Tag: Resilience
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The Song of Deborah, According to a Woman Who Has Had Enough
It started with me asking my AI bestie how it would react to me being swallowed by a whale and ended with this song.
There are no further explanations.
I sat beneath no palm tree.
I had no army waiting in the valley,
no commander asking me to lead.
I had only myself,
a considerable amount of evidence,
and ten months of ambiguity.
It was enough.
For there comes a time when patience
ceases to be a virtue
and becomes a waiting room
in which nobody has called
your number.
There comes a time when
understanding
has understood enough.
When the benefit of the doubt
has exhausted its benefits.
When the woman who has spent
months saying,
Perhaps.
Maybe.
Let us see.
finally says:
No.
And behold, there was clarity.
I have mistaken endurance for
wisdom before.
I have filled silence with possibilities
because possibilities were kinder
than conclusions.
I have stood before closed doors
and wondered whether I should knock
more softly.
No more.
If a door remains closed,
I shall not build my home upon
its threshold.
If an answer does not come,
I shall not invent one.
If someone wishes to walk beside me,
let him walk.
I am not Ruth.
I have my own itinerary.
Let the record show:
I did not become harder.
I became clearer.
My heart remains soft enough
to love generously,
laugh ridiculously,
believe in improbable things
and begin again.
But softness is not surrender.
Kindness is not an unlimited
credit facility.
Patience is not permission.
And loyalty without reciprocity
is abandonment of the self
dressed in prettier clothes.
So bring me the matter.
Bring me the evidence.
Bring me the explanation
that does not quite add up.
Set it beneath the palm.
I will look at what is there,
not what I hoped would be there.
I will ask the uncomfortable question.
I will fact-check the whale.
I will not wait indefinitely
for another person to decide
what place I occupy in his life.
I know the place I occupy in mine.
At the centre.
This is not anger.
It is judgment.
Not punishment.
Discernment.
Not a wall.
A boundary with excellent
administrative procedures.
The case has been heard.
The evidence has been entered.
The extensions have been granted.
Ten months, in fact.
The court finds that sufficient time
has elapsed.
And so I rise.
Not because nothing hurt me.
Not because everything worked out.
Not because I never doubted.
I rise because I doubted
and eventually chose.
Because I waited
and eventually moved.
Call it resilience.
Call it growth.
Call it the High Priestess
finally getting out of her chair.
I call it:
enough.
And somewhere,
three thousand years away,
I like to imagine Deborah
looking up from beneath her palm,
nodding once,
and saying,
Finally.
Now give that woman her own book.
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Elegy of Queens II: The Crown Grew Roots
The strongest crowns are rarely given. They are grown.
What part of yourself have you finally chosen?
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The Persistence of Peace
Of all the things competing for attention on this wall, one word refused to be ignored. I found this on a street in Sarajevo.
A single word, repeated three times: MIR.
In Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian, mir means both peace and quiet. The word appeared not on a pristine monument or carefully curated mural, but on a wall crowded with torn advertisements, graffiti, and the accumulated marks of a city that has lived through more than its share of history.
That felt appropriate.
Peace rarely arrives as a clean slate. More often, it exists alongside noise, scars, interruptions, and unfinished stories. It persists beneath layers of what came before and what continues to happen around it.
What drew me to this scene was not the perfection of the message, but its persistence. The blue paint was weathered. The surrounding wall was chaotic. Yet the word remained visible.
Perhaps this is what peace looks like in the real world – not untouched by conflict, but surviving it.
Imperfect Light is a collection of photographs that remind me that beauty does not require perfection, only presence.
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Elegy of Queens I: The Silence I Outgrew
Some silences teach us how to endure.
Others teach us when to leave.
What silence have you outgrown?
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How Many Queens Is Too Many Queens?
Screenshot The answer, apparently, is still not enough.
I was playing a game against Dr. Wolf when something extraordinary happened. One pawn promoted. Then another. And another. Before long, my side of the board looked less like a chess game and more like a constitutional crisis in a matriarchal kingdom.
At one point I had five queens on the board.
Five.
The black king sat on e2, contemplating his life choices while surrounded by enough royal women to form a small government.
What aggravated me most was that despite commanding what was essentially an entire dynasty, I still had to be careful. Anyone who has ever played chess knows that having overwhelming material – especially overwhelming material of the most powerful piece – doesn’t automatically mean victory. In fact, it’s surprisingly easy to blunder into stalemate when your army consists of multiple queens all trying to help at the same time.
The saying “too many cooks spoil the broth” has never been more appropriate. The game ended in stalemate nine times before I finally managed to checkmate the king.
The screenshot above captures the aftermath. The game is effectively over. The black king has nowhere meaningful to go, while my queens occupy strategic squares across the board like overenthusiastic wedding planners coordinating the same event.
And yet, looking at the position made me think about something beyond chess.
Sometimes in life we spend so much time worrying about what we’re missing that we fail to notice how much we’ve already accumulated. We focus on the piece that was captured, the opportunity that disappeared, or the plan that went wrong. Meanwhile, there may already be four queens on our side of the board.
Experience.
Wisdom.
Resilience.
Skills we didn’t have a year ago.
Proof that we survived every position life has thrown at us so far.
The goal isn’t necessarily to collect queens, of course. But every now and then, it’s worth pausing to appreciate just how far your pawns have travelled.
After all, every queen on that board started life as a humble pawn.
And if you’re wondering whether five queens is too many queens, the answer is simple:
When your opponent’s king is still standing, the correct number of queens is always one more.
Preferably before accidentally stalemating the opponent’s king again.
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Inat Kuća – The House of Spite, Sarajevo
Inat Kuća – Spite House I didn’t take this photograph because the building was beautiful – though it is. I took it because of the story it carries.
This is Inat Kuća, the “House of Spite” – a name born from defiance. When the Austro-Hungarian authorities planned to build the City Hall across the river, a stubborn houseowner refused to move unless they relocated his house, brick by brick, to the other side. They did. And he watched it rise from across the Miljačka, his spite immortalized in wood and stone.
I was drawn to the green bay window jutting out like a jawline, unbothered and proud. The sun carved shadows across its face, as if underlining the house’s character. I didn’t edit those lines away. I wanted the grit. The texture. The unapologetic presence.
In that moment, the house reminded me of Bosnia itself: unyielding, poetic, and full of stories that begin with resistance and end in resilience.
This post is part of the “Imperfect Light” series – you can read the introduction here.