I have not written in this blog for years. It’s a big deal for me that I’m putting in a new post. During these years I’ve been in a “cocoon” in which a great deal of soul work has taken place. This is me beginning to emerge from that cocoon into the butterfly I’ve transformed into.

What inspired me to do this rather than just think about it or write it in my journal was the decision that for today, I was going to seek out cultural beauty and forget about the mundane things I need to do. I had to, because I learned very early in life to survive rather than live. This just “surviving” is killing me, so I deliberately decided to live today.

My instinct in seeking out cultural beauty led me to my email, in which I receive The Marginalian Newsletter by Maria Popova. I rarely take the time to read it, but I did today. I came across a beautiful post entitled “Rebecca Solnit on Breaking Silence as Our Mightiest Weapon Against Oppression.” Here is the quote that captivated me, because it got to the heart of what I’ve been wanting to do for a very long time, which is tell my story:

“We are our stories, stories that can be both prison and the crowbar to break open the door of that prison; we make stories to save ourselves or to trap ourselves or others, stories that lift us up or smash us against the stone wall of our own limits and fears. Liberation is always in part a storytelling process: breaking stories, breaking silences, making new stories. A free person tells her own story. A valued person lives in a society in which her story has a place.”