Dearest Anderson,

Thanks for sharing about the little town's growing up. Learning to love and accept different folk or at least someone different from themself is a good goal. It's like any bias, prejudice or bigotry it takes time, effort and the inclination, if they want to change.

Freedom to be who you are is a wonderful thing! The main thing, like you say, is to not give up sharing the story and being patient with them while they learn and accept as we ourselves have had to do with ourselves.

Your right, out of years of our own fear, that of others in the community and great aloneness and lonliness we come on a bit strong, at first, but being ignored so long and even being rejected is really painful and traumatic in itself.

Probably, courage plays one of the biggest roles in getting this freedom! We see that now. For going before us, we have much gratitude, for all of them and you! For sustaining till we could even gain our strength, well there are no words, just a conviction that we'll put on reserve for the 'right time'.

You write so many truths here to read over and over in order to fathom the depths of it. You see, it is the same here. For a while this post was almost lost to me, thankfully I found it because there is so much similarity in thinking and processing. It is so welcomed and just creates in us a feeling of: "hey there are others out there who suffered, struggled and have overcome. So, maybe we can too.

I use much energy and there is a pressure build-up always talking in the singular, "I". When we use the plural...well the internal connections seems to be faster. We tend to get less mixed up, as we are speaking for many. For the society's sake though, someone does speak the singular "I". It's exhausting though. But, it will only help if our communities, that each of us are in, can learn to hear the truth of the 'bigger picture of 'we'.

Your story of the man who asked about the internal children, illustrates perfectly the 'good outcome'. Your courage to talk to him about your internal children must have been a bit scary but also liberating. We chuckled too, that you brazenly decided to show the gentleman the work load we carry, sans the diapers (although some did/mlp may need those too, we don't judge).

When you took the 'unknown' and made in 'known', amazing way to put it! The people perish for lack of wisdom comes to mind here but there is hope in that in little increments we can all do somethings, our part. '

"A softer telling of the story of how we endured things single minded people have not had to endure", is how you put it. This is just so sensible! As in not a textbook of 'how to's' per say but a kindly explanation for those that will, to open their eyes to what has had to be endured.

Their tongues would have to stop wagging and their gossip mills stop producing, their dismissive spirits to end and their hautiness to be gone, though. When they learn to understand how a person can be so hurt as to shatter and split and what the outcome of that hurt can do then we will be finished telling this side of the story. We will win, we will be accomplished and we will be considered whole, even if we still have parts.

Here's to paving the way for those coming along who will find 'a softer hearing' on the bookshelf. I love that: "a softer telling". No ones likes to hear the harsh words of trauma but a soft telling may soften the hearing of it.

Thank you for saying so much here that we will keep it forever.