Take Back the Night

I am in awe of the elasticity of the human spirit
how it can stretch wide
paper thin
let people in
slide our pain
out of our grieving
heaving hearts
and let it land
heavy and true
in the gentle hands
of this loving space
a gift spun of
shared sorrows
of threads of experience
we wish did not connect us,
bind us
tie us, together
in this long march
for a justice that is our birthright
stolen
behind closed doors
slammed shut by
individuals' and society's
discomfort
with dirty truths.
They say a spider's web
is stronger than its equivalent in steel
I believe in this
delicate haven we've
woven tonight
and hope teardrops
become prisms
to reflect the morning's sun
because morning will come
and we will be there to rise with it.


-by Jean Leonard, PhD.

90% of child sexual abuse is committed by someone known, trusted or related to the child.

Does anyone care?

Provincial elections are set to begin in Sudan next week.  Elections that have been in the works since at least 2005.  An election would be a breakthrough for this devastated country.  But now it's falling apart and it will probably only get worse.  The government thrives on intimidation and threats, making empty promises to people desperate for relief.  Civil war will likely resume and many more will be killed.  Evidently more than 2 million dead isn't enough.  Women and young girls raped, children mutilated, little boys taken into slavery, families burned alive in their huts.  No war is okay, acceptable or justified.  But war in Sudan is brutal, unfathomable, possibly the closest thing to hell on earth.
I have seen the faces of those who survived war.  I have walked through a village that was bombed, raided and burned to the ground.  I have seen people drinking contaminated and disease laden river water because dead bodies were placed in their clean water wells.  I have seen young children with stick figure bodies and protruding bellies due to severe malnutrition and protein deficiency.  I've held babies too dehydrated to muster a cry.  I've seen a grandmother attempt to produce milk from her own breast for her orphaned grandson.  I've met men, with tribal symbols etched into their foreheads, who tell stories of men on horseback who rode through the marketplace and killed everyone in sight.  I have cared for a mother and her newborn, all the while wondering how this mother can love her fifth baby when the previous four have died due to entirely preventable and treatable reasons.  I learned that a mother is a mother anywhere in the world.  A mother who has experienced such grief and loss is still capable of loving again.  Even more surprising to me, she loves without condition and without limit.  She loves her baby everyday of its life, not knowing if tomorrow will be the last.  Loving and nurturing her little one, her touch is gentle and her heart is full.
I hope someone cares.