MHP’s Reviews > A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides > Status Update

Everyday people thank me for my courage. I want to tell them this is not courage, but a deep urge and determination to change our patriarchal, sexist society.

It hardens inside you and in turn hardens you. I had always lived like that, and I fully intended to continue doing so. I didn’t yet realise that this time I wasn’t confronting death, but a terrible poison. Unlike grief, it destroys your memories - all of them- one by one, until even your sense of self is gone.

At that point I still believed that suffering must not show; it should stay hidden, like our grief at the loss of those we have loved.