ain’t No Justice. It’s Just Us.
When Justice Seems Out of Reach: How Survivors Can Have Self-Care in an Unjust World
I was passively listening to the late D’Angelo the other day when one lyric got stuck on repeat in my mind:
Ain’t no justice
It's just us
Suddenly I was Alice tumbling down a dissociative rabbit hole.
There are moments in history when the world feels like it is tilting dangerously backward. Right now is one of those moments when misogyny resurges, when powerful people normalize harm, when survivors are told once again that their pain is “exaggerated,” “unbelievable,” or “inconvenient.” I hear this reality and fear daily. Just this past week, some of you told me:
“It feels like the walls are closing in.”
“I don’t feel safe anywhere.”
“I’m terrified that things will only get worse.”
And we cried together. Still, you know me. I’m not going to soothe you with empty optimism. I find toxic positivity revolting. But what I am here to do is to help you stay alive—emotionally, spiritually, and literally—in a world that often refuses to protect you.
There is a quiet violence in pretending things aren’t as bad as they feel. You might be noticing rising misogynistic rhetoric, online harassment targeting ciswomen, trans folks, and girls, indifference to abuse by wealthy or powerful people, and institutions responding with silence or denial. Naming this doesn’t make you “negative.” It makes you accurate. And accuracy is grounding because there is a difference between hopelessness and orientation. One collapses you; the other helps you see the landscape clearly enough to move.
You may or may not have joined the “when I was 15…” social media prompt meant to highlight the youthfulness and not adulthood of being a middle teen for the purpose of clarifying that the victims on the Epstein list were indeed children. When I was 15, I loved Anne Rice novels and secretly dressed in a Victorian gown to imitate nobility and royalty. I did this in part to escape my harsh reality and to give myself hope for a softer future. A few years later, as an assault survivor, I leaned back into some of those fantastical ideas of vengeance through magical or otherworldly means. I did this because there was no justice. Justice means being believed, being protected, and seeing accountability and consequences. Many survivors are not provided this and at the present we are seeing that on a global scale.
So what happens when the world offers none of resolve?
Relief, then, becomes something different, something smaller, more internal, more sacred. To me now, relief means choosing dignity when others withhold it, protecting your energy when someone is committed to misunderstanding you, refusing narratives that blame you for harm you did not choose, and finding community with people who see you, even if it’s only one or two.
This is not “settling.” This is redefining justice as your wholeness, not their punishment.
Over the years working with survivors and healing myself, I recognize that we carry a quiet pressure to be constantly strong, constantly educating, constantly defending their existence. But fighting all the time isn’t resilience. Sometimes it’s self-abandonment. Let me be very clear that you will burn out if you do not take the time to care for yourself. Self-care in this context looks like choosing silence instead of debate, blocking instead of explaining, resting instead of vigilance, and curating your online world instead of absorbing all of it. Sometimes the most powerful act of resistance is disengagement. And no, it’s not because you’re giving up. It’s because your body is not built to be a battlefield every day.
Your strength doesn’t shrink when you rest.
It recalibrates.
When the world feels hostile, withdrawing can feel like the only option. And sometimes, it is the safest option. But isolation becomes heavy quickly. I have told many of you that I would rather have four quarters than 100 pennies. I usually tell you this when we discuss quality and value in our relationships. My point is always that you don’t need a large circle; you need a selected circle. You need a friend you can text without explaining your entire history, a therapist who doesn’t need convincing, a group or community where misogyny is named, not debated, and one online space that feels like oxygen, not poison. You deserve to be witnessed. Being seen by a few is more regulating than being surrounded by many.
Toxic positivity says: “Stay hopeful! Everything will be fine!” That’s cute for a throw pillow, but hope, for many survivors, has been weaponized. We’ve been told to “have faith” in systems that consistently fail us.
Emotional endurance, on the other hand, says things that may sound … realistic? I’m not sure, and some of you roll your eyes at me when I say it, but it’s like “This is terrifying and you’re not wrong for feeling overwhelmed” or “Your reaction is a sign of your sensitivity, not your weakness” or “You don’t have to imagine a bright future; let’s just get you through the next hour.”
And I get the eye roll because I’m not talking about resilience, which is how we keep push through, but rather endurance for how we honor ourselves. It’s hard to honor ourselves when we feel or are made to feel undeserving of doing just that.
But endurance is built through honest grief, grounded boundaries, small joys, nervous-system regulation, micro-moments of connection, and rest that isn’t earned, but deserved. I will never encourage you to pretend that the world is safe. We can absolutely find moments and pockets of safety. However, I will always encourage you to boldly refuse to let the world hollow you out.
Tools like the Power and Control Wheel help survivors understand the shape of abuse. But awareness isn’t the same as empowerment. After mapping the violence, the question becomes “Where do I have power, even in small ways?” I know that this question can sometimes feel burdensome, but the point is to reclaim a locus of self-containment. Let’s call it the Counter-Wheel of Reclamation. Here we’re relying on various forms of personal power, including:
Voice Power
Telling the truth in safe places. Journaling. No longer minimizing what happened.Boundary Power
Saying no without justification. Limiting contact. Blocking. Choosing not to educate.Body Power
Sleeping. Stretching. Eating enough. Movement that soothes rather than punishes.Narrative Power
Refusing harmful cultural scripts about women, bodies, or trauma.Future Power
Making tiny plans. Allowing yourself to imagine even a small version of a life that feels like yours.
Reclamation happens in increments, not revolutions.
If you’re still reading, you may be identified as someone who is demonized for one reason or another — either you spoke out against someone in power or called out injustice or refused to be defined by your genitals — and you might ask yourself “Why live in a world that hates people like me?”
The answer to this existential question cannot be false reassurance. It must be grounded, human, and fierce:
Because your existence is not up for debate.
Because surviving is not compliance; it’s defiance.
Because your life has worth separate from the cruelty of systems.
Because you deserve a life that doesn’t require constant armor. And we build that life one breath at a time.
Survivors in oppressive environments need harm-reduction strategies for the soul. I often gently suggest that you take social media breaks to give your system and spirit rest. You don’t have to be informed about everything, correct every lie, absorb every headline, apologize for protecting your peace, or mistake burnout for weakness.
Instead please try to think of endurance as a rotation. Some days you fight. Some days you rest. Some days you create. Some days you collapse and rebuild. All of it counts. You are not meant to carry this alone.
As I occasionally tune into the news before returning to myself, I am reminded that justice may be delayed and vindication may be denied, but relief is still possible. Sometimes justice is keeping your softness intact in a world designed to harden you. Sometimes healing is the refusal to disappear. Sometimes survival is the slow, steady decision to stay. The world doesn’t deserves you, but you for damn sure deserve yourself. Your existence is not small. Your life is not disposable. And your fight, however paced or imperfect, is enough.
You are always enough. 💖
