Jean Hatoum - Author

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 ...

 There is something I have wanted to say since the beginning. Not because I have finally found the right words. But because some words need time before they are ready to be spoken. This is one of them. Thank you. Not for agreeing with me. Not for admiring my writing. Not even for reading every page. Thank you for stopping long enough to listen. For every writer, there is a moment of uncertainty. The moment after the final sentence has been written. The moment before another human being begins to read. It is a quiet place. A vulnerable place. You wonder whether your words will find anyone. Whether they will matter. Whether they will simply disappear into the noise of the world. I know that feeling well. Perhaps because I did not begin writing with certainty. I began writing because silence had become too heavy to carry alone. I wrote when I could not explain myself out loud. I wrote when the page felt safer than conversation. I wrote because sometimes surviving meant giving my thoug...

For a long time, survival was the only plan I had. Not next year. Not next month. Sometimes not even tomorrow. Just today. Just this hour. Just the next breath. When your life becomes organized around surviving, you stop asking certain questions. You stop wondering what your dream house looks like. What retirement might feel like. Where you hope to travel. What kind of old person you want to become. Those questions belong to people who believe the future is waiting for them. Survival narrows the world. It teaches you to think in smaller units of time. One morning. One conversation. One heartbeat. There is wisdom in that. But there is also loss. Because one day, if you remain long enough, another question quietly appears. What comes after survival? I don't think enough people talk about this. We celebrate survival, as we should. It deserves celebration. But surviving something does not automatically teach us how to live afterward. No one hands us a map. No one explains how to replac...

Somewhere inside me, there has always been a stage. Not a famous one. Not necessarily a crowded one. Just a place where I could finally stand without apologizing for existing. Long before I published a book, I imagined that moment. I imagined holding its weight in my hands. Looking at a room full of strangers. Taking a breath. And speaking. Not because I wanted applause. Because I wanted to know that I had remained long enough to reach that day. Over the years, I have rewritten many things. Poems. Letters. Pages that no longer sounded honest. Sentences that belonged to an earlier version of myself. Rewriting is part of becoming. It is how writers listen more carefully to their own voice. But there is one speech I hope I never have to rewrite. Not because it is perfect. Because I hope the person standing behind the microphone is still recognizable to the person writing these words today. Success has a strange way of changing people. Sometimes gently. Sometimes without their noticing. Th...