And Found Me Guilty Of Making Things Awkward

You’re not weak for staying silent. You’re calculating risk in a world that punishes honesty.

If you're considering going public read this.

Life gets easier when you stop fighting it. The rain will fall whether you complain or not. Traffic will exist whether you stress or not. People will act how they want whether you worry or not. Focus on what you can change. Let go of what you can't.

You're still here

Maybe you still talk about it like it wasn’t a big deal. Maybe you laugh when you tell the story. Maybe you change the details each time, depending on who’s listening. Maybe you say “it was weird” instead of “it was wrong.”

Sometimes, survival looks like contradiction. Like forgetting on purpose. Like trying on different words until one of them feels safe enough to hold.

You don’t owe anyone a neat version of what happened. It was messy. You’re still here. That’s the truth.

To Anyone Who’s Still Carrying It

You don’t get over it in a straight line. You just don’t. And anyone who tells you different hasn’t been through it or hasn’t faced it yet.

Harassment doesn’t always leave bruises you can point to. It gets under the skin in quieter ways. It makes you second-guess what you heard, how you felt, what you wore, what you said. It can turn a job into a minefield and your own instincts into something you stop trusting.

And it doesn’t end the day you leave the job, or file the report, or speak the truth out loud. Sometimes it lingers. In your body. In your sleep. In how you walk into new rooms.

But here’s what I know: healing doesn’t have to look heroic. It’s not always confrontation or closure. Sometimes it’s just getting through the day without that weight taking over. Sometimes it’s finding one person who listens. Sometimes it’s deciding to stay. Or leave. Or try again.

Whatever it looks like --- that’s valid. You’re allowed to move forward without explaining why it hurt or proving that it did.

It was real. You’re not imagining it. And you are absolutely not alone.

"They're not harassing you. That’s just how they talk." Oh okay. I’ll just rewire my nervous system so it understands context.

Women In Tech: A Relatable Story?

Hey everyone, 

I'm a 31 F, working at an architectural design firm. I will keep this short because I am pretty upset and I know it will just turn into a big rant if I don't.  

I am newer there and lower level - junior designer slash BIM tech. But I have a degree and am frankly overqualified based on past experience and my skill set. We have a few Slack groups divided up by project, job and client. I'm on most of them because I am a newb, they have me bouncing all the time from thing to thing. So I get to see most of the messages across the company. 

It's almost all men. 30s to 50s. I am one of two women in the entire place other than cleaning staff. I almost didn't take the job because of that but I have a kid and student loans and can't not keep my pay at the level it was. 

My secondary work computer is a laptop and it was stolen a few weeks ago. It wasn't backed up so I lost a lot ofwork and had to redo it. It took a lot of extra time. This caused delays and a headache with two big clients and my project leads and boss have treated me like absolute shit ever since. 

After that the running joke on Slack about “diversity hires” has been getting out of control.Nobody has said they mean women specifically but all the details about what happened with me have been mentioned very clearly. The have gone as far as saying it's so sad how the company is “lowering the bar", that this is why the economy is so bad. 

The supervisors are on these threads too. They steer clear of that stuff but they don't stop the constant jabs either. Based on their treatment around the office I feel like they actually hate me. I can't go to them. The owner is the biggest douchebeg of them all. 

We are all contractors I think so there is no HR. It's "in the works" they tell me. 

The other woman I work with has become an ally and a friend through this and we want to get out of there but yeah we can't afford it. We want to resist. But there is nothing to do about it. Sick to my stomach of the backward slide things are taking, women are becoming second class citizens again.

Want to burn the place down. Nowhere else is hiring where I am.

Sorry if there are men on this thread I know you are not all the same but sorry sometimes it feels like you are.

I am so frustrated I want to scream.

She learned to carry her softness like armor. Not as weakness, but as proof she made it through.

Georg Wilson (British, 1998) - Spring Usher (2025)

You get punished twice — once for what happened, and again for how you react.

Fred "touch me not" Gruber finally got let go after his third reprimand.

Dance of the Forest Nymphs by Warren B Davis