For the first 8 years of my life, I was the only girl in my Sunday school class at church, and even the classes in the age groups older and younger than me were primarily boys. By the time I was 7, my dad had already taught me how to punch because multiple boys thought it was funny to come up behind me on the stairs after Sunday school and pull my skirt up. It didn't matter how many times I said no. 

I wasn't even a teenager yet when an adult male who volunteered with the youth group at my church (a different church in a different state literally 1,000 miles away) started being SUPER friendly. I told my girlfriends my age that he was creepy and made me feel weird and I didn't like how pushy he was about hugs. They felt the same way and we all tried to make sure none of us were stuck alone together with him. But, you know, he's just that way and he's such a nice guy and just  doesn't have the best social skills, girls, so just be friendly and nice and by the way should you REALLY be wearing a shirt that shows your shoulders? You might tempt your brothers in Christ, you need to protect their hearts.

Those are the "easy" stories to tell. They aren't my only stories, and I'm not the only one with stories, by any stretch. 

I walk for the little girls in Sunday school learning how to defend themselves against little boys who think their bodies are fair game. I walk for the pre-teens and teens with creepy adults volunteering in their youth organizations. I walk for the little boys who aren't being taught better and need to be. I walk for the Scotts and the Ryans and all the boys who have been victims and will become adults who need a STAR office to walk in to or Crisis Line to call. I walk for the adults of all genders who hear that they're wrong if they don't speak up and a liar if they do. 

I walk for my children, my nieces and nephews, my neighbors' children, and their friends and classmates, to fund prevention so their futures can be free from the violence that stains so many of our pasts, and to fund crisis response resources for those hurt by the violence that will likely always touch this world in some way. I walk for the children and youth in Alaska who survive some of the most horrendous things imaginable done by the people they should be able to trust the most, and the adults they will become because they are resilient when they shouldn't have to be. 

I walk for all these people and reasons. 
Most of all, I walk for myself and for the Alaska I believe in.