The Fire Inside Me
Survivor Stories of Hope and Resilience
In Partnership with Hope and Resilience Long Island
Hosted by the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the South Fork
Saturday, August 8th at 4pm
Hope and Resilience Long Island (HARLI) and Herstory Writers Network came together for a special event celebrating the power of storytelling, hope, and resilience. Through heartfelt readings, participants shared personal stories of courage, healing, and strength, alongside selections from Herstory’s anthology, In Life We Trust. Together, these stories uplift voices, foster empathy, and remind us of the power of storytelling to inspire connection and change. We invite you to explore the stories shared at this event.
Painting by Gwynne Duncan
Part One:
The Fire Inside Us,
Survivors' Stories for Hope and Resilience
Stories
The courageous writers and readers in the first part of our program have all survived things that most people never have to live through. Much more than survivors, however, they are women who have dedicated themselves to helping others, who despite what they’ve been through and perhaps because of it, know how to care for and protect other people from harm. They know how to touch others’ lives in the ways they need to be touched. These pieces demonstrate how the creative spirit inside us all can help us triumph over adversity and can help us speak what is too often deemed unspeakable.
Alyssa Harrilal
The Fire Inside Me
She was only a child, but the world didn’t treat her like one. The adults who were supposed to protect her looked the other way. The system that was supposed to keep her safe left her exposed. And the monsters who preyed on vulnerability? They saw her, but not as a person, not as a little girl with dreams and a future, as an opportunity. She didn’t have the words for it then. All she knew was pain, confusion, and survival. She learned quickly how to read a room, how to mask fear with a straight face, how to make herself small enough not to be noticed, but strong enough to make it through the night.
Amanda Noll
Love is not a Shield
I remember staring at his swollen blue face, unable to accept what I was seeing. It felt like an out-of-body experience, as if I were watching a movie about someone else’s tragedy. The voices around me faded into background noise. I wasn’t answering questions. I wasn’t thinking. I was frozen, stuck in disbelief, waiting to wake up from a nightmare that refused to end.
Jenna Petersen
When Water Flows Strongly
You know what they don’t ever tell you about having a house burn down? How whatever the fire hasn’t destroyed, the water has. Nobody says that part first. The flames obviously are talked about, but words cannot do justice to watching the blue and orange hues or the crunching sounds of a crumpling infrastructure. What it feels like to watch yourself lose everything.
Part Two:
Hands Across Our Communities:
Memoir as a Tool for Peace and Justice
Our next group of writers brings to life their experiences grappling with various kinds of social ills and injustices. While exploring environmental injustice in Cameroon to homelessness on Long Island to overt xenophobia in Central Islip, these writers expose the deep and disturbing contradictions—hiding in plain sight—of the places we call home. In doing so, they affirm the humanity that unites us across cultures, the importance of simple acts of loving kindness, and the beauty of the human spirit at its best.
Elvira Lois Taku
The Bridge to Salvation
Sunday was never only about belonging. It was also about display. My parents cared —desperately— about how we were seen, and church was their weekly stage. No detail was too small, no effort too much. Our hair had to be pressed, edges straightened, socks bright, shoes polished until they reflected the morning sun. Not a face could go unwashed, nor a shirt wrinkle survive. Even if hot water hadn’t run that morning, it didn’t matter. We would wake at dawn, boil pot after pot, wait for it to cool just enough to stand, then scrub ourselves clean before the first bell.
Yolanda Gress
Dia Martes
A Tuesday in January 2005, a very cold day. Snow had fallen the day before and the wind was blowing. It made your hands freeze and the cold penetrated through to your bones. My car didn’t have heat, but I had the responsibility of taking Armando, my son, to Kara, a high school student who helped him with the hard homework problems that he didn’t understand.
Budie Kadir
America the Beautiful
I straightened out my white collared shirt, tucking it into my beltless black slacks. I tucked the stray hairs by my ears into my headscarf. In all my years in that school, I was marked by my hijab—my religiously worn veil poking out of a sea of blonde and brunette hair. Once upon a time, in a cultural revolution of 7th century Arabia, headcoverings, or hijab, were religiously prescribed with the social purpose of allowing a woman to go unbothered. These days, after 9/11 and the War on Terror, my veiled existence was counterproductive to discretion, often scrutinized and sometimes even politicized.
Part Three:
For the Next Generation
Our final three readings explore a number of themes—not least of which is the parent-child relationship—whether the child is yet to be born (as in Tina’s piece), is an infant (as in Belinda’s), or is herself the very young narrator of the story (as in Kayleen’s). Collectively, these pieces speak quietly—with the care of a mother looking toward a future with her child, or with the innocence of a child, looking toward her future with a new mother. Like all good parent-child relationships, they may contain concern and worry, but ultimately, they thrive on gratitude and love.
Tina Curran
Going to Goa
The sun was already burning down on the open station the morning I left the Burmese monastery. I would board the train to Goa, a two-day diagonal journey across half of India. I was heading off to find the friends I’d separated from a month ago in Nepal, wearing a long skirt that tied over my soccer ball-sized belly, carrying everything I owned in my small collection of cloth bags, carrying a being inside me.
Kayleen Braswell
All Rise
Some people think that a foster child will never find a home that will fit them, especially with a foster child who has a disability. Foster children think that they will never find a home that makes them feel welcome, especially the ones that don't get to go back to their original home. In this story, this little girl's life turns around and now she is doing amazing things.
Belinda Castiblanco
Nothing
The order of the factors does not alter the product, however, finding the answer to the equation of life is easier when you have lived following the rule of one plus one. Sometimes I feel that, although I am where I have always wanted to be, it has taken me so long because I've done everything from end to beginning.
Thank you to our sponsors for their generous support
East End Acupuncture Association
John Leonard
Daily Dose