09/30/2026
What is happening surrounding the allegations at Cornell University matters.
As a woman, a mother, a business owner, and someone who works with children, I cannot read these stories without thinking about how early girls learn to protect themselves.
Don’t walk alone at night.
Watch your drink.
Keep your phone charged.
Don’t leave your friends.
Send a text when you get home.
Pay attention to who’s behind you.
Trust that feeling when something doesn’t seem right.
We teach girls these things so routinely that we sometimes forget how heartbreaking it is that they have to learn them at all.
A young woman should be able to go to college, attend a party, spend time with friends, date, drink, make mistakes, change her mind, or simply exist in the world without any of those things becoming permission for someone else to violate her autonomy.
The allegations coming out of Cornell are horrifying. A former student has alleged that she was drugged and sexually assaulted by multiple men at a fraternity house. Those allegations are now part of a civil lawsuit, and the criminal investigation has been reopened.
There will be legal processes to determine individual responsibility. Those processes matter.
But there is also a larger conversation that cannot wait.
We have to stop building a world where women are given an endless list of instructions for avoiding sexual violence while the responsibility of respecting consent somehow becomes the quieter part of the conversation.
We have to teach our sons, our daughters, our friends, our coworkers, and our communities that another person’s body is never an entitlement.
Consent matters.
Autonomy matters.
Speaking up when you see something wrong matters.
Holding people accountable matters.
And believing that someone deserves to be heard when they say they were harmed matters.
What also weighs heavily on me is that danger doesn’t always look like the stranger we were warned about growing up.
Sometimes harm comes from someone you know.
Someone you trusted.
Someone popular.
Someone educated.
Someone respected.
Someone with a title, influence, money, or power.
And when institutions or communities protect reputations more fiercely than they protect people, survivors are left carrying a burden that was never theirs to carry.
But I don’t want the center of this message to belong to perpetrators.
I want it to belong to survivors.
Because there is something extraordinary about watching a woman stand back up after someone tried to take something from her.
Women rebuild.
We find our voices again.
We learn to trust ourselves again.
We laugh again.
We create again.
We love again.
We build businesses, raise families, make art, help other people, and create beautiful lives that are so much bigger than the worst thing someone ever did to us.
And sometimes we stand up and tell the truth even when we know people may question us, dissect us, criticize us, or try to silence us.
So from one woman-owned business to every woman who has ever carried a story she never asked to have:
I see you.
What happened to you does not define the entirety of who you are.
Your voice matters.
Your body belongs to you.
Your boundaries matter.
Your healing matters.
And your life can still become something beautiful.
At Feather & Stone, we will always believe in creating a space where women feel safe, respected, and supported.
And when something this important is happening, silence doesn’t feel like an option.
Keep getting back up. 🤍
— Heather
Owner, Feather & Stone Emporium
