A story about bravery, about courage, about fear, about oppression.
A story about ultimate selfishness and total selflessness.
About subjugation.
About control.
About power
and taking it back.
Total loss of hope
and finding hope in total, utter darkness.
A story about the fact things can always get worse. So terribly worse.
And finding out how to find the cracks that will allow you to survive.
A story about loss.
And being totally alone,
And discovering that where there is courage, there are allies.
That even in the face of the end that there is purpose.
A story about consequences:
The consequences of apathy, bravery, cowardice, silence, speaking.
A story of humanity
And how good can be choked by darkness if we are not vigilant.
Tonight I finally sat down to finish the second half of the last episode of season 3 of the handmaid's tale.
And I've had to pause again because I can't stop crying.
It's so real. So heartwrenchingly raw. So terrifying to contemplate what I or anyone I know would do when faced with the same world.
I think I've learnt more about suffering and pain and fear and loss from this story than any other.
It's taught me about how precious, and delicate freedom and liberty really are. Why they should be protected.
I've learnt to see children and the burden of caregivers in a while new light.
I've been shown that evil doesn't have to be people, but how it can manifest in ideology.
This is a story about what it is to be human.
And I would encourage you to watch it.
Yes I know it's primarily centered around women and I know you already have seen parts of it.
I just wish I could show you what I've seen.
Help you open your eyes to the lessons this superb and masterfully-told story shares.
I wish you would watch this.
Not in the way you normally numbly watch things. But actively see what there is to be learnt from this incredibly powerful story. Seek to understand. Feel. Learn.
Experience a story about how hope swells. And is squashed.
Yet rises again, only though the focused will of those who refuse to be enslaved.
It's the greatest lesson in empathy I have ever had the fortune to receive.
Perhaps it will open your eyes into how valuable honesty is.
What a strong spirit looks like.
How good people fight for those who cant.
And why we abhor those who seek to control and subjugate.
