My friend, how are you?
I know… it has been tough for me too.
I have seen atrocities committed over and over again on my little screen and feel guilty as I cook dinner and go to sleep in the safety of my home.
If you feel hopeless right now, let me remind you:
Feeling hopeless does not mean you are numb to pain.
Feeling hopeless means you are in deep pain.
Feeling hopeless means you have temporarily forgotten the sacredness of your voice.
Feeling hopeless means your soul is stirring.
When I trick myself into believing that my voice is too small for anyone to care, as if warming my hands by a fire, I return to these poems and words and melt away my fear:
poem of the time by Yrsa Daley-Ward
the border is the wound by adrienne maree brown
Gate A-4 by Naomi Shihab Nye
Why Bother by Sean Thomas Dougherty
“Activism is not issue-specific…” by June Jordan
And if you’re still here with me, let’s take a deep breath together.
“Even though staying silent may feel temporarily comfortable, slowly disappearing under tyranny is not safety. Safety is not the same as comfort.” ―Ace of Alice Sparkly Kat
“People avoid uncomfortable conversations to ‘keep the peace.’ But peace isn’t the goal of a relationship. Love is. And when we love someone, we have the hard conversations in service of that love.” ―Jillian Turecki
“For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition. And while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.” ―Audre Lorde
I hope you feel lifted and carried by these words from our fellow bright earthlings.
I hope you feel called to uplift and speak for those with less power and those who are silenced.
I hope you remember how divine and full you already are. Don’t let anyone or anything, especially yourself, cut yourself off from that divinity.
*Blue Sky, 2014. (In reference to the illustration at the top of this newsletter.) The title is based on words spoken by Zubair, a 13-year-old boy from North Waziristan, Pakistan. After losing his mother to an American drone strike he said, “I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer grey skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are grey.”
This piece was part of an exhibition featuring works by 48 selected artists that traveled through Italy as part of Associazione Culturale Tapirulan’s International Exhibition of Contemporary Illustrators.
Soul spark ✨
What’s been inspiring me lately
Softly, softly,
Haruka