Experiences "ancient and hidden"

Audre Lorde speaks out about being able to share our experiences through language.  She writes, "These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because they are ancient and hidden; they have survived and grown through that darkness.  Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling."  This quote speaks a great deal about people who are "outsiders", people who have been limited in being able to share their experiences.  Experiences that are worth sharing because they speak to those who share similar stories.

I liken our "ancient and hidden" places to a tree that can survive in the crevice of cement, shielded by light, and yet it yearns for the rare rays that spray its surface if even just momentarily.  The tree grows, it sprouts new branches and new leaves, struggling to survive, strengthening as it stretches taller - it's roots firmly affixed deep into the earthen floor. 

We are just like a tree, each firmly affixed with roots in family and experience.  We struggle to survive, to find light amidst our dark world, to speak out when others want to silence us, to share our stories, to stretch our minds, our pens, so others know what we know so well. 

We know us.  Each of us experiences in some way joy, fear, pain, happiness, birth, death, love, faith, and hope, but only we can reflect them the way we feel them.  Only we can share them through language in the way we affix the words to a page; whether that is through careful consideration or an unfurling flow of the pen.  Only we can share the "ancient and hidden" us.