What do you need to feel safe?

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I don’t have the words this week. I just don’t have them.

Yesterday asked me what I need to do to feel safe and I think if I answer that question honestly, it would be that I can do nothing.

I can put my headphones on and put my bare feet on the cool wet grass and breathe in the icy autumn air whilst feeling the warmth of the sun on my face. I can breathe deep down into my tummy until my hands stop shaking and my heart slows down beating. I can listen to the beautiful Autumn playlist from until my nervous system regulates itself.

But I still won’t feel safe.

I still won’t be safe.

If you follow me on Instagram you’ll have seen the bonfire night fiasco. Thank you so much to everyone who has messaged me and helped me with this - either with words of comfort or suggestions of who to contact for support.

A man in my village has created an annual fireworks display on the green outside of my house. Not just a few fireworks in a back garden but a 30 minute display that drew in cars and people from all around the village. I’ve asked him to please move it somewhere else, I’ve explained how hard my neurodivergent family find fireworks, how hard that night is regardless - without it being brought right to our front door. In the last 24 hours I have been threatened, called names and had vile things said about me from a whole host of people.

Just for asking for people to move this event away from my home.

But it’s not just about the fireworks, is it.

All of these people shared in their gratitude toward the man for organising the event, for bringing ‘the community’ together. There’s been a lot of chat about this ‘community’, one I thought I was a part of.

But what is a community if it only honours and respects the needs and views of the majority? If it vilifies and threatens anyone who needs something different? Without even trying to listen or understand.

So far, neither the local police nor the local council will help me. Despite the government website stating it is illegal to set off fireworks in public spaces. Despite the lack of safety precautions, risk assessments, public liability insurance.

On the phone, the male police officer spoke over me, did not listen as I explained the above issues and treat me like I was a silly girl bothering him.

It’s not the first time this week or this month that a man has spoken to me as if I am a petulant girl who needs to get over herself and leave the grown-ups to get on with things.

These men are right there in all of the positions of power or in the professions we need to access to get help, whether with our health or our homes, issues such as these or something else. And no, #notallmen, but my experience for certain is that most of them set out assuming they know better than me and so never fully listen or help. And the anger you get when you don’t simply shut up is unreal.

How can I be safe or feel safe when this is how society works?

And this isn’t even looking at the gender-based police violence. At the sexual assault claims towards far too many members of parliament. At the 50,000 pregnant women caught up in conflict in Gaza, birthing without pain medication or safety - their aid blocked by powerful men who will never know what it means or feels like to create life.

As we turn toward the darker half of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere, it is another reminder to women that we are not safe here.

When you can’t go for a run, or walk the dog or pop to the shop after work anymore because it’s too dark. For half of the year we’re meant to struggle to fit all these things in during daylight hours, lest a man accidentally rape and murder us.

Men are never reminded not to rape women when the nights get darker, are they? Though you’d think that would be a lot easier than trying to fit a run in alongside your lunch break or cutting it down to weekend running only in winter whilst you remember you need milk but you’ve ran out of daylight to walk so you’ll have to take the car.

How do we fix this?

What do we need to do to feel safe? To be safe? To build and have communities where minority and minoritised voices are herd and held and supported?

Answers on a postcard please and thank you.

Zoe xx

letters from my bedroom window…