Jean Hatoum - Author

 There are things I have never known how to say out loud. Not because I didn't know what they were. Because saying them aloud would have made them real in a way I wasn't always ready to face. So I wrote them down. That became my language. Before I knew how to call myself a writer, I was simply someone trying to find somewhere for his thoughts to go. The page never interrupted me. It never asked me to explain why I felt the way I did. It never looked at me with confusion when my sentences stopped making sense. It never told me that I was thinking too much. The page simply waited. And sometimes, waiting was exactly what I needed. There are things I could only say on paper because paper did not require me to be brave before I began. I could write while trembling. I could write while angry. I could write while exhausted. I could write things that I wasn't ready to say to another human being. I could admit that I was afraid. That I missed things. That I was angry about things I ...

There is something about August that changes the way I listen. The air feels quieter. The light arrives more softly. Even grief seems to slow down enough for us to hear it breathing. For many people, August belongs to folklore . Not because of charts or awards. Because it became a place. A forest people entered carrying versions of themselves they rarely showed the world. Every year, when August returns, so do the memories attached to that album. The people we lost. The versions of ourselves we no longer recognize. The conversations we replay long after everyone else has forgotten them. I think that is why folklore has never felt like an album to me. It feels like remembering. When I first listened to my tears ricochet , I wasn't listening to a story about someone else. I was listening to what grief sounds like after it stops asking for permission. The song understands something that is difficult to explain. Sometimes what haunts us is not only what happened. It is what continues ...

There are two versions of me. The one people met. And the one who learned, very early in life, that survival sometimes means becoming someone else. No child should have to learn how to disappear while remaining visible. Yet that was the lesson I carried for years. I became quiet because speaking felt dangerous. I became observant because noticing every change in a room sometimes meant protecting myself before anyone else realized something was wrong. I learned how to smile when I wanted to cry, how to answer "I'm fine" without believing it, and how to continue moving through ordinary days while carrying extraordinary pain. People often call these strengths. Resilience. Composure. Maturity beyond one's years. I understand why they say those things. From the outside, survival can look admirable. From the inside, it often feels exhausting. There is a difference between living and surviving. Living allows you to imagine tomorrow. Survivin...

 I started asking for help in July 2025. I had already spent years carrying things I had never properly spoken about. Experiences that began when I was three years old. Sexual abuse. Sexual harassment. Sexual assault. Domestic violence. Trauma that stayed inside me long after the moments themselves had ended. For years, I kept quiet. I became very good at pretending. I learned how to continue functioning while carrying things that were slowly destroying me. I learned how to smile, work, answer people, and behave as though I was still a normal person moving through a normal life. But eventually, I could no longer pretend that I was managing. So, I asked for help. When I first began reaching out to people and organizations, I genuinely believed someone would respond. I did not expect the world to save me. I was not asking for someone to magically erase my past or fix my life. I thought someone might simply give me the chance to be heard. Maybe someone would read what ...