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The Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself

  1. What are the words you do not have yet? [Or, "for what do you not have words, yet?"]
  2. What do you need to say? [List as many things as necessary]
  3. What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? [List as many as necessary today. Then write a new list tomorrow. And the day after.]
  4. If we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language, ask yourself: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" [So answer this today, and every day.]