In all my years of searching for authenticity, I’ve learned to spot the flicker—that brief moment when someone touches something real. A crack in the armor. A tear. A pause. But it’s usually brief. Most cover it up again, retreating into intellect, distraction, or persona.
I saw it in my niece XA once. Just a glimmer. But it didn’t last. The masks forged in childhood—shaped by my sister’s repression, by family silence, by the world’s praise for performance—snapped back into place. The flicker was gone.
I saw it in S, too. He helped me write A Dance to Freedom, a book that lays bare the raw truth of childhood repression and the courage it takes to break free. And yet, he couldn’t break free himself. He voted for a man whose entire political power is built on exploiting people’s unresolved repressed emotions. A man who reenacts his own childhood pain on the world stage, targeting those who cannot fight back—migrants, children, the vulnerable.
I still can’t forget the sound of children screaming as they were pulled from their mothers’ arms by ICE agents under Trump’s orders. The agony. The heartbreak. The reenactment of every abandoned inner child—this time made literal and national policy. And for what? To feed the illusion of control? To satisfy the wounded egos of adults who never had the chance to mourn their own pain?
It’s insanity. And yet, millions cheered. Because unresolved trauma isn’t just personal—it’s political. It governs elections, builds empires, writes laws.
You see, being rich or being poor—those are just two ends of the same stick. On one side: the emotionally crippled with too much power and no conscience. On the other: the emotionally crippled with no resources and no voice. One exploits, the other gets exploited. Both are symptoms of a sick society that runs from its pain.
And in the middle, people like me—truth-tellers—become the enemy. Not because we’re wrong. But because we expose what others are desperate to keep buried. We make people feel what they’ve worked their whole lives to avoid.
XA can’t face me. S can’t look me in the eye. Not because I harmed them, but because I see them. I see the flicker they’re trying to hide. I don’t need them to be perfect—I only need them to be real. But that’s the one thing most people won’t risk.
So they retreat. They ghost me. They disappear.
But I remain. I write. I witness. I reflect back the fracture that most refuse to name.
Because someone has to.
And because somewhere, someone else is watching—and they’re ready to stop covering the flicker and let it burn.
That’s who I write for.
That’s who I’ll always write for.
