Aspen Matis Quotes

All I could think as he was speaking was that, if he touched me at all, all the miles I’d walked, the pain I’d felt, the beauty I’d drunken like milk, like good wine making me happy, the four million steps I’d taken, would all add up to nothing. They’d be stolen.

~ Aspen Matis

I reached into my pack and held something small in the fist I made. “It’s a pocketknife,” I said, enunciating each letter. I was asserting myself, I’d snapped out of something; he visibly snapped out of something too. I saw it acutely in his dropping posture: doubt in his movement. I said, “The truck works.” And so it did.

~ Aspen Matis

Each year, Gracie Henderson moons a thousand strangers, collects their shocked faces in an annual photo album.

~ Aspen Matis

I was able to pitch a tent and carry a backpack twenty-five miles a day through mountains—I’d mastered a thousand amazing physical feats—physically I’d become undeniably confident and capable—but physical weakness had never been the problem that I had. My true problem had been passivity, the lifelong-conditioned submission that became my nature.

~ Aspen Matis

I needed to begin respecting my own body’s boundaries. I had to draw clear lines. Ones that were sound in my mind and therefore impermeable, and would always, no matter where I walked, protect me. Moving forward, I wanted rules.

~ Aspen Matis

My malady was submission.The symptom: my compliance.The antidote was loud clear boundaries.

~ Aspen Matis

I felt unready to hold myself responsible for the decision if I slept with him

~ Aspen Matis

The small word, “No.” I’d see its deity.

~ Aspen Matis

Second—I’d take much better care of myself.There were simple things I could do. I could start with my poor feet. These little two feet carried me each day for miles and miles, steady and flexed, tired and aching from constant daily pounding, bruised scratched and sometimes rubbed red-raw, my weight pressing and pressing them. I decided now that each night in my tent I’d massage them. I would knead them with lotion because they always ached, and at the end of thirty-mile days they burned—and it would be luxurious—something I could have done the entire way because I had been carrying sun lotion but had never taken the ten sacred minutes to do for myself.

~ Aspen Matis

Rest fixed most things. Sleep was my sweet reward. I treated bedtime as both incentive and sacrament.

~ Aspen Matis

When I felt strongly I would say it strongly.

~ Aspen Matis

I needed to stop hiding: I was raped. It was time to honestly be exactly who I was. I saw—the shame wasn't mine, it was his, and I could stop misrepresenting myself, and I could accept myself.

~ Aspen Matis

And the idea of light unexplainably produced out of nothing was haunting, it shook me. A flat drab mountain could produce its own light, no one in this whole world knows why, and if that was possible then of course there must be other things that seemed impossible that weren’t, and so anything—great and terrible—felt possible to me now.

~ Aspen Matis

Childhood is a wilderness.

~ Aspen Matis

I was beginning to feel compassion for myself.

~ Aspen Matis

I had stripped naked in front of men. Drunk. In morning’s somber brightness I tried to remember why I had done it. Total exposure had seemed like the only way to be seen more clearly, heard, but now it seemed the opposite: a wild act that would define me.

~ Aspen Matis

When we apply the lessons we've struggled for our whole lives to learn to the lives of people we love, our love becomes judgment—which is toxic. Our fear our daughters will fail leads us to fail them.

~ Aspen Matis

I doubted I could survive in the woods without these very basic things to help me. It seemed like a tremendous leap of faith to forsake the tools I’d always been told I needed. And yet leaving college to walk was such a massive leap of faith already, and nothing I’d ever trusted and believed in seemed true any longer.

~ Aspen Matis

We aren’t afraid of what we can explain.But the truth is stranger than an aimless road, it always was. The world was full of blinding mysteries, and I was blind to truth of what they were. There were things about the world I couldn’t understand.

~ Aspen Matis

She told me that women who wore makeup had bad values. Putting on makeup would have been a statement—a rebellion. I didn’t try it. I grew to feel guilty for wanting to feel attractive.

~ Aspen Matis

It was suddenly Technicolor clear: the only thing holding me from giving myself vision this entire time had actually simply been me.I saw how in the fall and winter of my childhood, I'd walked through the golden aspens. And then I simply committed and gave myself my own eyes.I had once again proven that again alone, I was again enough.

~ Aspen Matis

Water was liquid silver, water was gold. It was clarity—a sacred thing.

~ Aspen Matis

After twelve years of trying, I just decided to stop missing.

~ Aspen Matis

Children believe they are immortal, death is an empty word like the name of a country they’ve never been to on a time-faded map. I wasn’t a child anymore.

~ Aspen Matis

I realized that no, no one would actually come to save or even stop me, I had absolutely no choice. The scale tipped: the moment not doing it became more difficult and unbearable than just doing it.

~ Aspen Matis

The night Junior stayed, my right to myself was taken from me in a way that had felt more final than ever before. Then the school had denied my rape—my word. The subsequent silencing and exile—misplaced shame—were the catalysts for me to finally break free of my mother's grasp and my voicelessness and do what I truly wanted, alone. I wished to prove myself as independent and valid and strong—to my mother, and to the world. I'd believed I had needed something huge and external that no one could deny was impressive, so I could show my family I was able—so they could finally know that I was strong.Instead I had shown myself.And it felt wonderful.

~ Aspen Matis

Because I feared I couldn't walk to Newton Centre without her, I needed to hike through desert, snow and woods alone.Childhood is a wilderness.

~ Aspen Matis

She had wanted me to hold rape inside me like a dark pearl, keep it in there, as it grew, as I grew cramped, as it overtook me as hidden things do. Secrets become lies. I'd carried in every step I took this lie, the shame of it.

~ Aspen Matis

It was heartbreaking to realize how we can fail the people we most love without even trying.

~ Aspen Matis

Absolutely devout in her complete care of my body, she had only taught me to be weak and voiceless. But I had unlearned that lesson. Our enmeshment no longer felt to me like proof of love. I was no longer willing to permit this silencing. Helplessness didn't have to be my identity, I wasn't condemned to it. I was willing—able—to change. Our enmeshment had been enabled by my belief that I needed her to help me, to take care of things for me—and to save me—but, back in the home where I'd learned this helplessness, I found I no longer felt that I was trapped in it.

~ Aspen Matis

I'd have to be impolite, an inconvenience, and sometimes awkward. But if I could commit, all that discomfort would add up to zap predatory threads like a Taser gun. I'd stun them. They'd bow to me. I'd let my no echo against the mountains.And better to feel bad for a moment saying no—and stop it—than to get harmed.I would take better care.That small word, no. I'd see its deity.

~ Aspen Matis

I made a conscious effort to name my needs and desires. To carefully listen to and accurately identify what I felt. Hunger, exhaustion, cold, lower-back ache, thirst. The ephemeral pangs: wistfulness and loneliness. Rest fixed most things. Sleep was my sweet reward. I treated bedtime as both incentive and sacrament.

~ Aspen Matis

Maybe I'd die. Maybe I'd burn to ash in wind, or blacken like the pines. Charred skeletons, I'd add one to the count. I didn't feel scared. I didn't think to panic. The trail wasn't burning. I was raw, ripe for loving. I wasn't stopping.

~ Aspen Matis

I had no evidence. No physical signs of my rape existed anymore. My body had already purged them. That was the irreversible reality.

~ Aspen Matis

I was so much more powerful than anyone knew. I was an animal learning to fight back, instinctively, fiercely. I was a brave girl. I was a fit fox.I realized that the most empowering important thing was actually simply taking care of myself.

~ Aspen Matis

If I could mark clearly, convincingly and consistently what was good for me and also what was bad—if I could say yes and also no, as if it were the law—it would become my law.

~ Aspen Matis

I had once again proven that again alone, I was again enough.

~ Aspen Matis

In the power of my newfound strength, I saw clearly—even though I’d been empowered to have my old college finally address my “horrific trauma,” make me finally feel heard, this event would never have happened had I not first given myself my own voice, the permission to call my rape rape and not shame. In telling, I forced the school that silenced me, that minimized my trauma, that blamed me for the rape, to finally respect my voice and give me the platform they should have given me in the first place. I did not need the school to call it by its name; I did it myself, and they listened. I was the powerful party that brought the closure and empowerment I’d hoped, in first finding their invitation, that Colorado College would bring.

~ Aspen Matis

Helplessness didn't have to be my identity, I wasn't condemned to it. I was willing - able - to change. Our enmeshment had been enabled by my belief that I needed [my mom] to help me, to take care of things for me - and to save me - but, back in the home where I'd learned this helplessness, I found I no longer felt that I was trapped in it.

~ Aspen Matis

She told me that my rape was not my fault, that I should feel no shame, that – simple as it may sound – I hadn’t caused it. No one causes rape but rapists. No one causes rape but rapists. No one causes rape but rapists. It was true. And it had not been obvious to me. And hearing it from someone else, a professional, someone who should know, helped me believe that soon I would believe it.

~ Aspen Matis