You may know the Vagina Monologues, but you may not know this monologue

Violence against women effects EVERYONE. If you can be nothing, be aware.

“Every mother has what I call, “developmental dreams”; for her daughter
To be happy as a child, to find a sense of love for herself early on
To find maturity through adolescence, regardless of how it grays us as parents
To find love in adulthood, tempered with respect, fidelity and passion…
All of you here tonight are warriors
Warriors know no gender
It is not a male or female issue
The right to be safe and free and loved is a war-cry we all can do
To honor the vaginas in our lives
Our daughters
Mothers
Grandmothers
Sisters
Aunts
Nieces
Teachers
Bus drivers
Bossses
Workers
Beauticians
Doctors
Etc etc etc
Tonight we gather as crusaders for all the vaginas we know
But * I * know
Having worked with vaginas for years
That crusaders are often in need of the very thing they fight for
If I had you count off
And divided you, by random numbers
I could statistically tell you
On the average
In this room
In this audience
How many of you have been raped
Been battered wives
Victims of hate crimes
Victims of incest
Tortured
Objectified
Mutilated
Desecrated
Denied
And what of the ones I cant include in the numbers game
Those who are dead?
How would I account for them?
But none of you here tonight are statistics
You cannot sit through an evening of the monologues
And still view women as mere numbers
You have heard the stories and my learned guess is
For many of you
Parts of this night
Hit too close to home
Look at me
See my face
I see yours
Men and women
Young and old
All colors, heights, sizes,
I see you…
When are you going to love yourself as much as I do?”

Read this monologue for yourself, for your mother, for any and every woman in your life.