Resistance & Echoes

By Maša H.

If I’ve ever experienced the most complex and layered emotions, it was through the experience of motherhood. A deep sense of responsibility often came flavoured with guilt and questions: Am I good enough? Can I give more—of myself, my time, my space? Do I give enough?

Every evening, I found myself in quiet dialogue with these thoughts, wondering if I was rising to the task. These inner conversations became part of my daily life, especially during the pandemic—when the world outside was silent, and the weight of care fell even heavier inside.

This work was gently shot during that time. It includes tender, open conversations between my son and me. It wasn’t easy—he rarely saw his father during that period, and the emotional complexity of it all was heavy for both of us. Yet he was brave enough to speak with honesty and depth, expressing things many adults struggle to name.

His courage moved me. In many ways, he became my greatest teacher.

Motherhood

The Pandemic

By Maša H.

During the pandemic, my son and I spent days, and weeks without seeing another adult or child. The loneliness of single motherhood had never felt more intense or more unbearable. Time became almost still—we moved through the motions of each day in a strange, suspended rhythm.

In this photo, I captured a moment of my son dancing through the shifting shadows and sunlight by the window, waiting patiently while I worked long hours. He played alone….I carried a deep sense of guilt—for not being able to be fully present, for letting him spend so much time alone. With no family nearby to offer support, the weight was heavy.

But through this experience, I learned how resilient we can be in the face of adversity. My son’s lightness amid such isolation reminded me that strength often grows quietly, in the background of our hardest days.

Descansos

By Eslem, 25

I have a strong belief that everything happens for a reason. That reason often leads to a significant change that will take place in the future. I've experienced similar events in my life that prove this belief is true.

For example, when I was 13, if the political climate in Turkey hadn’t started to become tense, I don't think I would have realized that I should become a journalist or study social sciences. I probably would have followed the typical path of someone from a science high school and chosen to become a doctor. Thank God, I am not a doctor—truly, thank God.

By Veronika, 47

She will know more about her dreams that stayed desires,

She will know more about rejections and fancy attires.

When she goes down the river.

She will know more about crossroads where she took the wrong turn.

She will have known the pain of a comment that stings like a burn.

She will know more about unsolicited lust,

She will know more about falling into one thousand pieces and not have a helping hand to rebuild her trust,

She will hate it all and crave for more,

when her ashes go down the river.

She will regret begrudge mourn all the moments filled with denial.

She will want them back regardless, they and only they were her real trial.

She will realize they were taken with her hopes down the river.

She will have known fleeing shivers of sheer joy.

She will be thankful and grateful and yet full of sorrow, for all the gifts and blessings and missed moments of love.

She will crave for more and rewind to the could-have-been bliss.

They tell you to seize the moment and capture the now. But they don't tell you all that you miss.

She may know what they meant as the stream takes her down the river.

She will have buried all the anger and pain deep in a lagoon of self pity and woe.

She will no longer ask Why me? and Who was in charge‎?

She will cry it out, and scream it out and stump her feet and grind her teeth all that it takes to take over the control of her life.

Open sores will be filled with love.

‎She asks for nothing more

when she goes down the river.

Down The River

Echoes of Silence

By Š.S.

The skeletons in our closet, behind an unlocked door,

Unspoken words, linger in the air,

The day our roles reversed, forevermore,

With a flare of despair.

Brand-new dishes shatter against the kitchen wall,

Once considered ‘suitable for special occasions’,

Black-and-white thinking, we brace for the fall.

She should have been a beloved daughter,

Yet became her mother´s mother,

Drowning in saltwater.

Emotionally bulletproof adult only at age of nine,

Comforting a soul of a child,

Lost in time.

My Personal Herstory

By Dagmar S.

For several years, I taught creative Female Monologues writing at the University of New York in Prague. Why Female Monologues? I was always interested to give voices to the ones who were not heard or never even given the spaces to be heard – so many women. My interest started in the stories of the women in my family. I often felt that they were strong, often painfully strong women who lived lives of absolute resilience. Their motto was one of survival rather than living. I would feel their ethos at many junctures in my life, not always knowing that it stemmed from our genetic belief system.

It would be best to start with my grandmother who lived a long life until she passed at the age of 95. When I think of her, I am reminded how little I knew of her feelings and inner struggles, but could feel her love to us, grandchildren. My life with her was more one without her because after the Prague spring in 1968 my mother, sister and little me left the Czech Republic (or better Czechoslovakia) to reunite with my father in the West who had fled 2 years prior. So, visits would be few, no more than once a year, short and regimented. I always viewed her as proud, defiant and strong with a sense of toughness which I would only later understand more fully. My grandmother experienced 5 political systems, saw the changes of times and how people would turn - sometimes for the worst- to grab their advantages in any new system they will find themselves.

It was her wisdom and insights that cocooned my mother when she would be unjustly imprisoned at the age of 22, with a child, my sister, just turning one year. This brutal cut of out a life in which my mother had recently graduated from college and started her work as a physical educator at a school in Usti nad Labem was at the hands of people who only saw their advantages in a corrupt system. People who would spy on her, to say something that “sounds” anti-establishment and then report her without mercy. Her prison sentence was 1.5 years in which my sister would grow up without a mother and has trust issues to this day. The repercussion of this event had, looking back now on my life and standing in my family, had been woven into our family fabric since I can remember. The fact that my mother never openly spoke about it until a few years before her death, showed how she wanted to forget about her past which she could, however, never fully shake off.

I know that my mother’s story is one of many others who faced very traumatic situations and could not speak about it for a very long time, or ever. I often asked myself why it was so difficult for my mother to share with us her experience - after all she was completely innocent - and within myself grew this unbearable sense of justice growing-up. Because someone should be taking full responsibility for this injustice. And who do you ultimately blame? A corrupt system which breeds people with corrupt minds who think of their own survival before others. In the end, everyone wants to live and have a glimpse of happiness, protect their livelihood and families. I am not filled with hatred, never was. I can only perceive how certain actions in the name of political propaganda can keep families alive but affect their emotional and psychological make-up for many years or even the rest of their lives.

My mother was a very loving person, and I am so grateful for her ability to transform what evil deeds others did to her, to a sense of human understanding. She never begrudged, but she also knew that people could have many different faces. I am in so many ways grateful for her wisdom, sometimes, I sensed a certain mistrust from her towards others, but she never closed her door. And often she was right in her judgement. Life taught her not to look at others how we like them to be, but how they are, and still find respect towards their humanness. This is why I became a Buddhist almost 40 years ago. I wanted to find a philosophy that can overcome these contradictions, between self-preservation and serving others, between self-respect without becoming narcissistic and respecting the differences of others, between the good and the evil in others and realize that they are part of the same, an evolution towards wholeness.

I also learned that you can be born in one place, in my case the Czech Republic and never fully belong as much as you try. My family is half Sudeten German and half Czech on my father side. After the WW II, Sudenten Germans were expelled or killed from the Czech lands, and when allowed to stay like my mother’s family, they were tolerated - because my grandfather was a much-needed engineer after the war - but never felt truly welcomed anymore. Many years later, in my evolving time as a dancer and actress I wrote a short play called “Stranger at Home.“ Interestingly, even so much of my family history was not revealed to me until in my 40ties and 50ties, my subconscious mind let me explore many themes related to my herstory. Art is therefore a clear mirror of life and shapes us in our pursuit of knowledge that moves beyond storing information but transforming realities. In this way, my mother supported and helped me in so many ways to use the arts for my healing, and I know she did it not only for me, but also for her and all women in my family. A movement, an image, a smile can often say more than a thousand words.

My pursuit of knowledge continued in my doctoral studies in dance education, deepening my understanding how our bodies store our legacies, and how we can make use of them. It is crucial to understand that we are whole as we are, and any brokenness we might perceive is the imagination of our minds. The mind wants to separate, the body wants to unite. This ongoing dialogue within and without keeps me afloat, and open to see my legacy as my mission.