Michelle Williams

speaker

1,165 appearances 24 recordings 10 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard 29 Jan

Michelle Williams’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 18 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 12.

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Fresh Air · A Marine's Portrait Of Her Body At Extremes · 25 Nov 2024 podcast

you've kind of normalized that men will sometimes touch you in a way that you don't love, but like you don't want to make a big deal out of it because you don't want to complain. And then, you know, when I was sexually assaulted, I was like this great numbness because there was kind of a sense of, I knew this was going to happen.

And it's hard to explain that, but it was like all of the quieting of the lesser evils made the greater evil It allowed it to happen in silence. There was nothing to say at that point, I felt. Of course, that's not every woman's experience. Again, there are women who fight very, very hard for justice. But in my experience, it was just like almost inevitable.

I at no point seriously considered reporting that assault in part because I lacked the language to name it and secondly because I knew it wouldn't be taken seriously or at least I felt that it would not be taken seriously. I saw and heard for years how we spoke about women who did report sexual assault and And I knew that it would somehow be my fault. I was there, wasn't I?

I hadn't been drinking, but I was there. And I knew that people would – I knew I was perceived as a kind or a nice person because I was so eager to please. And I suspected that it would be like, oh, you know, William, he's an idiot. He probably thought she was leading him on and he probably thought she was interested, but you can't really blame him for that, you know. And I just –

so absolutely anticipated that the response would be, but did he really? You know, the fact of the matter is that, to say it simply, you know, that really hurt my feelings. Like it was violating and painful and sad. And it was like I don't want to expose this to scrutiny and to doubt. That was just how we spoke about – gosh, I wish that wasn't true.

And I would love to believe that that's changed or is changing. But I can definitely speak to my own experience in feeling like there was never – For not a second did I consider reporting because I knew it wouldn't be taken seriously. And if it was taken seriously, it was going to be my life that got harder and not his.

I think the kindest among them, yes, very legitimately wanted to be good leaders, wanted to take care of me. I did feel that sense of People did care about me as a person, some people. However, there was just a complete confusion over what an eating disorder was and a complete skepticism of its severity. There was also a remarkable lack of holistic care.

So I would go to medical for all the different components of having an eating disorder, you know, the ulcers and the blood and the Raynaud's and the anemia and like all these different things. But at no point was there a comprehensive continuity of care of anyone saying, you know, all these things together, these are all indications that this person is really struggling with an eating disorder.

So I went to a nutritionist who asked me what I eat in a day and I described my day, which included about 900 calories, which is starvation levels of food. I described that and she goes, oh, that sounds great. Oh, you eat so clean. You eat so well. And that that kind of. rhetoric around good and bad food.

And she told me most of her clients were on BCP, indicating most of her clients were people who were overweight or prescribed to be overweight by the military standards. And then she was helping them lose weight. So she's like, but you won't have to worry about that if you eat like this. You eat even better than I do.

And so, yeah, I diagnosed her as a fellow orthorexic, which is a part of my eating disorder was this kind of obsession with eating well. And eating clean is another way you hear that a lot. And for me, it extended to every bite of food I ate. Did this harm anyone? Did this harm the planet? I was, you know, vegan for a lot of my time in the military.

I really sought to eat locally and just like anything you can think of of what makes food good. I exhaustingly tried to follow those those protocols.

Yeah. So in Mormonism, the first Sunday of each month is set aside as Fast Sunday. So you fast for 24 hours without food or water. And now this is a it's considered a covenant, a two way promise with God. It's meant to renew the vows you take when you're baptized of following Christ and living a life that's sanctified.

You know, it's considered a very tender time and a time to connect again with spirit, again, by denying the body, right? So that message was there. And technically your baptismal covenants, Mormon children are baptized at the age of eight because presumably by then that's the age of accountability because at eight you can make your own decisions apparently.

But I was precocious and I wanted to prepare for my eventual baptismal covenants. So I started fasting, yeah, before I was baptized when I was seven.

And that was, you know, those were in the years after my mother had died and I really was seeking some degree of safety in the world and feeling like held by my father and brothers and just the... Being good, I am certainly not the first daughter to feel like if I'm good, then I will, you know, be filling my role within the family.

Yes, I was.

You know, we were speaking earlier about eating disorders as a function of seeking control in a world that inherently you cannot control. I feel, too, that the root of that is a desire for safety. And my mother's sudden and violent death felt like being uprooted, that I lost the sense of safety in the world. I lost the sense that you can reasonably expect to live through the day.

And I think many people have that at some point in their lives, like that kind of understanding of your own mortality and your understanding that this is finite and I just happened to have that when I was four years old. And I think that's actually left an incredible, again, you grow and you adapt and you kind of become, you grow around the things that shape you.

And then sometimes you are able to see with perception of like, oh, that has shaped me in a certain way. I tend to be slower to form relationship. I tend to take my time. I tend to hesitate in some ways because you don't know if someone's always going to be there. You know they're not, actually.

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