The Unimaginable

While there are a handful of classic literary heroines to look up to as a child, Nancy Drew, Jo March, etc., arguably the smartest, spunkiest, most imaginative, and most dedicated to social justice is Anne of Green Gables.

One of Anne’s pieces of sage advice that always stuck with me is, “It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it's not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?"

It is often romantic to imagine sufferning and to imagine us emerging above it, but who would risk the romance for the pain? War in novels and films is often epic and beautiful, but in real life dirty and inhumane. In “Pretty Woman” the prostitute heroine is young, beautiful, and vibrant, seemingly untouched by the horrors of her industry.

And these are the horrors we can imagine; but, what about those that are completely unfathomable? Like the sex slave trade. Although this taboo subject is starting to be depicted more often, as in the extreme violence of action film “Taken,” the reality of the sex slave trade is largely ignored.

Women who are taken as sex slaves are often sold by their families, physically and mentally abused, and never recover.

Organizations like the Somaly Mam Foundation in Cambodia are fighting to help these women rehabilitate, but not without strong resistance. The daughter of Founder and former sex slave Somaly Mam, was kidnapped by traders and raped as a warning.

These are the kinds of sorrows impossible to imagine living through, let alone imagine living through heroically.

This Tuesday, July 28^th in New York City, The Body Shop, in partnership with Somaly Mam, is holding a rally “Stop Sex Trafficking of Children and Young People” from 12:30-1:30 outside of St. Mark’s Church at 131 East 10^th Street.

Go if you can. We can make the unimaginable unable to ignore. As Anne would say, it is not so nice to live these sorrows ourselves, and luckily for most of us we don’t. We need to do our part to ensure that others do not either.

In fellowship and humanity,

CAFW