For Our Daughters in Nigeria

I can’t reduce it to a meme or a hashtag. I understand the intent behind it and it’s well intended but I simply can’t. They are human beings, they are someone’s daughters and sisters, they are my daughters, they are your sisters. They were taken, they are being sold, they are being raped, they are being married against their will. Why? Because they wanted to learn, because they wanted to live their potential not hide their light. They are being used as pawns in a global game of fear and the inhumanity of that appalls me and I can’t reduce it to a catchy phrase. No hashtag can contain their pain or the loss their families feel. The only thing that can contain it is the outstretched arms of our love. The only thing that can reach them now is our global, resounding no. Not this time, not our girls, not our family, not our world.

We will not be held hostage by your hate. We will meet your forces with the forces of love. We will meet your fear with forgiveness.

We can do this because we know you are also part of our family, a part we don’t want to look at, or own. But it is time for our family to come together as one and heal. To call back the ones who have strayed into darkness. To surround them not with the arms of war, but with the open arms of love, to surround them with the light of that love so that there is no darkness to hide in, so that the truth is illuminated.

We are one. They are our daughters. Release them. Then let us all heal together in the light.