Matches

Dr. Trent's "Sacred Dream"

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

When I was a child my family had a video of fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen. It was the kind of children’s movie that hardly deserves the title, just a voice-over of someone reading the stories while a camera zooms in or out on illustrations from the book, but movies of any kind were a rare treat in my house. My favorite story—or at least the only one I still remember—was the last and saddest of the collection, “The Little Match Girl,” often skipped by my mother because she thought it was too tragic for us. It is tragic. A dying orphan abandoned on the streets uses her last few matches to peer through the frosted windows of houses, imagining what it would be like to be one of those happy children, loved and warm and well fed and excited for Christmas. Each match is not only a burst of feeble warmth but a kind of spotlight, illuminating the dream of home that is fading along with the girl’s life and hope. Out of matches, she curls up in the cold and dies alone, her dream puffing out with her final breath. Some stories burrow deep into your psyche and stay there; this is one of mine, recently awakened by the story of another nearly forgotten girl.

Her name was Tererai and she lived in Zvipani, a village of cattle herders in rural Zimbabwe. Tererai had a dream: more than anything else she wanted to learn. Her wish was an education for herself and all of the girls in her village, because she believed, deep in her core, that she and all girls were as capable as the boys, and just as worth the effort of teaching. Instead, she was married and pregnant by the time she was 13. By the age of 18 she had birthed four babies, one of whom died because her child’s body couldn’t produce enough milk. Her husband beat her, cheated on her, demeaned and dehumanized her in every way he could. With great courage she left him, got a job, and married again. Her second husband turned out to be even worse than the first. Tererai’s brother came to the village where she was living with her second husband and was appalled by the fact that he could barely recognize the sister he had known. He went home without her but sent back her cousin to bring Tererai home to her mother, again.

Good girls don’t complain. Good girls are proud to be wives and mothers. Good girls bury their pain and shame. Good girls do not leave their husbands. Good girls learn to be quiet, submissive, compliant; then, they teach their daughters to be the same. Stay small, stay quiet, stay safe. “We all know this,” Tererai’s mother said to her. “My mother knew it and her mother before her. We speak to each other and we stand up for ourselves when possible, but for the most part, we are silent. We say to ourselves, ‘This is our culture and our tradition. It is just the way things are.’ But this is not true. It will not always be this way. Someone needs to break the cycle.” Tererai was only 20 years old, a social outcast, a mother without a husband, recovering from the deep physical and deeper mental and emotional wounds inflicted upon her by men. She wanted to know who would break that cycle, who would save them, but she didn’t even have the energy to ask.

Tererai’s story could have ended there. If it had I would never have heard it. Tererai got out, she made her dream come true. Decades later, Dr. Tererai Trent would be welcomed onto Oprah Winfrey’s show as Oprah’s “favorite guest of all time.” By then she would have founded an organization which, funded by Oprah, would train teachers and sponsor the education of thousands of children across rural Zimbabwe, some of whom would follow Dr. Trent into higher education, all of whom would have a chance at the life she wanted and never thought she would have. Dr. Trent broke the cycle for herself, and for other women and girls like her. And then, she wrote a book to tell the rest of us how she did it.

The Awakened Woman: Remembering and Reigniting Our Sacred Dreams. I found her book in one of my random library searches. I’m a slow reader and tend to order a lot of books all at the same time, a combination that results in most of the books I order sitting on the shelf untouched as weeks turn into months, only remembering I have it when it turns up overdo on my account. Two weeks ago, between books and in need of reading material to pass the time while my girls were in dance class, I picked it up. I have never met Dr. Trent, but reading her words felt like being lovingly pinned by a wise and piercing gaze. I could not look away. The room full of noisy mothers and restless children too young for classes faded to nothing as emotion welled up in me again and again. I knew this story, and I couldn’t imagine what it had been like. The child I had been uncurled under this benevolent scrutiny, stood up straight, stood still and expectant. Sacred Sister, she called me, like she could see that child, too. Like she wanted to hear my story. “What is it that you are truly hungry for?” she whispers. “What does your soul need?”