“He just wouldn’t listen to me. He was trying but he is such a man. He thinks like a man. He only hears what men hear. No matter what I said he was not hearing me. I was desperate and there was nothing I could do. Then, a voice came. I do not know from where. It came through me and as I spoke, his features were held rapt with attention. I told him this: Imagine that your ancestors are here with us. Now. All of them. But the women are at the fore. Your mother, grandmothers, their mothers. All of the mothers. They are standing with you. And they come to you, as one, and say: here, child of ours, we will give you our skin. Wear our skin, and understand the woman before you. Wear our skin and hear with our ears her concerns and pleas. And with this, they place a sacred robe about you, that endows you with the clear sense of their bodies, their dreams. Their hearts and passions. Their concerns and anguish. As you wear their robe, you feel their lives. And now, wearing this robe of your many mothers, listen again to what I have said, and see if you may understand it anew. Listen with the mothers inside you. Listen with their hearts.

And he listened. And he heard me.”

— overheard overhead