AND NOW, IT'S HERE.

Two rounds of security and alas, all that’s left is a 17 hour flight to New Delhi, then on to Kolkata. 

The last few weeks have carried me through mile long to-do lists of moving 8 years of Boston back to a barn in Maine, connecting with family and friends, making my life somewhat accessible across the many miles, etc. Essentially, preparing as much as one can prepare for a journey such as this. And for as much joy and fear as I carry, I must say, I just want to get there!

While much of the next four months will unfold along the way, my hope is this: to find hope in hidden places, to find beauty where it shouldn’t be, ultimately, this is a journey about redemption.

The word “redemption” scares a lot of people because it sounds religious, but if you think about it, it’s what a lot of us really are living for. We want to know that there is meaning in the suffering. That somehow, “it”, whatever “it” might be, has happened for a reason. Silver Lining. Beauty for Ashes. Lost and Found.

And so, spending time with survivors of the sex-trade can only be a mission of discovering beauty for ashes. Meeting second-chance lives that were told that their lives were worth nothing. Nothing. They have camped out at the gates of hell.

And by hell I mean being sold by your father at the age of 12 because you were a financial burden to the family and certainly not as valuable as your brother. Or, being tricked with promises of a “good job in the city”, only to be thrown in to a brothel with 20 other women in the same situation. Or, being born in to an generation of prostitutes: grandmother wants you to start “working” so that she can retire. Forced prostitution wears many hopeless faces.

But, redemption. It is there, in these dark places. It can be found. There are mighty things happening in the form of innovative, empathetic organizations who are intervening and slowly pushing back against the pandemic of human trafficking. There are organizations such as Made By Survivors (www.madebysurvivors.com) who develop vocational training centers where women are learning artistic skills such as silver-smithing, sewing and block-printing that set them up with the skills to potentially start their own businesses. There are organizations like The International Princess Project (www.intlprincess.org) which trains rescued women living in after-care homes to make beautiful “Punjammies™”, which are then sold in the US through various retail environments and awareness events. There are many organizations such as these, which are making an impact by applying innovative solutions, many in the creative arts.

And that’s what this journey is about. Finding beauty in unlikely places. Down dark alleys, sequestered in the slums. There are heroes in these places, and survivors who are more than surviving—they are healing, creating and living!

I will be posting discoveries along the way of inspiring lives and organizations, impactful projects, curious objects. Beauty* lost and found.

Next stop, Kolkata.