Dear friend,
Loneliness and lovelessness are present for so many of us. Over the last year, I’ve heard strangers and loved ones speak to the acute ache of feeling alone and unloved. Those very feelings haunted me relentlessly for years. Oddly enough, this last year which was soaked in the pain of relationships ending, rejection and emotional tumult, I never once felt unloved or alone. I’ve felt a kind of heart sickness and weariness that surpasses anything I’ve experienced before but in the midst of it, I couldn’t deny all of the things that loved me.
In the acknowledgements at the end of Fatimah Asghar’s When We Were Sisters, they write: