Trusting Yourself After Trauma with Jaye Garcia, Eternity Martis, Kenisha Charles and Chenthoori Malankov-Milton
Sometimes, the first person we need to tell that we were sexually assaulted is ourselves. Too often we can convince ourselves that it wasn’t “so bad,” that we can “handle it” or that it was somehow our fault. All of these are not true. In this Healing Comes in Waves episode, we are talking to Chenthoori Malankov-Milton, Jaye Garcia and Eternity Martis about understanding what it means to be a survivor and how that is different for everybody.
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Although there are no descriptions of sexual violence in this podcast series, any conversation about sexual violence can bring up big feelings and be hard to hear.
Listen in a way that feels safer for you. You get to choose.
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Trauma and Recovery: Judith Herman
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk M.D.
Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, Peter Levine
Written on the Body: Letters from Trans and Non-Binary Survivors of Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Edited by Lexie Bean
Dear Sister: Letters from Survivors of Sexual Violence. Edited by Lisa Factora-Borchers
They Said This Would Be Fun: Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up by Eternity Martis.
“Me saying out loud to my younger self that it was never your fault. You were so courageous even during when it happened and after. I love you so much. And I am here holding you every step of the way, and now you're safe, you're safe. And you, you deserve joy. You deserve love, you deserve joy. And I care so much for you. To anyone who's listening, you're cared for. So sending big love waves of love, your way .“
- Chenthoori Malankov-Milton
About Our Guests
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Chenthoori Malankov-Milton (she/her) is a daughter of the Thamil Diaspora. She is a grassroots gender-justice advocate. She lives, works, and plays as a guest on the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Huron-Wendat Peoples. Chenthoori is a Social Worker who incorporates a transformative healing justice framework and is committed to cultivating a better world for all marginalized communities. She enjoys spending time with her two pups in her spare time, practising yoga and smashing the patriarchy.
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Jaye Garcia (they/them) is a fat, queer, gender non-binary, racialized person of colour with hidden disabilities, born and raised by Latinx refugee immigrants in Amiskwaciywaskahikan ("Beaver Hill House" in Cree; AKA Edmonton, AB). Jaye is eager to continue their journey as a settler-guest, living, (un)learning, and growing in Tkaronto.
Presently, Jaye works at ACT, an AIDS Service Organization (ASO) in Toronto, coordinating programming for People Living with HIV/AIDS (PHA), those 'at-risk' and those in solidarity whose livelihoods persist despite ongoing neglect by the state. The year is 2022, and Jaye remains unapologetically fat, femme and fierce.
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Keneisha Charles (they/them) is an organizer and artist who strives to dream and co-create liberation through all they do. As a fat, Black, queer, nonbinary, autistic, second-generation Caribbean, intersectionality is at the heart of their praxis. Their community work centres around Black liberation, collective care, environmental justice, disability justice, queer-trans liberation, and gender equity. As a poet, storyteller, and musician, they’re also passionate about the role of art in revolution. Their present work with the Consent Action Team helped launch #HighSchoolToo, a national student-led network that works to end sexual violence in secondary schools. They’re currently completing a Bachelor of Social Work degree with a double minor in Caribbean Studies and Disability Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University.
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Eternity Martis is an associate professor at the School of Journalism and Toronto Metropolitan University. She is also an award-winning journalist and editor whose work on race and gender has been featured in VICE, Chatelaine, Maclean’s, Flare, Salon, CBC, Hazlitt, The Walrus and many more. Her bestselling, award-winning memoir They Said This Would Be Fun: Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up, about being a woman of colour at a predominantly white university, won the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Non-Fiction and was named a “Best Book of 2020” by the Globe and Mail, Chapters/Indigo, Audible and Apple.
Her writing has helped newsrooms, including The Review of Journalism, Xtra, the Toronto Star, and tvo.org change their style guides to capitalize “Black” and “Indigenous,” and her writing has been taught on academic syllabuses at North American and Caribbean universities. Following a petition by journalism graduates at X University for more diverse courses in light of the murder of George Floyd, Eternity developed and teaches “Reporting On Race: Black Communities and the Media” at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Journalism, the first course of its kind in Canada.
