I don’t know where you are reading this, but I’m writing from outside the camp.

It’s only been a few days since I was turned out beyond the perimeter. I suppose “banished” is the proper word, though it still feels strange to say it aloud. But I wanted you to know, I am safe. They cannot hurt me anymore.

I keep thinking of a line I once heard: once I’ve lost everything, there is nothing left to lose.
And what a terrible, honest kind of freedom that is.

As I sit here, I sit in silence. Not just the kind you can hear, but the kind you feel in your bones. A kind of quiet that aches.

But I could not stay. You can only live peaceably for so long among people who have no desire for peace.

And perhaps that was the beginning of the fracture… when peace became something we only spoke about, but no longer practiced. When words were repeated, but something essential no longer hung in the air.

I did not have the language for it then, but I do now. Somewhere along the way… they took Him out of His own gospel. Not in name. His name was spoken often.

Reverently, even. But in substance, He was missing. His gentleness. His mercy. His way of drawing near to those cast aside. It had all been replaced by something harder. Sharper. Easier to wield.

And the audacity of it still unsettles me—that anyone could believe they have the right to reshape something so sacred. To speak for Him, while slowly removing all that made Him who He is.

I think, deep down, I knew it long before I left. But knowing something, and admitting it to yourself… are two very different things.

There is more I could say, much more that needs to be said. But I am still learning how to put language to what has been broken—and what, perhaps, was never whole to begin with.

So I will write again. But, for now, I will leave you with this:

The outside is quieter than I expected. Lonelier, yes. But there is a strange kind of honesty here. Nothing is hidden. Nothing is forced. And for the first time in a long while, I am beginning to wonder if what I lost… was not what I was led to believe.

There is more to discuss. But it will have to wait for another letter.

—Sojourner