“Why bikes?” she asked one day.
“Freedom. You’re in control. You decide where to go. Nobody owns you.”
“When you’re ready.”
On her nineteenth birthday, Macy called me. “I’m ready.”
I taught her on a small Honda. She was terrified at first. Then determined. Then joyful.
“I’m flying,” she said after her first solo ride. “I’m actually flying.”
She got her license. Bought her own bike with money from her part-time job. Started riding to campus. To therapy. To the safe house where she now volunteered, helping other girls like her.
“I’m going to be a social worker,” she told me. “The right kind. The kind who actually protects kids.”
“You’ll be good at it.”
“Because I know what it’s like to need saving and have everyone look away?”
Macy’s twenty-three now. Graduated with her social work degree. Works with trafficking victims. Testifies at trials. Helps prosecution cases.
She still rides. Has her own Harley now. Sportster. Purple. Covered in stickers about trafficking awareness.
We ride together sometimes. Her and me and a few other club members. Sometimes other survivors join us. Women who’ve escaped. Who’ve healed. Who ride to remember they’re free.
Last month, we organized a ride. “Macy’s Run for Freedom.” Two hundred bikers. Raised fifty thousand dollars for trafficking victim services.
At the end, Macy gave a speech.
“Seven years ago, I was being sold in a gas station bathroom. Three men were bidding on me like I was property. I’d given up. Accepted that this was my life now. That I’d die young in some hotel room somewhere and nobody would care.”
She looked at me.Continue reading…
