Sansa’s Lack of Regret

Published May 11, 2019 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hi Guys!

I’ve written to you before on the Westworld Podcast but have stayed out of Game of Thrones on purpose so I could just sit back and enjoy your shows. I’m writing today to correct something I just heard on the Small Council for Episode 4 so while this is an Um Actually….it’s not directed at you! (you should bask in the glow of this being aimed elsewhere)

A listener wrote in expressing dissent of Sansa’s lack of regret toward the things that happened to her. They said that they felt it was disingenuous to survivors of sexual assault. Let me first say that to some survivors it would feel that way….but it depends on how a particular person reacts to assault.

As a survivor myself I have to tell you that what Sansa said was the FIRST time I have seen my words and feelings expressed on screen. It was, for me, the most powerful moment on the entire show because I have said those words…at least something very close.

I was asked once “if you could go back and have your sexual assault never happen, would you?” I was surprised by my own gut feeling and response. The truth, for me, is that I would not change it. That experience is part of who I am today. It shaped me in ways nothing else has. It taught me the absolute depths of my mental strength and stability. I am a stronger person today BECAUSE of that experience and I know it to my core.

Did I want it to happen? NO! Am I happy it happened? NO but it did happen and I can’t change it. What if’s and could have’s mean nothing in this life and THAT was Sansa’s eloquently put point. She knows who she is. She knows who she would have been if her abuses had never occurred, and she understands and appreciates the differences between the two. She has fully accepted what happened to her and released it. She has chosen to find something positive in it and her words were some of the most empowering ever written on the show.

So to the folks complaining about this line. Yeah, some women may feel slighted because they don’t feel that way about their own abuse but there’s another side to it too and we all react to abuse in our own, individual way. So maybe everyone should keep the judgement to a minimum on this subject.

As always, great show guys. I love it.
Christina from Ohio

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