Breathe
By Lydia Cacho
To Lynn Fainchtein
Every time I write a column, I think about the questions that, for me as a journalist, are fundamental: Does it inform ethically? Does it reflect honestly? Is it useful for those who read it? Does it contribute any ideas that come close to collective solutions?
Since I went into exile -although I should call it forced displacement due to State violence-, I have reflected on the 35 years of my journalistic career. I kept silent in the media for a long time, focusing on my new books because for me, as for most people, my own and other people's pain continually overwhelms me. Throughout my career I have prepared myself to handle with emotional balance the immense frustration provoked by the lies of the politicians who control the reins of our countries, I learned to face human cruelty, I learned to keep my mental health in a fragile balance before the evidence of brutal violence against children and women, I have seen things that I have never verbalized, except in front of a judge who needed to understand how an adult records a little girl he is going to abuse. I have taken risks that made, and make my family suffer, the one that loves me in spite of the pain caused by my professional and life choices.
