As I sit here writing this to you I am lost. Like many people my age I am lost and I don’t know where to begin. This is my third draft of what I hope will be a transformative experience for the both of us, and yet it just isn’t coming. Do you know what I mean? Have you ever worked very hard for a certain moment and then, just before the end, you freeze?

When I was a little girl, I was known for consistently losing my earrings. Or—to be precise— one farda (pair) of my earrings. My mom kept all the earrings I lost in a small wooden jewelry box that she filled to the brim: two pearl ones, a gold one, a diamond and a small turquoise flower. I used to think her reaction – when I would ask to borrow her earrings— was way overdone (hatdaya3ihom! Be careful!) until I discovered that even well into adulthood, I was still losing my earrings. One time I even lost an earring in the street outside my house [1].

I don’t know if this is just a me thing, I’m assuming a lot of people lose earrings, but I think it is quite a feat to possess over 15 pairs of just 1-farda earrings – and I’m not talking about cheap costume jewelry, I’m talking about the valuable ones. A lot has happened in the past year. I have been sick and on the brink of death. The light that I used to carry within me has dimmed, or, possibly, gone out. I want to tell you all about it, but I don’t really want to start our relationship that way. Usually, I’m a go-in-for-the-guts type of gal but this time I wanna take it slow.

When I started working on this blog, I came across that box of lost/unlost earrings again and started wondering why I held on to it. My time in hospital last year had taught me that very little in life is truly precious, and so, it made sense to throw it away. But then I started wondering how many other people have boxes of semi- useless stuff that they don’t want to throw away. If this is something we all have in common. If this is something that defines us as a species.

Why is it that we can’t let go?

Why do we put up a shrine to our past?

What parts of ourselves are we holding on to, even when they’re no longer in style? 

And what parts are we hoarding …afraid to share with the world?

In this blog I hope to go through this journey of unexplored treasures with you. Maybe we’ll find our other ferad, maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll uncover new hidden boxes, maybe we won’t. Hopefully we will get unlost together. I look forward to sharing many soul-building moments with you.  

Until then,

This is me

Girl With One Earring

[1] I looked for it for three days and had my friend check his car, but it never turned up…