a posse ad esse

Half of a Yellow Sun (Nigeria, 2013-2014)

✿Actress Issa Rae for NY Magazine/The Cut✿

A 25-year-old woman has taken over as the head of a local authority in the mainly Muslim north of Nigeria. Hindatu Umar is the first woman and the youngest person to hold the position in Argungu city, in the north-western state of Kebbi. She is also the city’s first unmarried local leader.

A woman can be broken and during the night, she will sit quietly sewing her heart back. Never the same, sometimes with new affirmations. A woman can go back several times to weep for the girl she was but when she decides to forge ahead; a hundred days & nights of grief will not stop her. A woman can weep, sit and dwell on those who turned their back on her but when that woman decides to shed the pain, you will see even her creator will dance & dance.

For i have seen women who have been hurt become a light so bright even the weapons fashioned against them never prospers and these women give love. They know what hurting feels like, so they give love but most importantly they love themselves dearly, never apologizing for it. They love themselves dearly.

How much heartbreak can a woman take? There are times when the breaking is so severe she has to shut her heart to lovers, because it is okay for a woman to understand nobody can love her better than she can love herself, it is okay for her to know she is healing, she is shedding old pain to love again. These women slowly take the time to heal, to become herself, to become too full of life to be half-loved. The world can always wait, the woman will return, whole.

Francis Chan, Crazy Love (via littlethingsaboutgod)