Category: Clarity

We must be careful about the voices that we plant in our children’s heads. They will stay with them forever, whether we believe so or not, whether we intend to provoke this or not. And most of our children might not have the fortune of a strong personal character to push them into a nervous breakdown to reset the narrative that they believe about themselves. And won’t have the opportunity to ask the question, well, what if this isn’t so? They will simply continue believing the voices.

I am trying to follow the advice I have been reading (and talking about) for the past years. To sit with the pain, to look straight into the eyes of the person I was ten years ago when I ran away from a hollow and painful existence. And ask myself what is this here to teach me?

I left the Orthodox Church a decade ago. Meaning, I stopped hoping that was the path to God, salvation and peace. I have been longing

Any failure throws me in a vortex of such despair that I can’t even bear the thought of it. Perfection is still my dance and, in all of the work I have done with myself over the past decades, I have peeled only the outside layers of the onion: the middle, probably the stinkiest and hottest part of it, is still there, untouched, disguised as a quality that fools me into thinking I am helpful.

“It is easy to love a flawless God, with no stain and no mistake, the way He is. What is much harder is to love your fellow human, with all their habits and flaws. There is no wisdom without love. We cannot truly love Him or know Him until we learn to love Allah’s children.” (The Forty Laws of Love, Elif Shafak, pg. 120)