"AUNTIE...YOU...ARE...LOVE"

Greetings from Kolkata!

There has been no greater feeling on this trip than being greeted by sixty perfect and beautiful girls and young women as we enter their home.  A couple hours outside of Kolkata is the Women's Interlink Foundation shelter that provides full time care and housing for almost 100 survivors of sex trafficking and orphans of sex slavery victims.  Four days in a row, we pull into the shelter to a round of applause and squealing girls chanting "Auntie!  Auntie!".  We are met with bear hugs, huge smiles, and whole lot of girls battling to hold hands with their "aunties".

These girls take my breath away.  I was prepared to see trauma survivors.  I was prepared to see healing both emotional and physical.  I was prepared to see sadness and suffering.  I was prepared to be cautious and careful.  Afterall, I was nervous to meet the girls that have lived in my heart and mind as mythological Goddesses of strength and perserverence for so long.  And here they are, their hearts open, the sweet faces of innocent children and it just clicked.  What I was really prepared for - what I absolutely knew to be true - just effortlessly fell into place.  I totally and completely fell head over heels in love.

So I stop to soak in all that attention, all that fussing, all that joy and I just jumped in.  There are many moments when I am positively certain that I could be anywhere in the world - a school at recess, a summer camp, a friend's house.  The sounds of children laughing, playing, a little showing off, the universal need to love and be loved.  Over the course of four days we are fed (I mean - really, really fed).  We are dressed in gorgeous golden saris.  We are given Goddess names (without hesitation I'm named Saraswati - the Goddess of Learning and Education).  We were an audience for dancers.  We were the performers (think Electric Slide to Indian music - seriously).  We played games.  We drew pictures.  We painted a mural.  We braided hair.  We sang songs ("Auntie - do you know the song We Shall Overcome?"...Gulp.)  We did yoga, the hokey pokey, duck, duck, goose.  We jumped rope.  We played cricket and soccer and any game we could think of with one ball.  We blew bubbles.  We laughed.  We cuddled.  We shared stories and had long conversations while speaking broken and jumbled English, Bengali, and Hindi for each other.

This, my friends, is the ultimate reason that I traveled across the world.  To celebrate the living Goddess in all of us.  When there is struggle for one woman, there is struggle for all.  When there is hope for one woman, there is hope for all.  The girlhood of our past, the womanhood of our futures, this very moment when we stop to bask in our own divine feminine light and strength - together.  We are all universal mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, bonded over the eternal power of womanhood.  To stand together on unfamilar ground, far from home, hand in hand - when every last fiber of our bodies is awake and alive and aware that yes, sweet children and brave women of the world,  we shall overcome. 

And as I leave the shelter one hot, sweaty afternoon after hours of play and attention, tea and cookies, questions and answers there is a moment that will be etched in my soul forever.  A young girl about thirteen, beautiful, smart, sassy - everything a young teenager should be - holds my hand in hers and says in very careful English, "Auntie...you...are...love."  I choke back tears (even now) and smile and hold her.  Because all we can really do is hold on to each other...

Namaste,

Janell