Beloveds,
i met him in December 2021, right after i left The Fox.
he was younger than me. small-bodied, vibrant, full of energy. he lived in an abandoned community center — one room, zinc roof, blocked-up windows, no running water. not a place i would ever choose to sleep.
somehow, i ended up there.
one of his nicknames was Gifftid.
there were good moments. he showed me nature spots i'd never seen. he was teaching me to ride his motorcycle. once, at a river, i fell from a rope swing, hit my head, and lost consciousness. he pulled me out of the water. i couldn't breathe. i'd forgotten how.
i never told my family about that incident.
but i should have paid attention to what it told me.
on September 24, 2022, he raped me. he was drunk the night before. woke up still tipsy. i told him no. more than once.
i wrote about it two weeks later, furious at myself as much as him: "Can you guess how long it took me to forgive him? Two days. I stayed away for two days and nights, and then I was right back in his bed, comforting him, telling him it was gonna be okay."
he never apologized. when i bring it up, he says it didn't happen. that's gaslighting. i stayed anyway.
then i got pregnant. then I gave birth. then i spent every day after that doing everything — working online, managing the house, caring for our son full-time — while he counted down the days until i was physically available to him again.
on January 18, 2026, he kicked a door down in front of our two-year-old son. for over an hour, he raged. i recorded some of it. i sat on the couch. i stopped responding.
the full story — in raw, unfiltered detail, including the journal entry i wrote two weeks after the rape, and every word of what he said the night he kicked down that door — is in Book 7: Dear Gifftid.
this book is not about leaving. it's about finally seeing clearly. naming what happened. stopping the performance of pretending it didn't.
that's its own kind of decision.
or if this is the post that makes you want to read all of it — the full collection is available as a bundle - Speak, Mamacita: Seven Stories of Unsilencing Trauma.
A portion of proceeds from the Speak, Mamacita series supports The Sanctuary Foundation, launching November 2027.
this is the last character in the first collection. more books are coming. more truth being told. more women being set free.
thank you for reading all of it.
Talk Soon,
Santana Chevel 🌹