Sublime

We live like beggars.

As I began, the words of the abolitionist William Wilberforce ran through my mind: “You may choose to look the other way but you can never again say you did not know.”[1] In 1789, filled with passion over the evil of slavery and an unflinching commitment to see it end, he had risen in the British Parliament and described in unwavering graphic detai

used to ask, Why me? Why did I survive? I have learned to ask a different question: Why not me? Standing on a stage surrounded by the next generation of freedom fighters, I could see in my conscious awareness something that is often elusive, often invisible: that to run away from the past or to fight against our present pain is to imprison ourselve

And because denial, fabrication—storytelling—was her way of staying one step ahead of her life, how could any of us tell her she was wrong?

What matters is that all of it, even if I didn’t know it then, brought me here, to this page, to tell you everything you’ll never know.