Member-only story
Doors to The Soul
*
“The Negro Mother” (fragment)
…I am the dark girl who crossed the wide sea
Carrying in my body the seed of the free.
I am the woman who worked in the field
Bringing the cotton and the corn to yield.
I am the one who labored as a slave,
Beaten and mistreated for the work I gave
Children sold away from me, husband sold, too.
No safety , no love, no respect was I due.
Three hundred years in the deepest South…
— Langston Hughes
*
I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity, but to mature and transfigure us.
~ Herman Hesse
*
It is what is called experience, for which in old times the elders were considered the wisest of the tribe, and their duty was to pass on their knowledge to their children and grandchildren. It is a wonderful feeling to realize that every day you learn something more, that your own mistakes before have made you wiser, that your mind (as well as your body perhaps weakened) is a library that enriches day by day with a new…
