How does one begin again from rape?  It had always been my greatest fear, but then again, it is an instinctive fear for all women.  It crosses all boundaries – race, culture, class, and geography.

I was on location on a film when an angry young man stalked me. I woke up with him on top of me. He said, “If you make a sound, I will blow your brains out.”  He beat me, threatened me, and even had a knife. It went on for hours.  He wanted to kill me.  Luckily years of therapy helped me talk him out of it.  I was lucky.

How do we survive trauma?  How do we “begin again?”  By muddling through.  By finding meaning – meaning in what we have gone through.  We are all unique and have our own path.  Trauma is an opportunity to find out what we are made of.  “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”  It’s true.  

“Suffering in life is like salt on meat, a little can make it tender, but too much can ruin it.”  I was able to survive and conquer the wounds because of my belief in life and all the gifts I’d been given.  I couldn’t let evil win.  I couldn’t let chaos rob me of life.

Choose humanity, choose hope, and choose to use the pain, by transforming it into something of meaning.  

I made a film to help others, to make them not feel that empty aloneness that trauma engenders, to make them see that there is a path through it.  It’s safer to dive into the wave than to try to outswim it.  It’s how we choose to meet trauma that defines us-that is the key to beginning again.

Mia Goldman is the director of the film, "Open Window."