And he didn't win. He was never even close. I was the strong one, I was the winner. As the year went on learning became the exhilarating experience it had once been. Knowledge is power; I gained so much in the past two years-some of it unasked for, but all of it valuable.

The sharing of personal stories and the breaking of one's silence can be the most personal and the most political activity one can do. As part of our research for this project, we collected women's stories through a questionnaire. Reading them was both painful and inspiring. For us, it was the stories of women-known and unknown-that fanned those first sparks and fuelled our commitment to raising awareness about violence as a barrier to women's education. The personal accounts saddened and outraged us while at the same time they inspired awe for the women who shared their stories. Whether or not they have identified themselves this way, they are indeed survivors. Women told us about how they are standing up and fighting back as well as what they are doing with their lives now. When women share truths, it helps us to know more and more that we are not alone. Breaking the isolation that violence can cause is crucial to healing: both personally and societally. We admire the women who have done so and we hope that our stories will in turn help spark other women into action.

Part of the way we both have healed personally is through our writing. We feel we have been able to give back some of what was taken from us, to other women, and to ourselves. On these two pages are examples of these writings that we would like to share.

Again we think about how lucky we feel. We have tried personally, and now professionally, to bring some healing into the world. "Violence is extremely widespread in our society. Every time it occurs it catches more us in a web of negative effects. Even so, there ways of making positive changes. As much as every hurtful act can cause a series of hurts, every positive action can start a chain of healing. We know we have initiated new healing within ourselves and we hope we have done so for others as well. Women can learn, grow, be free, if only there is someone to see our pain without defining us by it and believe in our strength without demanding it. We will take the learning we have done this summer to the rest of our lives, where we teach as well as learn.

Through this project, we have learned about our own strengths. We have learned about the strength of other women. We have had renewed within ourselves a deep grief and anger at the prevalence of violence and the inequalities for women it exposes. We have learned how to give comfort to ourselves and each other, found strength in a common experience and a common hope that women in the future will not share that experience. We have learned that with determination we can make a difference. We believe that the right to a safe, empowering, relevant and useful education is fundamental. We believe in women.

Lisa Bryn Rundle is a feminist crusader both as a hobby and a career goal. In her formal education, she studies Canadian Studies, Women's Studies and English at the University of Toronto. Nicole Ysabet-Scott is a feminist and AIDS educator, majoring in English and Women's Studies at Trent University. Her role models include Ani Difranco, Hothead Paisan, and her mom.

Both Nicole and Lisa worked as researchers and writers at CCLOW in Toronto last summer, and together produced a series of booklets and fact sheets entitled "Making Change: Raising Awareness about Violence against Women as a Barrier to Women's Education" (see Resources in this issue). To order this series, contact CCLOW in Toronto.

1. Anne Elliott and Patricia Williams, eds. Isolating the Barriers and Strategies for Prevention: A Kit about Violence and Women's Education for Adult Educators and Adult Learners (Toronto: Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women, 1995): 1.
   
   
2. This theoretical framework includes concepts like social permission of male violence, violence as a manifestation of women's inequality, "tools not rules" for violence prevention, "the personal is political," Maslow's hierarchy of needs, educators' responsibilities and women's rights.
   
   
3. "An Educator's Guide to Creating Safe Learning" in Making Change: Raising Awareness about Violence as a Barrier to Women's Education by Nicole Ysabet-Scott and Lisa Bryn Rundle, with CCLOW, 1995.