It stops here.
Today the teenager relayed her grief on learning of a classmate who had been raped by a relative.
I listened, responded with all appropriate compassion (and admiration for HER compassion), then left the room as quickly as possible, so I could weep.
For her classmate, yes. But also, selfishly, with joy for the fact that my daughter could be so shocked.
She may be the first young woman among many in recent generations of my family to have never experienced rape (much less the familial kind).
Here’s to that innocence (and that of her little sister, who at ten is now older than I was, the first time I was molested) remaining intact, now and for all future generations.
