Just for today

You are some sort of magical creature.  I can try to cut you out of my everyday routine but I cannot seem to lock you out of my heart.  I miss you so terribly today.  So, I wish for a quiet moment - just once...


I wish you would run your fingers through my soul. I wish you could see some light in me, just for a moment.  Look a bit deeper - peep through the keyhole of my soul.  Just for today.   Just once, I wish you could feel exactly what I feel, believe what I believe, perceive as I perceive, look, experience, examine, and just once.... see into my heart and understand me and perhaps you may realise just how much I loved you.

Wear your dignity, not his shame

I am deeply disturbed by acts of violence – especially when they are perpetrated against women and defenceless children.  Recently, I listened in horror to the account of the CBS journalist who was gang raped in Egypt and the self-righteous and misogynistic responses of some people in the media.  She is a celebrity and the world has reacted in outrage.  However, I am aware of another victim, someone’s mommy, wife, daughter  and friend who has been brutalised too.  

While I do not know her personally, I am deeply moved by what has happened to her.  I have been thinking of her and stand appalled at the devastation one person can cause in the soul and life of another with out a second thought. 

So this blog is just a thought from one stranger on this side of the planet to a broken and shattered woman on the other side of the globe…

Dearest girlfriend

I do not know you and I cannot profess to begin to imagine the heartache you must be carrying inside of you right now.   While I don’t know you and the details of your particular circumstances, I understand the spirit of a woman and it is with the deepest respect and compassion that I write this.  I have been thinking of you and trying to put myself in your shoes.  I am deeply disturbed by what has happened to you.

I have never been raped and that is only because I have been lucky, not because I am a better person than you or because of anything you did that I haven’t.  Don’t allow this monster to take a way your righteous anger.  If you feel that you have done something somehow to deserve what happened to you, you are allowing him to keep hurting you, even though he is absent.    You were the victim – not the perpetrator.  Too often, one hears that women try to find the fault within themselves  for what happened to them and in a sense they assume the role of the perpetrator.  You were in the wrong place at the wrong time and became the victim of a predator who uses sex to feel a sense of power over women which he obviously cannot get otherwise.   He is a coward.  Blaming yourself only empowers him.

I wonder if you feel guilty that you did not fight harder and wonder if you think that you had, it may not have happened?  Please don’t.  Fear can paralyse you and there is a huge difference between submission and consent.  If you did not verbally express desire to have sex with this man, then you definitely did not consent to the act.  Please do not confuse the two.  In some cases submission without consent is the only way to save your life.  You should not feel shame or guilt over being the victim.  You have been brutalised and you definitely did not ask for it.

If it were me, I think I would feel deeply embarrassed as if everyone knew what had happened to me.  I think it is natural – we feel violated in such an intimate way – that we unwittingly wear a badge of shame that is not ours to wear.  Too often, I think we are too worried about what people may think or say about us.  Please try to focus on yourself and your own healing.  Please don’t pin his shame to your sleeve.  It is not yours to wear.

I feel such rage at the devastation that such an act of violence can have on a woman and her family.  There is no justification for what he has done.  Please, please do not allow him to minimise your femininity and your beauty.  Please channel your outrage and your anger outward – at him.  Please do not inflict it on yourself or get trapped in the abyss of self-recriminations.  You have so much to fight for.  You are worthy.  You are beautiful.  You are a mom.  You are a woman who has the right to say NO.  What he did to you was deplorable and debased.  But what happened  was as a result of HIS actions and his choice – it is not a reflection on you or  who you are.  There is so much more to you than a woman who has been brutalised.

I so hope and pray that you will look in the mirror and see beauty, grace and dignity there.  You are a survivor.  You have survived many women’s worst nightmare.  I pray that with time you will find the resilience you need to stand up and fight for your future.  You did fight him – even if your cry was silent and your resistance futile.  You did fight and you still are.  You have not lost your dignity, he preyed on your vulnerability and your fear. 

I pray that you will find the inner strength to get up each morning and face the world with pride.  You ought to.  You have conquered.  You may be hurting but you have conquered.  I wish for you so much love and understanding from those closest to you.  I hope that you will have understanding silences because sometimes words become superfluous and obsolete. I pray that those closest to you will allow you the space and time  to deal with your emotional trauma and not compound it by making you cope with theirs. 

I hope that you are hugged when you need to be hugged and told that you are loved.  I hope that you will again find a way to combat the fear and do the mundane things in life without looking over your shoulder.  I hope that the eidetic memory will leave you soon, so that you are not haunted by the event and reliving it every night.  I wish for you many nights’ peaceful rest in the loving embrace of your husband.  I hope that your marriage and family will be your sanctuary.  Allow them to care for you and love you.  More than anything, I wish for you to find your inner voice and defy what this man has done to you and your loved ones.   I pray for you to find a means to channel your heartache, rage and anger positively.  

You are a beautiful and dignified woman and a mom whose children look up to her with love and appreciation.  Focus on that.  More than anything, I hope you will not allow this gutless non-entity of a man to keep violating your mind or to wreck your marriage.  I wish for you good friends who will walk this path with you  and be there for you in your darkest hours. Above all, please fight for your survival and your healing.  

Please claim what is rightfully yours… your right to life, happiness and love.    

Lots of love from Sydney

CornflowerBlue

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The Angel in the Marble said "Sawubona"

"I saw an angel in the marble and I carved until I had set him free." - Michelangelo Bunarotti


I travel to work by train every morning.  While sipping my cappuccino this morning, I watched as strangers boarded the train and noticed a few  familiar faces.  Oddly enough, even though I smiled at the familiar faces, they did not acknowledge my silent greeting.  I was pondering this phenomenon of detachment when I recalled one of my first lessons in conversational Zulu.  I’m a child of Africa, hatched under the African sun and have always thought the Zulu greeting to be truly beautiful. When you greet someone in Zulu with “Sawubona”, it literally means  “I SEE you”. The appropriate response “Ngikhona”, translates into English as “I am here”. 

Intrinsic in this greeting is the notion that “until you saw me, I did not exist”.  By recognising and seeing each other, we come into existence.  This is echoed in the Zulu proverb, “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabanthu”  which means a person is a person because of other people.  This triggered thoughts about a recent conversation.  Sadly, I have felt unseen and unacknowledged by someone who is really very important to me.

As I listened to the criticism during a recent conversation, my heart was aching to hear the “Sawubona”  which would acknowledge me  - my wholeness somehow – somewhere between the lines, but I didn’t.  All the while my heart thumped “I am here.  I am here. I am here.”  I felt minimised and reduced to a few negative traits and flaws.  As the criticism was handed down, a part of me stopped dead in my tracks.  One of the blows hit a faultline that runs very deep – right down to my core and split me open, like the chisel of a sculptor splits a block of marble if it strikes a vein in the rock.  It split me open with the same stunned silence after a massive explosion.  It leaves you dazed for a few seconds.  It was in that silence that I heard her.  The angel in the marble.  She bellowed at me from my core – “I AM HERE!  I AM WHOLE! THERE IS SO MUCH MORE TO ME!  LOOK AT ME!!!”  I felt her roar in defiance and in anger which is generally pain that has become too much to handle. I felt her rise up and beat against the walls of my heart begging to be acknowledged.  I thought for a moment that I was not the only one who had heard her and feeling that defiance brought me to tears that flowed unabashedly down my face.  They were tears of extreme hurt and anger.  How is it that someone who claims to love you, can hurt you more deeply than any stranger ever could?  In the stunned silence the sobs subsided, I stopped fighting the hurt, and am not fighting to hold on anymore.  I felt my soul shudder like a child does after a bout of crying and looked inward.

I thought of Michelangelo’s words about his sculptures “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free” and I realized how profoundly true it was of this situation.  That day, I realized that there is indeed an angel trapped inside of me – in this humble block of marble there is more to me than you are seeing in front of you and she is screaming for release and to be acknowledged.  Michelangelo said that in each block of marble he could see the statue as plain as though it were standing before him.  All he had to do was liberate it from the rough marble walls imprisoning it so that he could reveal it to others.  What a wonderful man he must have been.  I so wish you could look deeper and see the angel in me.   Unacknowledged, pain can erode your soul from the inside out – like an incessant dripping wears away at the limestone to create a large vacuous cave inside.  It is from that cavernous hollow that the echo of despair and self-doubt becomes the background noise for every conscious moment.

Marble is an unforgiving medium – mistakes and damage cannot be undone except by changing the design.  A single blow made with the chisel angled incorrectly, can crack a block of marble. The same is true for a human spirit.  I am the marble – the primordial quantum soup of endless potential.  Just like the marble, I hold the form of every thought and as I intend or visualize, the angel in me is revealed.  I have heard her and now I am chipping away at the marble to free her.  I’m chipping away at the fear, worry, sadness, feelings of worthlessness, and unlovability so that the inner angel can emerge.

I realize that a very special person passed briefly through my life and that person was me.  I need to return to her.  I am only human and flawed but I am perfect as I am.  I have always endeavoured to be your most loyal friend, a caring person, someone you can count on, dependable, fun and loving.  I have always been a giver and have demanded little in return. But I realized, I have not been any of those things to myself.  I realize that I will need determination on this journey.  I have gathered my chisels and I have started chipping.  I have to stay on course, grip the wheel and keep at it.  

I will win this battle, one chip at a time and I will have cuts and bruises along the way.  I am not a master carver. I have been found wanting - rejected because the block of marble is substandard.  Isn’t it ironic though, that the block of marble Michelangelo used for the monumental David, was rejected by the quarry master as being flawed and unsuitable.  Michelangelo disagreed.  He took what others considered the consolation prize and discovered something truly beautiful because he was prepared to look deeper than the superficial reality. I only wish you would really SEE the wholeness of me.   

Perhaps someday, I will hear you say, “Sawubona” and I may or may not answer “Ngikhona”.