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SALT LAKE CITY — “I became in spite of you, and in some ways because of you. I was not made to stay down. I was made to soar. I will rise.”
That is part of a mantra written by a Utah woman who experienced domestic abuse. The “Warrior Project,” developed by Shantell Thaxton, aims to empower and give a voice to women who have been subjected to emotional and physical abuse, victimization, trauma and other painful life experiences.
What started out as a blog for Thaxton to “share some of my journal and healing from abuse and other things” has branched out into a dynamic project with an empowering message: “Remembering we can conquer in any battle and rise from any defeat.”
Thaxton told KSL.com she came to realize it is one thing to talk about abuse, but another to see it. This inspired her to reach out to a friend, photographer Jane Merritt, to collaborate on a photo project to visualize the abuse experienced by Utah women.
The photos were collected and published in a book titled “Victim to Victor,” with the intention of showing that Utah women who have experienced abuse “were not created to be victims. We were created to be victorious.”
Thaxton’s mantra addresses her experience with someone who treated her like she was “crazy” and who took “away my ability to trust my thoughts, my feelings and my intuition.”
“I’m not crazy. I survived crazy,” Thaxton wrote in the book. “I know what I am capable of and what I deserve. I know who I am. I am enough. These truths will never be taken or lost again.”
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Cassandra Eccles, who learned about the Warrior Project after seeing a friend’s posts on Facebook and Instagram, said she keeps Thaxton's mantra with her in the notes of her phone.
“That’s something I look back at often,” Eccles said. “It’s something that speaks of who I am and who I strive to be every day. It just describes me.”
While the Warrior Project involves women who have experienced violence, sexual assault, anxiety and depression, Eccles said she got involved because of the “emotional trauma of living through a lie.”
In February 2014, Eccles discovered pornography on her computer. She learned it belonged to her husband. “And that was devastating,” Eccles said. “You think that after 14 years of marriage your life is good.”
Eccles and her husband “worked it out” by attending Utah Coalition Against Pornography seminars and going to counseling sessions offered by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
When Eccles got involved with the Warrior Project, “(It) just kind of helped empower me and give me the strength” to know that “I was OK, I was my own person,” Eccles said, and to set her own boundaries and “move on with my life.”
The Warrior Project started out as just seven women, but Thaxton said there are now about 30 women who have participated.
The inspiration for the project came from a seminar Thaxton attended discussing the four stages of “goddesses:" the sleeping goddess, the awakened goddess, the wandering goddess and the warrior goddess.
After Thaxton helped Utah women who have experienced abuse feel like warriors, she wanted to help them look like warriors, too.
(We) watched each other come into a different realm, a different feeling of empowerment. There was strength in that; strength in being a woman. And as you saw it all come together; it was amazing.
–Cassandra Eccles, Warrior Project
Using costumes provided by the Hale Center Theatre and makeup by the Paul Mitchell professional hair school, Thaxton and Merritt arranged a photo shoot where Utah women could pose with swords, daggers and bows and arrows, visualizing their strength and perseverance.
When Thaxton saw pictures of herself looking like a warrior, “I just started to cry,” she said. “I said, ‘There I am. That’s me. That’s who I am.’”
“It was amazing,” Eccles agreed. We “watched each other come into a different realm, a different feeling of empowerment. There was strength in that; strength in being a woman. And as you saw it all come together; it was amazing.”
The Warrior photo shoot almost didn’t happen because it started raining that day, “but that didn’t stop us,” said Eccles. “I think think that just led to further feelings of strength and courage.”
Thaxton said she wants Utah women who have experienced abuse or trauma — to whatever degree — to remember who they are and the value that their lives hold.
“It’s just about remembering your strengths,” Thaxton said about the Warrior Project. “I know for myself, after what I’d went through, you kind of lose who you are and you forget.”
The group has an event planned for June 2 at the Courtyard Marriott hotel in Provo.
Through the Warrior Project, Thaxton has not only helped dozens of Utah women, but she has also helped herself. Using imagery, prose and a community ethos, Thaxton has assisted herself and others in “remembering that you were created to be victorious,” she said. “There is nothing too big in front of you that you can’t come through and rise from.”
