How Olympian Aly Raisman Built Her Courage & Advice On Speaking Out

What would you say to young girls now who might be afraid to speak out and how do you get courage? I would say to young girls, boys, women, men, people of all ages, um, to know that you deserve to feel heard and to know that there is a whole army of survivors that has your back whenever you feel ready, um, to share your story. I think everyone is going through something different and my best advice is it's okay to not be okay. It's okay to ask for help. I know when I do that, I feel a lot better. So I hope that, um, they find strength in knowing that I support them and you have a whole army of survivors that support them too. Right now, I am just trying to take things day by day.

I definitely wanna always speak out on very important issues. When I spoke out, I didn't realize how many people can relate to my story. I feel like every single day, I have, um, survivors coming up to me, whether I'm at the grocery store, whether I'm at the mall, you know, no matter at the airport, wherever it is, people are sharing their stories with me and so I've realized that there are so many people out there that can relate. And so I want to continue to speak out and call attention to such an important issue. My biggest focus is, you know, tonight and tomorrow night.

I'm very honored to be there and taking it day by day, but grateful that, you know, ESPN has been so supportive because without the media, then we can't make even more of a difference because then with the media, more people know about it. So I think just calling attention, speaking, um, as much as I can, to kids, people of all ages and really focusing on education. I work with Darkness to Light. We're trying to get, um, you know, all adults to take the course because it's the adult's job to educate children or to protect them. So hopefully we live in a world one day where nobody is ever abused and we can live in a world where people have more empathy for one another.