When talking about a home, what do you mean? Four walls and a roof, the love surrounding you, concern, support. What does home mean?<\/b><\/p>\n
I asked this question more than once as a child. I often longed for a hug, for my parents to care. I begged them to notice I was there. But when you lose your path, providing for basic needs is challenging. After years when my siblings and my house were a ruin with four walls, everything that could be was destroyed, and there was no trace of a family in all that chaos, only those four walls remained standing, and within them, one giant void.<\/span><\/p>\n When you’re stripped of hope and confidence and left with nothing to hold on to, you realize you are alone in this world. You know that dreams of sanity are unattainable. When you’re in survival mode, goals change, life changes, you no longer allow yourself to be a child. You’re imprisoned in a young body, but your soul has matured, learned the essence of life in the flesh. Your belief in “the system” of a family no longer exists. You realize you’re nobody’s kid. And this realization that no one really wants you wakes you up, makes you take command, makes you know it is surviving or die. You get nerves of steel and grow protective thorns. That’s how you live, knowing, understanding, looking at the four walls closing in on you.<\/span><\/p>\n I came to the village an eleven-year-old girl, who had already been through cancer, lost an eye, and was full of internal scars indicating the hell she had gone through. However, only the growing wound in her stomach told of what was inside her \u2014 hunger, fear, hatred, pleading, an array of emotions. Yes, it turns out hunger is an existential need. Without it, you can not exist. You can survive curses, beatings, and disease, but hunger kills you. It causes your body to shrink until you no longer have the strength to carry yourself on.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When talking about a home, what do you mean? Four walls and a roof, the love surrounding you, concern, support. What does home mean? I asked this question more than once as a child. I often longed for a hug, for my parents to care. I begged them to notice I was there. But when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n