April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and that matters to me in a very personal way. This is not just an awareness campaign or something I repost because it generates clicks or because it’s trending. It’s personal. In the prologue of Saved to Serve, I shared that on August 31, 2006, I was drugged and raped by someone I thought was a friend. This August 31 will mark 20 years since that night. Twenty years is a long time to carry something that violent, and it is also a reminder that sexual assault changes people in lasting ways. That is why this month matters to me. It is about survivors being seen, believed, and not pushed into silence.

It also matters because rape culture does not come out of nowhere. We live in a world that constantly teaches people to see women as commodities instead of people. You see it in trafficking. You see it in pornography. You see it in OnlyFans and adult services being pushed through disguised social media accounts. You see it in places like Twin Peaks, Hooters, strip clubs, and in suggestive advertising that keeps selling women’s bodies as entertainment. When that kind of messaging is everywhere, it becomes easier for exploitation to feel normal and easier for dignity to be stripped away.

So for me, April is not just about awareness. It is about honesty. It is about saying out loud that this issue is real, that it is still happening, and that we should be far more disturbed by the culture helping fuel it. After nearly 20 years, I care about this month because I know what sexual violence takes from a person, and I also know how important it is to keep speaking up anyway.