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“Everyone suffers hardships in this life, Meriem. Especially women.”
Not for the first time she wondered if art was something you could even teach, the same way you taught science or math. The rules of math were concrete, but with art, the locus of creation lived within the artist.
What was she searching for? She wasn’t sure, but the more that was happening out there, the less was happening inside her, and that at least provided some relief.
Why didn’t the world recognize that identity and privilege were accidents of birth? How much more empathy would people have if they understood that their position in life was decided not by goodness or merit or fault or need but by luck and chance, a toss of a coin?
It was because all her life she’d learned to feel safer in obedience than to be free.
Was it possible for someone like her to find herself, to be her own person, when she had experienced so little of the world outside her home?
Travel and tell no one, live a true love story and tell no one, live happily and tell no one. People ruin beautiful things.’”
Words simplified situations and emotions, robbed them of their complexity.
Language was often a bridge, but sometimes a barrier.
Silence was better than being misunderstood, erased, unseen for who you really were.
As long as we continue to share our stories, our history will be remembered.”
“There is no hierarchy of pain when it comes to traumatic experiences,” Esther said. “I know it’s hard to accept that your suffering is legitimate, too, but I promise you it is.”
“Our emotions are energy,” Yara continued. “Energy in motion. The point is to move the emotions through and out of your body. When you don’t express your emotions, when you keep your feelings inside, the energy gets trapped. So it’s important to feel emotions and talk about them, because when you keep them bottled in, you start to feel sad and down and heavy.”
To surrender to the vulnerability of love and allow ourselves to be loved by others—isn’t that the most courageous act of all?
