Gratitude, Hope, and Sharing our Strengths
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” ~Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
In her 1937 novel ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ Zora Neale Hurston tells the story of Janie Crawford’s passage from repression to spiritual fulfillment as she clashes with the expectations thrust upon her by her community. The novel, a story of ‘becoming in black America’ casts a long shadow over the Harlem Renaissance period and mirrors the hopes and struggles of blacks embodied through literature and arts, including motifs of racial and gender roles, inequities and oppression, liberation, relationships, and lives of self-fulfillment.
As I winded down the month of August while reading the novel, one of its themes (living a life of self-fulfillment) stood parallel to the myriad of struggles I’ve been through over the past year as I went through losses, mental breakdowns, failures, grief, disappointment, and the pressure of dealing with ‘the expectations thrusted upon me by my community.’ I’d my first therapy session in November of last year and have since been through highs and lows with a series of traumas. The thing about the traumas of our past is that it re-emerges with triggers, or through experiential reoccurrences. With the pressure of leaving college a few months back and figuring what’s next, the quarter-century crisis ushered…
