Hi, I’m Ashley. I am a survivor of childhood abuse, and my story is not connected to just one person or one moment. I experienced harm from multiple people throughout different parts of my childhood, and each experience affected me in a different way.

Some experiences changed the way I trusted people. Some changed the way I saw myself. Some made me question my safety, my worth, and whether my voice even mattered. Every experience left something behind that I had to learn how to understand, carry, heal, and eventually release.

For a long time, I thought surviving meant simply getting through it. But survival is so much more than that. It is learning how to live after the pain. It is learning how to feel safe in your own body again. It is learning how to trust your instincts, how to set boundaries, how to love yourself, and how to find your voice after experiences that made you feel powerless.

Healing has taught me that the things that happened to me are a part of my story, but they are not the whole story. I am still here. I am still loving. I am still growing. And I have found strength in places where I once only felt pain.

This is why this petition is so important to me.

I know what it is like to carry the invisible weight of abuse. I know what it is like to need protection, support, understanding, and people who are willing to listen. And I know there are so many survivors carrying similar pain every single day, some of them still children, some of them adults who have never felt safe enough to speak about what happened.

I do not want survivors to feel that they have to walk through their healing alone. I do not want children growing up believing that what happened to them does not matter. I do not want anyone to feel that the system has forgotten them.

Survivors deserve to be protected. They deserve to be believed, supported, and given real resources to rebuild their lives. They deserve access to help without shame, fear, or impossible barriers standing in the way.

I cannot change what happened to me, but I can choose what I do with my voice now. I can use it to speak for the younger version of myself who did not always know how. I can use it to stand beside survivors who are still finding their own voices. And I can use it to push for a future where protection, accountability, and healing are taken seriously.

This petition comes from love. Love for the child I once was. Love for the person I fought to become. And love for every survivor who deserves to know that their life, their healing, and their voice matter.

That is why I am asking you to stand with us. Sign this petition and help demand stronger protections and better support for survivors of abuse. Because surviving should never mean being left to heal alone.

You Matter 🫶🏼