Trying to express the unimaginable feeling of
a loved one held hostage in words. For the 2 years and 2 months Josh was held captive by the Iranian regime,
words were woefully inadequate to describe my feelings. Though I was his voice
and I called out for his FREEDOM every moment of every day, when it came to
expressing my feelings, I embodied the silence imposed on him. I was full of
words I could not say, feelings beyond words.
Words still elude me when I try to capture my
journey since he was released. I am full of unfinished thoughts, incomplete
sentences…words I cannot say, words that don’t exist.
A beautiful friend encouraged me to find
words and to share them at a gathering of friends at his home. These are the
words I spoke. As Josh said when he started writing a book to tell his story, “These
words will be windows, not walls.”
Ocean of emotion
We were two
rivers of life
with
intertwined tributaries
flowing in
parallel
unable to meet
When you
were FREED
our rivers
converged
into the
crashing waves
of an ocean
of
collective emotion
We crash against each other
and pull
apart
with the
waves
We swim to
the surface
fight to
stay afloat
We reach for
each other
then try to
let go
We forge
our journeys forward
our own rivers
emerging
from our ocean
the source of
our strength
Our collective heart
