Witness to a Miracle

8 years ago, I was witness to a miracle.

Jennifer Lanzaro was a beautiful spirit born with cystic fibrosis, she lived her life with enzymes and breathing treatments, with laughter and love, with Mets baseball and slurpees, and with her sister Marissa who did the same except wisely preferred Yankee baseball. Both Jennifer and Marissa bravely battled this horrendous disease, they stood by each other and supported the efforts of one another and believed in a bigger, brighter future for themselves and for the generations behind them.

When Marissa died in June of 2006, the world stopped spinning and for a while our hope for brighter future was dimmed. But just six months later, Jennifer would save us all, as a kind stranger saved her. Jennifer lay in the grips of death waiting on what could only be called a miracle. And I witnessed it. The miracle of organ donation. I walked at the head of her bed as she was wheeled to the OR and wondered what our lives would be like ten hours from now. I wondered and waited by the elevator, starving but not eating the NY take out in Mt Sinai's cardio-thoracic surgery waiting room. I thought back to six months prior and remembered making the photo collages for Marissa's funeral while Jennifer lay her head in my lap, I silently hoped that I would not be making collages again because who would lay their head in my lap? I sat terrified, and thought about how we would survive if she did not. It was such a challenge to put together the excitement for these new lungs with the uncertainty of the surgery and the critical nature of Jen's condition. But when morning came, our hearts exploded, and we were all saved along with Jennifer. One of her many surgeons came out to tell us all that the surgery went well, and I can remember holding my breath and reaching for the round leather stool in the waiting room as my knees buckled. It would be days before she could talk to us, months before she would come home and it would be four years almost to the day when her time would come and we would all gather inside her hospital room to hold her hand as she left this world. In that time we would celebrate holidays, lungaversarys, and birthdays. Jennifer would become an advocate for cystic fibrosis, she would lecture to medical students, nurses and faculty, she would raise thousands of dollars for cystic fibrosis research and she would leave, with everyone who met her, the hope she had always held bright and strong.

Jennifer Marie Lanzaro

November 12, 1977- November 13, 2010

May you rest in peace with all of our love.

#SurvivorPrivilege

For 1/3 of my life I have been a rape victim. It's not something I list on my resume but perhaps I should given the recent enlightening opinion of George Will. According to him and his op-ed published in both the New York and Washington Posts, I hold a coveted status, with conferred privileges.

I don't know of the privileges he speaks of but I do know that before June 11, 2006 I was not a victim of rape. For every day after and until the day I die I am a survivor of rape. It's strange to think this had been a part of who I am for so long and it's alarming that it can still bring me to my knees in tears, wake me up from my sleep, or prevent me from feeling safe in the dark, and to some degree leave me in a state of hyper-vigilance. Maybe those are some of the privilege Will is speaking of. #SurvivorPrivilege began trending on Twitter yesterday with many survivor stories and descriptions of each individuals unique privilege associated with their rape or assault. For me I haven't been able to tie down the right words to explain my "survivor story" or to summarize the "privileges". What I have struggled with the most is the obvious and unfortunate misunderstanding of what rape is and means. Rape means being a social stigma, a living, breathing, talking one. It means making others around you uncomfortable, so much so that no one will ever ask you how you are dealing with it, it means suffering in silence because there is no way another individual can understand. It means years of pain and loss, and hope that you can come out with some piece of who you were before when you make it through this very dark and long tunnel. I'm sorry but there is no privilege associated with that.

I'm proud of the survivors who have chosen to stand up and share their stories through #SurvivorPrivilege, they have made a splash and gained significant media attention. Hopefully it will be recognized that George Will is blind for failing to see the pure strength in the women and men who have earned the "coveted status of victimhood". It's delusional of him and all fellow campus assault denialists to suggest there is no issue of rape culture in our society. They do not believe in the nationally representative statistic that says 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted while in college. And so they suggest that the privileges of victimhood have caused a proliferation of so called victims of so called sexual assault on college campuses across the United States.

Mr. Will and his fellow denialists are bringing light to the glaring misunderstanding of rape in our society by being part of it. This isn't something new and on some level we all play a part in it. The stigma of rape runs grassroots movements down, it prevents any upward momentum because each fight is silenced. The stigma is why when posts about a horrific news story of a young woman being gang raped because of the clothes she wore come up, people respond with private messages rather than public comments or shares. It's why when Downton Abbey featured a rape scene there was an uproar of disgust for bringing such crude and disgraceful acts in to the living room instead of support for accurately portraying a real and horrific social issue. This stigma is why when my nursing lab ran a mock trial of a rape case involving a drunk and non-consenting 16 year old and a well-liked and academically successful college freshman, every single person in the room (except for me) found him not guilty, some saying, "this would ruin his life", and "she shouldn't have lied about her age". This misunderstanding is how a judge can sentence a teacher who plead guilty to the rape of his 14 year old student to thirty days in prison, calling the 14 year-old partially responsible. So much of this is a shame, so much of it could be changed if the battle was taken out of the shadows. Let #SurvivorPrivilege be a ray of light.



#SurvivorPrivilege shows George Will just how fun it is to be a rape survivor

#SurvivorPrivilege trends on twitter