It’s easy to say you believe survivors. It’s harder to actually believe them.

Or, how to put that hashtag into practice

My grandmother called me this week to talk about a million things, as she is wont to do. She lives in a trailer down a panhandle lot in Oregon and has never used a computer and sometimes she just wants to chat. Most of the time, we talk about the same handful of things. She compliments me profusely, in spite of having exactly zero idea of what my life — 300 miles and several worlds away — is like, and encourages me.

My great grandfather, his mother, and one of her (several) husbands.

She will also, almost without fail, remind me that I come from a legacy of strong women — bitchy, usually, is the word she actually prefers — and that because of that, I can do anything. Her mother didn’t take any shit from a man. Her grandmother didn’t take any shit from a man. And I too, as a result, will not take any shit from a man, she assures me.

“There has never been an abused woman in this family,” she’ll say, “because all of the women are just too strong. We’d never let that happen!”

Oh, Abuelita, I think, if only it were that simple.