Fear doesn’t always scream or fight

Romi taught something to the whole world when she said, "Until you are in this situation, you cannot understand what happens to the body."

"Fear paralyzes, and I was paralyzed. Nothing went through my mind in those seconds except that I am afraid and that I am disgusted."

In describing what it was like after one of her s*xual assa*lts, Romi explained somatically what happened to her body.

She told us about the ringing in her ears, the sensation of the world spinning.

She described the out of body expeirence, like watching from above when she was first brought to G*za and the people were pulling at her clothes, 15 people touching her at the same time, leaving her basically naked.

What Romi taught the world in those words is something essential.

She taught us that trauma is something the body lives through in real time.

That fear doesn’t always scream or fight.

Sometimes it freezes.

Sometimes it leaves the mind entirely and lodges itself in sensation.

She taught us that dissociation is not weakness, but can be protection.

That the body knows how to survive what the mind cannot yet hold.

When Romi spoke about ringing ears, spinning, watching from above, she was giving language to an experience that so many people carry but cannot name.

She translated the unspeakable into language:

giving people words for sensations they have long carried,

and softening the stigma that surrounds them.

This is what testimony can do.

It widens the world’s understanding of what survival looks like.

And because she spoke, because she named what happened inside her body, countless others now have words, and permission, for their own truth.

That is what Romi gave us.

(Image: Ziv Koren)