The Wire

Today is International Women’s Day. Last year I focused on women as a whole and spoke of the hardships some of us endure from single parenthood to dying in war torn nations. But this year I want to focus on the women, the girls, the prisoners of war, who are being treated like objects and are being sold into slavery and treated as sex slaves. These girls and women are being raped countless times every day and are giving birth to babies at young ages and dying during childbirth. These victims of sex slavery are not only traumatized physically but also emotionally. When, if they are released from their imprisonments’, they are not able to speak to their families of what really happened to them, rape, because if they do they’ll be cast away from their families because of their family honor. These women are told that being raped by a man or men is acceptable within Islam, this is false information. These women are the thousands and hundreds of thousands of Yazidi women who have been

I've been very silent these last few weeks, almost as if I am a new person, not the same as I have been this last year.  I wonder to myself lately whether or not this means I am healing because as they say "time heals all wounds." Or am I just running from my past by putting it aside and forcing myself to run, to run to a universe much different to the one I'm living in....I'm not sure... Lately I've been having a lot of dreams, for the first time in years I've been remembering little snippets of these dreams.  They are mostly of my past life, of my husband, of my first love, and of my childhood memories.  Maybe this is the way I'm coping with my past, by remembering all of these painful memories in my sleep.  Maybe my mind has latched on to which remedy is best for my heart, It's almost less painful when I dream of my husband because I can't feel that gut wrenching feeling of a blade cutting through my veins.  I don't know how I've m