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Jeri Bingham, the creator and host of Hush Loudly, a podcast dedicated to introverts.
Gorée Island—“the last place our ancestors were held before being brought to America,”
the transformation of past injury into present healing, of bitter into sweet.
“Black people sometimes keep it all inside,” she said, “to be strong, unwavering, or unbothered, all of which can sometimes appear to non-Blacks as anger or apathy.”
Another way to heal generational pain, says Yehuda, is to help others currently facing similar trouble.
“Longing,” she said. “I just have it. I don’t know why. I’m longing to be whole.” But as she told me her story, it was clear that she did know why. And it wasn’t just Farah’s story. It was her sister’s story, her mother’s story, it was the story of her female ancestors.
Meaning making, he believed, is the heart of humanity; it gives us the power to transcend suffering.
Nietzsche, who wrote that “he who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
Levantine hamsa
“Live as though all your ancestors were living again through you,”
I can keep the connection alive without keeping the pain.
We all think what we think, feel what we feel, are who we are, because of the lives of the people who came before us, and the way our souls have interacted with theirs. Yet these are also our own, singular lives. We have to hold both these truths at the same time.
Your pure sadness that wants help really is the secret cup, the longing we express really is the return message, and the grief we cry out from does, in fact, draw us toward union.
If you’re this obsessed, it’s because he represents something you long for.
Maybe you experience a chasm between who you are and what you do for a living, and this tells you that you work too much, or too little, or that you want fulfilling work, or an organizational culture in which you fit; or that the work you need has little to do with your official job or income source; or countless other messages your yearning might be sending you: Listen to them, follow them, pay attention.[*]
In Rwanda,
eight hundred thousand were slaughtered by machete in ninety days, a rate of killing that surpassed the Nazi concentration camps,
that if you want to live a quiet life, you should just live a quiet life; that if you’re a humble person who has no use for the spotlight, to just be a humble person who has no use for the spotlight. No big deal.
We’re drawn to the sublime domains, like music, art, and medicine, not only because they’re beautiful and healing, but also because they’re a manifestation of love, or divinity, or whatever you want to call it.
