This morning I woke up, heart pounding, from a nightmare in which Jordan, the man by whom I felt abused so badly while working for the Larry King Live organization, and his partner had taken my baby just after I’d given birth. We were in a hospital, and I was informed that because they had more resources on hand, regardless of whether these had been appropriated ethically, they were being permitted to take my child. I didn’t know what to do but to yell out and to run through the hallways of the hospital, looking for a room where such decisions were being made, desperate to articulate the injustice of what was being attempted. I found Jordan’s partner bearing the look of an accomplice to a crime, certainly, but not a mastermind, silently accepting the stolen.

After recently talking online about what feels like a continued need to speak about the problem of women’s safety within CNN, its characterization after its recent president’s departure having felt so unhelpful – particularly as unheard solutions have been proposed, a former colleague responded by referencing how difficult it is for women to regain their careers after experiencing gender-based abuse in journalism corporations.

If it is true that corruption in media – and, arguably, in all organization types – tends to take the form of encouraging, and covering up, the build-up of large amounts of unaccountable power for the purpose of exploitation by only a few informed players, a great danger to the country could be said to be any system – not just any person – that would automate such processes. Too often, it seems boards of directors, and not even organizational figureheads, who sometimes operate as little more than “useful” tools, today tend to try to wield this kind of power most often. Even non-profit news organizations, to the extent that they cover up such operations, could, arguably, be said to be using for-profit news corporations to beef up the sector’s overall store of power for personal benefit at the expense of the well-being of the American public.

Because, in my heart, I feel it is urgently important for me to manifest some semblance of my God-ordained career, whatever that looks like in the future, I refuse to accept that it has been permanently stolen, and I still believe it right to articulate this desire. I loved my work, and the feeling of closeness to God I had (that I am very grateful to say now feels restored), before meeting Jordan and joining his work team; and I believe it is right for me to insist, and be able to prove, that a full resolution is possible – not only for myself but for other women and girls.

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