In 2022, I was in peak health: hiking, boxing, eating clean. Then suddenly, I was bedridden. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t write. I had been stabbed nineteen times, including once in the spine, by someone I had been seeing intimately. The injury left me with a rare condition called Brown-Sequard syndrome. I used to joke, bitterly, “Great job. You managed to get yourself stabbed and outed all in one fell swoop.” I blamed myself for surviving. I was hooked up to tubes, drifting in and out of consciousness. My friends spoke to the detective on my behalf because I couldn’t. When I was finally lucid enough to hold a conversation, a detective came to inform me that the man who did this had been caught. Because it was classified a domestic violence case, a restraining order had automatically been issued. My mother, who had flown in and refused to leave my side, looked confused. “Domestic violence?” she asked the detective. “I don’t understand.” My eyes went wide, signaling the detective to back off. She apologized and quickly left the room. My mother didn’t bring it up until a year later, when I was preparing to testify. We finally had the conversation. She said, “It reminds me of that movie…Moonlight.” I could tell she was trying to understand. In that moment, I saw the power of storytelling, media, and narrative, playing out in real time. Moonlight gave her the language to process what I couldn’t say at the time. My mother never had a formal education. Like many, media became her main source of knowledge. That’s why I believe education, both formal and informal, plays a crucial role in reducing intimate partner violence. Media literacy helps, but structured school programs, college curricula and survivor-led training can teach students to recognize early warning signs, understand the psychology of abuse, and unlearn toxic narratives about love, power, and control. But what happens when media, and by extension, society fails us? Look at the recent P. Diddy case: a man caught on camera mercilessly beating his partner and receiving a slap on the wrist. I’ve lived my own version of that same disappointment. The man who tried to kill me is facing less time than some nonviolent white-collar criminals. These are not anomalies; they are patterns. According to The Justice Gap Report, 88% of recent survivors of domestic violence did not receive adequate legal help for their civil legal problems, and 64% of women who reported needing legal services after experiencing intimate partner violence never received them. When abuse isn’t met with consequences, support or visibility, and when survivors are asked to prove their pain we send a clear message: this isn’t that serious. We must rewrite that message, and that starts with education. At Northwestern University, I’m pursuing a Master of Science in Leadership for Creative Enterprises, where I’m learning how to build infrastructure, raise capital, and scale mission-driven platforms. My goal is to create a storytelling network rooted in healing, imagination, and access, where survivors are not just statistics, but protagonists. Through my nonprofit, Hollywood Here, I already run programs that help underrepresented creatives, many of them survivors, tell their stories. I also created and host a podcast called The Resilience Files, where people like Ladios (who was stabbed in the throat by her partner) and Dr. Delgado (choked nearly to death in front of her children) reclaim their narratives and offer lifelines for listeners navigating similar paths. This is education through media. Because storytelling isn’t just for reflection; it’s for revolution. And education is how we equip people to lead it.