Walking Into the Fire

What Nellie Bly did for asylums, women today must do for the courts.

In 1887, Nellie Bly risked everything to expose the abuse and neglect hidden inside a women's asylum.

In 2025, women are still walking into institutions that gaslight, endanger, and silence them - not in asylums, but in family courts, police stations, and bureaucratic systems that pretend to serve justice.

I know this because I lived it.

I walked through the neglect of my father.

I survived the abuse of my husband.

And then, I met the third abuser - the system itself.

The judges, the police, the administrators who promised safety but delivered silence.

The ones who "couldn't get involved."

The ones who took my evidence and my truth and said, "We're worried about his ability to get relicensed 'at his job in a public health sector' if the truth of his abusive violence behind closed doors is made public."

The ones who watch women and children lose homes, dignity, and hope - while men walked free.

The individuals who knew I've spent three decades protecting and cultivating a lifelong body of art, and that this financial abuse puts me at direct risk of losing it all.

All this, while I've remained sober for 20 years - working tirelessly on healing, personal growth, and contributing to humanity through my art and truth.

What Nellie Bly faced in the asylum was horror disguised as care.

What we face now is abuse disguised as law.

Women are still being institutionalized - not with straightjackets, but with debt, custody battles, and the threat of losing everything if we speak up.

And just like Bly, we are documenting everything.

We are writing, exposing, and refusing to go quietly.

Because silence is complicity.

And truth, when spoken by a woman who has survived the unthinkable, becomes a weapon of light.

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I am not crazy. I am conscious. And I will not stop until the system is held accountable.

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The Court System Must Be Held Accountable: Women and Children Deserve Safety

Women and children deserve safety. Yet across the globe, corrupt judges and administrators continue to cause colossal harm under a misogynist, colonial, patriarchal system.

Too often, women who are victims of abuse lose homes, custody, or stability, even when there's clear documentation of abuse. Meanwhile, the men responsible - sometimes decades older, sometimes with new partners, often holding professional roles serving the public - face little to no consequence. The women, often the ones keeping the household and raising children, bear the full burden of loss and trauma.

This isn't just incompetence. It's a deliberate continuation of abuse and systemic discrimination. Judges, lawyers, and law enforcement officers must be trauma-informed and accountable for the real-world consequences of their decisions.

There is zero excuse for ignorance. Willful ignorance in positions of power is abuse. And it's costing lives.

It's time for the courts, the administrators, and the entire legal system to answer for the harm they perpetuate.

Women and children should never be forced to pay the price for a broken system.

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I’ve been alchemizing my healing journey through writing since escaping domestic violence eight months ago — but my expression didn’t begin there. I’ve been painting since I was fourteen, using art as the only language left to me when silence was forced upon me at home. Over the decades, I’ve created more than four hundred works — each one a record of survival, rebellion, and faith in beauty when the world refused to listen.

Women everywhere are rising — documenting, exposing, reclaiming language and creativity as our birthright. This isn’t just personal healing; it’s part of a larger spiritual revolution that insists truth itself is sacred.

Let these words serve as witness, as warning, and as prayer: the light will not go out.

— The Honed Crone

#TheHonedCrone #SurvivorVoice #DomesticViolenceAwareness #WomenRise #SystemicAbuse #JusticeForWomen #TruthToPower #SpiritualAwakening #FemininePower #ArtAsResistance #HealingThroughArt