Don’t Pass Away In Silence…Share Your Story

If you haven’t heard the story of Mariane Pearl, you need to.  What an amazing woman!  I was able to meet her today when she spoke at the Women Moving Millions conference I am attending in New York.  Mariane is a French journalist and she is the widow of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and killed by terrorists in Pakistan back in 2002.  After her husband was murdered she went on to write the story of what happened in a book called A Mighty Heart, which was made into a feature film in which Angelina Jolie played Mariane.

Mariane shared her story with us and explained the things she went through at the time of her husband’s kidnapping.  She had setup a command center at her home in Pakistan for the people that were all working to help her get to the bottom of what happened to her husband.  In the home working with her to find her husband were some Jews, some Muslims, a Hindu, and some Christians.  She said that she watched as each different group tried to tell the story of what was happening to her husband from their own perspective in an attempt to control the narrative, and therefore, control the story.  Everyone was fighting with a strong feeling that they knew the truth.  And the stories people hear ultimately lead to the decisions people make, which is why it is so critical to have truth told without bias or without trying to sell people on anything. Watching all these differing stories get told helped her to realize how important it was to put your own truth out there – to give your truth a voice.  That was why she decided to tell her own story from her perspective on what had happened with her husband.  She wanted to let her husband’s truth be heard, so she shared that truth by writing the book.

Mariane encouraged all of us listening to go out and share our own truth, and to encourage others to share their truth as well.  We need our life stories to be heard, even if it is just by keeping a journal that we right in for our own posterity to read someday.  The impact of our stories is a powerful thing and one that we don’t want to miss out in doing.  Just think of how differently we might view the history of our world if more people would have put their life stories out there for us to learn from.  If only we had each person’s perspective of truth it might completely change the some of our understanding of history today.

The bottom line was this:

When our lives come to an end, don’t let our lives pass away in silence.  Share your story.

I am excited for more exciting talks tomorrow.  The group of people at this small conference is tremendous and I am excited to learn from each of them and to make new friends that can help me learn best practices for my own charity.  It’s great to be around a group of people who want to make the world a better place, and who are out there actually doing something to make that happen.  It is an honor to associate with them.

~Amy

2 Comments

  • Mark Hester says:

    I remember all of this and what they did to Daniel.

    I share my story of the battle daily on Facebook. Full of feelings and events.

    I share my truths and some like it, and some get bored. but it is my story.

    Enjoy NYC. I know you are I saw pics from yesterday.

  • Lieselotte says:

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