. Nzinga-Johnson

p.s. 2/10/20. I recently dropped the Johnson from my last name although I kept my partner of 26 years. Nzinga-Johnson is still my legal name but Nzinga is what I will use professionally and socially. I continue to evolve into myself and he continues to be the man who is secure in his masculinity with no need to "own" me or mark me as being his possession. Freedom lives here.

--Sekile M. Nzinga

p.s.s. 3/28/24 My new SS card and my new license came in the mail today. I am now officially/legally Sekile M. Nzinga, a free assed black woman. 

My thoughts on trigger alerts

I am at an impasse. This blog will discuss sexual abuse, rape, child abuse, racism, sexism, elitism, poverty, homophobia and other forms of structural violence. As a person who has two degrees in social work and has worked as a therapist for survivors of trauma, I am forced to consider whether I will foreground the potential triggers embedded in my blog at the beginning of each post. I am also a survivor of many forms of abuse and personally feel re-traumatized when directly exposed to images of rape scenes or other stories of gender based torture. However, even with these professional and personal histories, I’m choosing not to regularly announce that the content that I post here could be triggering. Why? Because, my intention with this blog is to assert that trauma and joy can co-exist and not privilege one over the other. We do indeed live with trauma. As women. As people of color. As subjugated folk.  How will our collective rage spill over to action if we do not stare our collective pains in the face?!

Systematic violence and oppression require collective confrontation and for keepers of a culture of violence to be held accountable. Those who are most affected deserve validation, healing and justice.  I believe that we begin to heal by resisting being silenced. We draw strength and seek justice from naming the thing that should not be named.

I am making the assumption that those who will read this blog are not eternal victims who are beyond repair. Instead I am imagining that they often searching for community and that they are hoping that there is another side of that wall they are facing. I don’t mean to reduce other’s pain but I DO aim to forefront life—even when it involves tragedy. I take this position not because there is temporal and spatial distance between me and my trauma. I carry its heavy load daily. But I stand firm because I believe that each breath has the potential of a joy filled future in spite of our aches. What do you think of my decision? As survivors, do we need to be protected from possible triggers at every turn?  This is where I am today but I would to discuss this issue further with other survivors.