Her name was faith. She spelled it with a lower case "f."
Everything about her screamed lack of Faith, capital F, especially Faith in herself.
She would look around at the other faces in the room before meekly answering any questions. Whenever she spoke, she hoped mightily she had said the right thing. She hemmed and hawed and bit her fingernails whenever she was put on the spot. She did not have a mind of her own. She never smiled. Never.
She tried not to speak at all there for a while. The schools demanded that her parents send her to a shrink before she could return for another day of government indoctrination.
This was heaven for her! She went to the shrink and sat there, mute, day after day after day. She learned how to slow her breathing, to go into herself, to stop the constant flow of self-effacing thoughts in her head.
On that last day, a murder of crows sat on a line outside the window, and stared in at her. She smiled. The shrink then said the first and last words he ever said to her, breaking a months long and healing silence.
I see you've seen the crows. What do you think?
"I am free. I can fly. I know what Love is. And I am never going back to school."
This is my entry to @mariannewest's daily freewrite challenge. Today's prompt is her name was faith.
This is kind of about me, kind of not about me, all wrapped up in the mysteries of us all.
What a transformation! Faith represents many people who have been through same. It's very few people who discover themselves early in life and 'fly'.
Self-doubt and societal pressures are burdens laid on most of us from childhood. So we struggle like faith until we see and walk the path to freedom and self-acceptance.
I think I like this shrink. He didn't force her to talk, only to see and understand and she healed all by herself. Inspiring piece! !LUV 😊
Thank you for seeing so much in my freewrites, spewings of my subconscious, or whatever the word is for understandings that come from the beyond. Or within? I do not know where these stories come from, but I am very glad that they do come.
@owasco, @kemmyb(1/4) sent LUV. | connect | community | HiveWiki | NFT | <>< daily
! help(no space) to get help on Hive. InfoYour writing is gripping. I'm sure many can relate to your words
There you are!
Thank you for that wonderful comment. Gripping?! Cool.
Truly! It has quite an effect
Wow ... that is an amazing story... and a great deal true, as I was recently advised by a wise old man who spends his days hiking in the hills here: "Silence is often the most powerful response."
Silence and stillness are vehicles for truths to appear. I think they are a kind of technology that we no longer have time to squeeze into our lives. As I once heard about some positive behavior.
I walk 4-6 days a week ... usually about an hour or so... it does help...
Oh, to be truly free, not sure what that looks like anymore and I am an old lady. I wonder how my grandkids cope with all the technology and pressure that comes with being "liked" on social media. They will have to be strong to resist being totally consumed by all of it, or they to may fall silent.
Great free write.
We are all free, unless we choose to be shackled to fear and enmity. I'd say you guys are as free was we come these days. So much love and beauty! Ingenuity, fun, nature all around, natural water to swim in and to rejoice around. When I think of freedom, I see something like you guys. Your kids and grandkids have to possess some of this quality of living too.
So sweet, thank you. YES, we are blessed.
Like the change to lower case "f" for significance. Do you post on Vocal?
Let me know, so I can follow you there if you do?
I don't know what that is.
https://vocal.media/
It's a community where you can post writing. They have tons of contests. Let me know if you join.
Allow me to be critical.
I interpret that you are talking about a child. To achieve such mental strength as the end of your story suggests, it loses credibility. How can a child who does not speak or has chosen to speak as little as possible learn if not from encounters (through other people, mentors, role models, books etc.) that subsequently allow it to maintain its faith?
From what exactly, would be my provocative question, does any child, indeed any human being, derive spiritual strength if he or she has not first undergone what is commonly recognised as a process of maturation? The accepted hero stories always tell us that before a hero becomes a hero, he has experienced pain, error and suffering, which is necessary to become a hero, hence to free oneself.
The new hero stories, however, and what people scoff at because Hollywood has recently decided to tell them that way, is this: The heroines (they are mostly female now) achieve their mental and physical power just out of nowhere. It comes to them without any previous history, without them having done anything for it, so without having trained hard and without having suffered from insecurities and setbacks, doubts about themselves. Is it not so, that there needs to be a decision that despite these hurdles, one continues to walk the difficult way? And freedom comes to mind and heart as a consequence of that?