By: JANA GREENE

It’s been a minute since I’ve written anything at all. Not because I am out of ideas, but because I have too many, but they are all jumbled together like the bottom of a Scrabble box, having potential to make sense but not making any.

I like to write about faith and hope and feelings, but the feelings have been running the entire show lately. And maybe they should. Maybe under these circumstances, that’s ok.

Well-meaning friends say helpful things, like “don’t watch the news.” And “trust God.” And I get that, I really do. But I have figured out one of the reasons that I am hyper-vigilant about the current state of affairs, and it has everything to do with personal justice.

You see, I do have a dog in this fight. Well, not a dog, but a child. She is a little red-haired girl whose innocence was stolen by men in some position of power, and she’s pissed. She is pissed, and she doesn’t want to pipe down, because all those years ago, she is crying “ME TOO,” and yet again, no one is listening.

I’ve been advised that caring for her in the way she needs to heal requires that I shield her from a hostile world, that I make my mind a safe place for her. But my mind has been an unsafe place since the abuse. It rewires you.

But she does not want to turn off the news or stop following the Epstein files debacle. She has been silent and defeated. She knows what it’s like to be unheard. What she doesn’t know is what it’s like to be seen.

I may be wrong, but I’m giving her a voice, my wounded, inner little girl. She gets to rally and object this time. And all iterations of me are involved in protecting her now – my rebellious inner teen, raging about this in her honor. My inner, evolved adult, protecting her this time.

All those years ago, she had no voice, she had no recourse. No consequences were ever imposed on her abusers. The Epstein files, damning as they are, is full of predators that we reward with power.

And what kind of message does that send to the girls whose lives were impacted by molestation? It tells them they don’t matter, that their value is close to zero. And the world confirms it by their complicit silence.

The little girl in me has big feelings about this happenstance. She wasn’t listened to when she was six, or nine, and she doesn’t want to sit compliantly while men who rule the world have broken children walk free. Not only are they walking free, but possessing the most power, the most influence. Just like her abusers, who have lived consequence-free. For all of us little girls, we need to see justice meted out.

There are millions of women who developed through this trauma, and we want to see consequences given men. We NEED to see mighty fall, if they have harmed children or r*ped a women. We need to see the dominos fall, so that we can have some degree of healing.

We are at war, but we were before. And every little child who has been abused by an adult male was on the frontlines, shell-shocked for life. We have lost the war long enough.

JUSTICE for the Epstein file predators NOW. We DO have value. We DO require justice. We need to see these monsters in prison, just as their acts so long ago still imprisoned us.

Enough already.