Some people will laugh when I say I had a lucky life as a kid, but I did. The losses I experienced were buffered by the love I received.
I grew up in country Australia, in small-ish towns, with family around me & people I knew. We could & did roam at will. We had few rules: come home when the street lights come on and; don’t swim in the creek (the latter we largely ignored). If I was picked on it was because in the new town we moved to, I didn’t know the other kids & I was shy for a while. They called me “snob”. The kids in my old town would have laughed at the thought of me being shy or a snob, so it wasn’t fair or nice, but I wasn’t picked on for my race, colour or religion, or for long. On Christmas Eve all us kids went to whatever church everyone else was going to that year. The only wars we staged were over who sat where and with whom on the school bus. We were made to go to school. It wasn’t a privilege or an option.
I’m aware as a child I was fairly sheltered from the stuff that goes on behind closed doors. I know bad things happened. There was alcohol, drugs, violence, unplanned pregnancies, losses, disappointments, grief, desperation… afflictions and effects in a modern, affluent society.
I well remember well being 16, and feeling the walls of community closing around me. I look back now and know it was just me growing out of the cocoon that had sheltered, nurtured and given me the strength and momentum I was feeling the push of. It wasn’t perfect but if I had kids I’d go straight back there or somewhere like it, such is the strength of my convictions about the benefits of good community.
This doesn’t mean I live in a bubble. I am tragically aware my life then and now is the worldwide exception rather than the rule. I have a dream. I dream all kids will grow up feeling confident and being safe, knowing everyone is the same but different & that’s ok. I dream they will have enough. Love, food, water, shelter, education will take them to a future they can imagine living & thriving in and passing on to others. I dream they will experience enough challenges to develop character but nothing they can’t handle or will damage them.
I dream they will be neither persecutors or victims.
Having been independent and out in the world for several decades, I again feel the draw of community and know it will have its place in my life soon enough. Within it both locally and globally is a continuing opportunity for me to manifest those dreams.
This post is my tribute to “16-year-old Amina Filali, who took her own life to escape marriage to the man whom her family says raped her. Escape for Amina came in the form of a pill of rat poison she bought in a market for 60¢.” I began writing it before I saw the news article which led me to think about Amina’s dreams . Even though she is no longer alive her dreams will be alive as long as we keep dreaming for her and others who need our dreams, for I believe just as nothing can be accomplished with only dreams, also nothing can be accomplished without them.
I dream the kids of today & tomorrow will grow up, grow old, take my dreams and make them obsolete. I dream they will dream their own dreams, better dreams.
I dream this for Amina Filali.
daleleelife101.blog 
great post
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Thank you, and thank you for commenting and saying so. Much appreciated. It is close to my heart.
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people don’t understand how traumatic abuse can be, and if you don’t let lose that pain, it can eat your mind alive.
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Wow. I thought you were going to be telling us about some of your sleepytime dreams and asking what we dreamed at night.
I often have bad dreams, verging on nightmares (I start shouting help in the middle of night) – so to follow your dream theory, I’d like anyone not to have bad dreams, where there inner fears built up over so many years from the past still come back to haunt them
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Thank you. I agree. I dream of a world with no bad dreams.
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Reblogged this on elladee_images.
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Brilliant post, great read
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Thnx. I took the photos for my street art collection but they came to represent so much more 🙂
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You can really tell. Wonderful!
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I read about this incidence. I don’t think I’ll ever understand a culture where marriages are forced to begin with, much less where a child is forced to wed a/her rapist. It seems he should have been arrested for pedophilia. Amina probably felt like she had no future. It is so sad that parents put ‘tradition’ about their children’s happiness and/or well being. I hope that Amina find’s happiness on the other side. May she RIP in the meantime.
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I agree. I had to re-read the article a couple of times to may sure I understood because I thought “this can’t possibly be right”.
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Some of those religions are really strange. I can’t imagine how a mother would allow her children to suffer as they sometimes do in the name of tradition. I guess it all has to do with the culture in which you are raised. I thank God, I am American. Although, I sometimes wonder, with our corrupt Government, how much longer Nationality will make a difference. I just love my freedom, even if it is being erased as we speak. Here though, hubby to be would be carted off to jail and wishfully handled by his fellow inmates. Child molesters here are the lowest scum of the Earth. They rank below murderers.
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I think within their culture & ability to do so, the parents were trying to do “the right thing”. So sad & sorry for them all, and the others we never hear about in the news.
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Ditto here, but when push comes to shove, it is up to the people that allow the rules of a specific culture to dictate their lives, to change those rules themselves. It is so sad though, that a girl so young, lost the hope and the will to live. And I’ve heard horror stories of others, and as you said, I’m sure there are thousands of stories, none of us know about. Sometimes it is a cruel world we live in.
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real nice
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