(An Excerpt from In Times of Terror, WAGE BEAUTY)

An essential component of healing the hearts of those forced from their homelands: center their beauty. It is a simple approach to disrupting that loop tape of self deprecation that is playing on repeat in so many of our brains.

For there are few pains distinct as the one that emerges from a feeling of abnormality, that seemingly inescapable idea that one is all alone in their wound and this world. Scaled up, it becomes a social belief present across hearts that one's pain has no parallels, perpetuating feelings of shame and isolation.

My how trauma convinces us we are abandoned.  It is an unimaginative composer corrupting that loop tape thar sits in your frontal lobe, impeding our ability to see beyond our own experience, much less across generations.

Look up. Look around. Listen . See and hear the echoes of your wounds and dreams all around you. Know that you are never alone as you think. We may even be in the majority. Each point of connection with another transforms them from stranger into ally in the healing process.

If you read this and still feeel abandoned, walk with head high knowing there are generations of ancestors inside of you. We will survive this era as we did the eras before: using the skills we have, inventing the ones we need.

On those days when the spine or soul becomes tired, imagine all of humanity whispering a twelve word prayer inside your ear: "we are not the children nor the descendants of a weak people. 

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