Just before the news went out that CBS reporter Lara Logan was conducting her first interview since her violent attack, Oregon Women’s Report received a form thank you card for sending her a support letter [5] (containing numerous words of encouragement from our viewers). What matters most to us all is not the thank you but that the friend we were so hurt and feared about was now back with hope and optimism. Seeing her card with her smile and the words “This will not define me” and “My best work is yet to come!” made our spirits rise.
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We felt the need to start the support letter because we feared that her sexual assault was made public without her control or consent. Women across our state sent encouraging words as a public way to uplift Lara and not be part of the “public” problem. Her support from around the nation showed that love still matters as Lara said in her interview, “I do wish I had a way to explain to all the people who did things for me, who wrote to me sent messages…all those things layer by layer help restore you and put you back together. They are everything. I wish people to understand that none of those letters went into a vacuum. It was such incredible thoughtfulness that lifted me up.”
We feature the video below so you can know her story from her own words and you can be encouraged by her own resolve that the best of Lara is yet to come. She said this is both the first and last interview on her tragedy, so let this be the closing of one door and the opening of a new beautiful door marking her new future that we all embrace.