25 years ago...

......you'd never guess that my parents were trapped in Communist Romania. Until my dad decided he'd had enough and escaped from behind the Iron Curtain. Here they are, months before being married. Notice the picturesque haystack in the background....a legacy of Ceausescu's refusal to modernise and develop a nation that continued under food rationing well into the 1980's.

Who told you?

“Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind? …Who taught you to hate being what God made you?” - Malcolm X

I find myself asking these questions very often. Either internally musing upon their truth, or straight out discussing them with any of my close friends. Wondering who told us, who taught us, about beauty, about what is worthy of love and admiration. 'Us' meaning women, only because I feel that we have been sold more of a lie than men. Sadly, the answer often seems to be 'The Media', that all-pervasive, ubiquitous and yet undefinable entity that shapes our lives more than we care to admit. But 'The Media' has a beginning, and yet these questions seem to be eternal, timeless, and older than MTV.

Mr X sure had a point, don't you think? Moreover, he was wise in not just simply decrying our self-loathing as futile and destructive, but going further, pushing past that and questioning; WHO taught us? Not 'Where did it come from?' Not so much 'What caused it?' but rather what self-governing and sentient being instilled and planted those poisonous seeds in our souls?

Who told you that you are not enough? Who told you that you are unworthy of love? Who said that you do not deserve peace?

For whoever did, was a liar. And has been since time immemorial.

And the beautiful, the tragic part of it all is remembering that just like every action has an opposite and equal reaction, so too does that sentient, wilful being have an Opposer, a Foe, a Warrior-King, a Suffering Servant who doesn't answer the questions but destroys their source.

If we had to be told, to be taught the intricacies of self-loathing, it makes you wonder....is there a Truth that lies beneath the slick veneer of lies? Is there a Truth that says we can have peace, we are enough, we are exquisite creations?

I think so. No. I know so.