“You don’t know what you’re doing, you’re basically recreating your life, and there’s no map for it. I just went through the motions for a long time, I was just a shell of who I once was, but by talking about my experience I realised I could help other people and I began to share my story in front of audiences.”

Power, control, empowerment. Rebirth, trauma, healing, and even forgiveness and on finding the places, the spaces to talk about hard things, in life changing communication and accountability terms with our fellow human beings.

As spring once more approaches during March is Women’s History Month, with March 8th being known as International Women’s Day, it’s time for another one of sister/co-host Kerry’s annual IWD featured spotlights on a woman she knows who is doing important work in intersectionality and gender equity spaces.

This guest can be an ally, but does not necessarily need to be blind or even disabled, but rather a woman that’s making an effort to foster human connection…with conviction for a more equitable world, as it meets the themes of diversity, intersectionality, and interdependence that make up the crux of this show.. This week on Outlook for International Women’s Day 2025, the guest is Jane Piper, (performer, artist, and restorative justice lived experience advocate) local and live in studio.

Kerry and Jane look back on how they met in the autumn of 2018, how they very nearly attended a Bernie Sanders rally together, and Piper shares more about what sharing her own story means and does for her each time she tells it. She shares openly about the brutal attack she faced in 2003 and about how she handled the trauma and life afterward, leading her to take on surrigate victim/offender dialogue. Piper runs storytelling workshops with both women in abuse shelters and with the men who’ve been incarcerated for violent acts against women and she talks to Kerry about cultivating empathy for others, even those who have committed unspeakable acts, and on what it means to offer/find forgiveness in a world more divided than is good for any of us.

Women’s History Month/International Women’s Day this year’s theme is “The Strength In Every Story” and Jane Piper has both worked to facilitate that in others (like she did when Kerry took her storytelling workshop locally in London) alongside showcasing the same in her sharing of her own, in the work Jane’s done on herself and with/for others such as her work with abused women (as a peer support worker) and inside correctional facilities doing accountability workshops with men imprisoned for violent crimes against women. Jane shares with us what it was like the first time she stepped foot into just such a facility for one of these accountability workshops, what restorative justice has meant in her life, and what it’s like working with these offenders.

To find out more about the public speaking she does, as she’s progressing on the book she’s written (Coming Out of The Fog) about her rape survivor experience, check out her website here in the meantime:

http://janepiper.com