I Am a Warrior

“I am not a victim. I am not a survivor. My name is Jacks, and I get to choose who I want to be. Today, I choose to be a Warrior.”

It was January 8th, 2018, my mothers birthday, when I took the stand at Boston’s Suffolk County Courthouse, fourteen years after the day my innocence was rifled from an abduction and sexual assault. After the guilty verdict, the victims of the attack were invited to give impact statements that could influence the judge’s sentencing.

During my statement, I spoke about how I had fought to rebuild myself into a woman who chose not to be a victim. But I also realized I didn’t quite identify with the word survivor either. To be labeled as one meant that I was still embodying the other. I didn’t want to live within either of those labels. I didn’t want to be seen, judged, heard, described, stereotyped, or defined by roles that were created because of something or someone else had done to me. I didn’t want to be a textbook definition. In some way, allowing those labels to define me still gave the assailants power since choosing to be defined by these words made them the narrator of how I would continue to walk through life when surrendering to the ideologies of how others saw me. 

I didn’t want what happened to me to become the soil where I grew new roots. I didn’t want it to become the foundation from which the rest of my life sprouted. So I decided I was going to make a new label. I was going to choose who I was. I chose Warrior.

I had chosen Warrior because I finally understood that I had the autonomy and agency to decide who I was going to become. It was no longer a label created by something that happened to me. It was a name I had chosen for myself.

When I took the stand, I said the words: I was going to fight for justice for the girl whose life ended that day, the girl who essentially received a life sentence because she never got the chance to have a normal one. But I was also fighting for something larger than myself. I was fighting for women everywhere. I wanted a world where women didn’t have to worry about rape because men were taught not to, a world without restricted autonomy, economic disparity, or sexual harassment and assault, and a world where people knew the difference between the two. A world where a woman didn’t have to think about her body becoming someone else’s object of desire or a bill of sale pasted to her skin.

So I chose to be a Warrior for women, and the words, “I am a warrior,” stayed with me. They became a reminder during the many other times in my life when I felt I was doing a disservice not only to who I was, but to what I represented as a strong woman who has faced adversity. There were times when I left that ideology behind and conformed to other people’s standards because it made them more comfortable. I made myself smaller to make other people happy or approve because sometimes the fighter in me made others uncomfortable.

Later that year, my sister gave me a ring with these same words, I am a Warrior. It meant the world to me because I felt seen. I felt seen as the person who had to die a million times to become the person she was. Someone who fought. Someone who dared. Someone who broke boundaries in the boardroom, the bedroom, the bench, and eventually, the boreal.

I chose to carry that reminder with me into the Arctic, so I had the words I am a Warrior engraved into my multitool. The inscription was hidden beneath grip tape that eventually fell away through friction from grit. There was something strangely fitting about that because I fought like hell in the Arctic and found that strength again through this grit. You may not have seen all of the battles. You may not have seen all of the trials, tribulations, and triumphs, but I fought like hell out there. 

There is something about being a Warrior that I understand differently now. With every Warrior comes determination, but there is a moment when determination can become dangerous because not every battle needs to be fought. Not every battle can be won. And a Warrior does not have to win every battle to win the war. Sometimes the greater victory comes from recognizing which battles are worth fighting, which ones are costing you too much, the meaning behind the war, and when walking away protects your ability to fight another day.

I cannot fight for others if I cannot fight for myself. I cannot play the game if I am sitting injured on the bench. I cannot move forward simply because I still have gas in the tank when I can no longer see the road. Choosing not to fight does not necessarily mean you stopped fighting. Sometimes continuing the battle weakens your reserves, and weakening your army is not a decision any good general should make.

On my journey on Alone, I eventually encountered a battle I knew I was not going to win. My eyes were injured, and I had to make a choice. I could continue because I still had the determination to continue, or I could protect my eyes and protect the person who would have to live inside this body long after the game was over. Even if I had chosen to stay, I knew I did not have the reserves left in my body to fix the problem that was in front of me. Determination could not manufacture resources my body no longer had. Grit could not guarantee that continuing would not cause more damage. There comes a point when pushing forward is no longer evidence of strength. Sometimes strength is having enough awareness to understand what the battle is costing you. And sometimes being a warrior, means to lead by example.

So I chose to walk away from that battle. But I was also protecting something much bigger than my eyesight. I was protecting the person underneath all of it. Underneath the contestant. Underneath the instructor. Underneath the woman who had spent years learning how to fight. I was fighting for me. And ultimately something much larger.

I believe that by retreating with self preservation, I remained a Warrior. If I had stayed, I would no longer have been fighting for the right reasons. I would have been fighting to prove a point. I would have been fighting because I thought a Warrior was supposed to keep going no matter what. But Warriors do not have to win every battle to win the war. Sometimes retreat is part of the strategy. Sometimes self preservation is the victory. Sometimes the most powerful decision a fighter can make is refusing to sacrifice herself simply to prove that she could.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I didn’t have to play a game simply to prove a point. I could surrender to what was waiting for me. I could surrender to what existed between the lines. I could surrender to what nature had for me. Perhaps that was where the real battle was. That was where the Warrior showed up.

Sometimes being a Warrior isn’t about what you do. It is also about what you don’t do. Sometimes what you choose not to do speaks louder. Sometimes not doing is where the reclaiming happens. Sometimes choosing not to continue requires more work than simply putting your head down and pushing forward.

And somewhere in the Arctic, I realized I was fighting for a louder calling.

I wasn’t there simply to prove a point that women are capable of incredible grit. We are. I know that. I have witnessed it my entire life. I did not need to sacrifice myself to prove something that never should have required proof in the first place.

I was fighting for a world where we can be unabashedly ourselves without being ashamed of it. Where we are no longer shackled by higher standards, impossible expectations, and constantly moving goalposts created by people addicted to standing on their ideological soapboxes and telling everyone else what strength, femininity, resilience, success, or worth is supposed to look like.

I was fighting for a world where “girls will be girls” and to rewrite “you fight like a girl” to where they had the freedom to be loud. To be messy. To take up space. To laugh too loudly. To cry openly. To feel deeply. To be angry. To be joyful. To change our minds. To make mistakes. To succeed spectacularly and fail just as spectacularly. To be powerful and vulnerable, capable and scared, certain and uncertain. To be perfectly imperfect and imperfectly perfect.

Perhaps the battle was never about proving that women can endure more.

Perhaps the battle is creating a world where women no longer have to endure more simply to be considered equal.

I do not want women to have to destroy themselves demonstrating how tough they are before the world grants them permission to be called strong. I do not want us to have to suffer quietly to be considered graceful, succeed flawlessly to be considered competent, or hide our emotions to have our capability taken seriously. I do not want strength to require self abandonment.

This is the fight worth having.

And perhaps that is the Warrior I want to embody now. Not someone who fights everything and everyone, but someone willing to fight for the freedom to exist outside the boxes other people create for us. Someone willing to fight for the person underneath the expectations, the labels, the roles, and all the noise telling us who we are supposed to be.

I embodied the Warrior because I needed her to survive. But I continue to embody her because I want others to know they are allowed to fight for themselves too. And sometimes fighting for yourself means pushing forward. Sometimes it means standing your ground. Sometimes it means being loud enough that people become uncomfortable.

This is the person I ultimately fought for in the Arctic.

Me. And all the other warriors ready to break these shackles.