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Christopher Sterling

@christopherjsterling

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His name is Ahmed. And he deserves a future. ❤️🇵🇸

He lives in Gaza.

He is a student. A son. A brother. A young man with a beautiful sense of humor, an extraordinary heart, and dreams that extend far beyond the circumstances into which he was born.

He is trying to build a future in a place where simply surviving another night can require extraordinary courage.

I have come to know Ahmed beyond the headlines. I know his laughter. His tenderness. His determination to keep learning, even when the world around him makes that almost impossible.

And I know that his life is so much more than what has happened to him.

He deserves to worry about homework instead of whether his family will survive the night.

He deserves ordinary mornings. Safety. An education. The freedom to imagine growing older.

He deserves the opportunity to become everything he has not yet had the chance to be.

We are raising funds to help Ahmed and his family meet their immediate needs and pursue a path toward safety and a more secure future.

If you can give, even a little, thank you.

If you cannot, sharing his story is an extraordinary act of kindness, too.

Because somewhere in Gaza, there is an 18-year-old boy who is still dreaming.

And I would love for us to help him discover what happens when the world dreams alongside him.

The link to help Ahmed is in my bio. ❤️

Please help us leave some light on for Ahmed.

If you’d like to understand a little more about the love, hope, and humanity behind this work, I invite you to read my essays at thelightweleaveon.com — a home for stories about the light we can leave on for one another, even in the darkest of times.
#HelpAhmed #Gaza #Palestine #GazaRelief #MutualAid
Some songs seem to understand what we’re trying to say before we’ve found the words.

Thank you, @tompeterodell, for making music that gives tenderness somewhere to go. https://chuffed.org/project/202768-help-ahmed-survive-study-and-rebuild-his-future by @christopherjsterling

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9 hours ago

When Farah was nine years old, she put on a pair of boxing gloves and began to dream.

She loved boxing. Roller-skating. Skateboarding. The freedom of movement. The joy of discovering what her body could do and who she might become.

Today, Farah is nineteen years old.

She is a wife, a sister, and the mother of an eleven-month-old little boy named Osama.

And she is trying to raise him in Gaza.

I have come to know Farah’s family personally, and there is something I wish more people understood about the lives behind the photographs we see.

They are not simply stories of suffering.

They are people who laugh. Who tease each other. Who fall in love. Who have favorite songs and childhood dreams. Who want to make coffee, raise their children, and wake up without fear.

Farah is still that little girl who loves boxing.

But now she is fighting to find food, clean water, diapers, medicine, and safety for her baby and family.

One passage from her fundraiser has stayed with me:

“I do not want my life to be defined only by how much suffering I can withstand.”

Neither do I, Farah.

I want the world to know you for what you love, not only what you have survived.

For your courage in the boxing ring.

For the joy of being a young mother.

For all the extraordinary, ordinary days you have not yet had the chance to live.

I’ve helped Farah and her family put together a Chuffed fundraiser called Farah’s Fight for a Future.

If you’re able to donate, even a small contribution can help provide essential supplies and support their efforts toward a safer future.

And if you cannot donate, please share her story.

Somewhere in Gaza, a young mother is still holding on to the dreams she first dreamed at nine years old.

I’d love for us to help her keep them.

With love and gratitude. ❤️🥊

DONATE / SHARE: Farah’s Fight for a Future
https://chuffed.org/project/205991-farahs-fight-for-a-future?utm_campaign=campaign&utm_id=01a11d84-5e8d-73d0-ad90-0c8941bd7201&pdm=url_copy

#Gaza #SupportGazaFamilies #MutualAid #Palestine #FarahsFightForAFuture by @christopherjsterling

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12 hours ago

The Cup - Part 2 And then, sometimes, love arrives carrying something wonderfully ordinary.

Not a grand promise.

Not a rescue.

Not a declaration that nothing will ever hurt again.

Just someone who wants to make the coffee.

And perhaps, after a lifetime of learning how to give, how to anticipate, how to protect, and how to carry more than we should ever have been asked to hold, we discover something unexpected.

Receiving can require courage, too.

The courage to believe that kindness does not always arrive with a hidden cost.

That love need not require our disappearance.

That trust does not mean surrendering our voice.

That we can still say *when*.

We can say *no*.

We can tell the truth when something hurts.

And we can also say *yes*.

Yes to tenderness.

Yes to being witnessed.

Yes to allowing someone to care for us.

Yes to the possibility that home does not have to be the place where we first learned to survive.

Perhaps home can become something we choose.

Something we build.

Something with room for every earlier version of ourselves.

The frightened child.

The exhausted watchman.

The witness who needed witnessing.

And the grown person who is finally learning that being loved does not have to mean being useful.

Sometimes healing doesn’t look like becoming someone new.

Sometimes it looks like an ordinary morning.

Sunlight through a window.

Two cups on a table.

One with a sun.

One with a moon.

And the freedom to let someone make the coffee.

The complete story lives in *Not Everything That Hurts Is Broken*, an essay about the word *when*, the mercy of the elements, the courage of witnessing, and learning to choose what home looks like.

Read more on **TheLightWeLeaveOn.com** ❤️

And perhaps, wherever you are in your own journey, you might ask yourself:

*What would it feel like to receive something beautiful without believing you first had to earn it?*

#TheLightWeLeaveOn #hilaryhahn #NotEverythingThatHurtsIsBroken #mnightshyamalan #TraumaHealing by @christopherjsterling

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18 hours ago

Part 1 - The Cup Sometimes the smallest gestures touch the oldest parts of us.
A cup of coffee.
Someone remembering how we take it.
Someone offering to do something kind without needing anything in return.
Such ordinary things.
Unless you’ve spent much of your life learning to anticipate what someone else might put into your cup.
Unless you’ve learned that being strong, useful, agreeable, or exceptionally good at surviving can sometimes make the world forget that you need tenderness, too.
I grew up believing that when something became too much, all I had to do was say when.
And I did.
Oh, how I did.
But sometimes the pouring continued.
And somewhere along the way, I became very good at holding the cup.
At watching.
At anticipating.
At finding ways to remain compassionate, even when I was the one who needed compassion.
This is a story about those earlier versions of ourselves.
The little ones who tried so hard.
The watchmen who never slept.
The people who became extraordinarily capable because they had so little choice.
And the possibility that being capable of carrying something never meant we should have had to carry it alone.
THE CUP — Part One
A companion to my new essay, Not Everything That Hurts Is Broken.
Part Two continues the journey from learning to survive toward learning to receive.
Read more on TheLightWeLeaveOn.com ❤️
#TheLightWeLeaveOn #mnightshyamalan #TraumaHealing #ladyinthewatermovie #HealingThroughWriting by @christopherjsterling

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18 hours ago

“Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.”
— Anaïs Nin

I have spent much of my life understanding the world through music.

Before I could explain certain feelings, I could hear them.

Before I knew what to call grief, longing, tenderness, or love, I could find them somewhere between the notes.

And through years of working with breath, the body, and the nervous system, I’ve come to appreciate something humans have understood for thousands of years.

Sometimes we don’t need another explanation.

Sometimes we need to listen.

To breathe.

To let music reach the places words cannot.

We have sung to our children.
We have sung to our dead.
We have made music when words were not enough.

Not because music fixes everything.

But because, sometimes, it allows us to stop holding everything so tightly.

Today, Help Her Understand Us by Joy Ngiaw found me in exactly that way.

A cello beneath a gathering of voices.

And suddenly, I was somewhere beyond a screen, beyond distance, imagining an embrace that hasn’t happened yet.

And somehow, my body seemed to recognize it.

Perhaps that is one of music’s oldest gifts.

It allows us to feel what we cannot yet touch.

To remember what we thought we’d forgotten.

And sometimes, to experience a little of the love we are still waiting to hold.

So today, find a piece of music that knows your heart.

Let your shoulders soften.
Notice your breathing.
Just listen.

And allow the music to meet you wherever you are.

I wonder—

Has a piece of music ever taken you somewhere you haven’t been yet?

Or brought you home to somewhere you thought you’d lost?

Tell me what you were listening to.

Perhaps someone else needs to hear it, too.

🌙 The Light We Leave On
thelightweleaveon.com

#TheLightWeLeaveOn #MusicAndHealing #MusicAndMemory #Breathwork #joyngiaw by @christopherjsterling

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2 days ago

PART 2 The House That Remembered Perhaps being remembered is its own kind of homecoming.

Two brothers. A war. A garden. Two names that deserved to rest beside one another.

And a house that had been keeping their stories long before I knew how to listen.

Sometimes we cannot give people back the years they lost.

We cannot undo what happened.

But we can remember.

We can make room.

We can leave a little light on.

Read More On: TheLightWeLeaveOn.com

Read Part 1 for the beginning of the story.

#TheHouseThatRemembered #TheLightWeLeaveOn #Brothers #Remembrance #worldwarⅱ by @christopherjsterling

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2 days ago

Part 1: The House That Remembered. Some houses are made of wood and brick.

Others are made of everything that happened inside them.

The laughter. The grief. The children who grew older. The people who went away. The ones who came home changed.

And sometimes, if we are quiet enough, a house begins to tell us what it has been holding.

This is a story about a house built in 1898.

And the lives that never entirely left it.

Read More On: TheLightWeLeaveOn.com

Continued in Part 2.

#TheHouseThatRemembered #TheLightWeLeaveOn #CreativeNonfiction #Storytelling #HistoricalMemory OldHouses GriefAndLove LiteraryWriting WhatRemains by @christopherjsterling

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2 days ago

Part 2: Let it Shine “the Light on Both Sides Now” For years, I thought the miracle would be learning to let the light in.

I hadn’t considered how much of my own light had been waiting to find its way out.

And perhaps that’s the part of healing we don’t talk about enough.

Not simply becoming safe enough to be loved.

But becoming free enough to love without disappearing inside the giving.

To stand in the sunshine.

Alive. Loving. Loved.

Without needing to know how the story ends.

So I wonder…

What if the darkness you’ve grown accustomed to isn’t the absence of light at all?

What if it’s only the shadow of something you no longer need to keep standing?

Read more on: TheLightWeLeaveOn.com

#TheLightWeLeaveOn #LetItShine #FindingYourLight #HealingJourney #poetryandprose taken in Norfolk, Virginia by @christopherjsterling

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2 days ago

PART 1: Let it Shine “The Walls We Build” Some of the walls we carry were built by children who had no other way to feel safe.

And I don’t think healing means arriving with a wrecking ball and telling those children they were wrong.

Perhaps it means sitting beside them.

Thanking them for what they built.

And asking, very gently, whether we might move just one brick together.

There is no need to hurry.

The sunlight isn’t going anywhere.

Read more on: TheLightWeLeaveOn.com

#TheLightWeLeaveOn #LetItShine #InnerChildHealing #HealingThroughWriting #traumahealing taken in The Chrysler Museum of Art by @christopherjsterling

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2 days ago

PART 2: I spent so much of my life believing love meant keeping watch.

Staying awake.
Holding the light.
Making certain no one else had to be afraid alone.

And then, somewhere in the middle of loving another human being, something extraordinary happened. Someone reached back. And the little boy who had spent his life watching the door began to understand that he was allowed to walk through it, too.

Perhaps healing is not always about becoming someone new.

Perhaps sometimes it is about returning to the child we were, taking his hand, and showing him that the world still contains people worth opening the door for. And maybe the most beautiful thing love can teach us is that we do not have to be the only ones keeping watch.

More writing at thelightweleaveon.com

#TheLightWeLeaveOn #HealingThroughLove #LearningToReceiveLove #InnerChildHealing #LoveAndHealing by @christopherjsterling

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3 days ago

Some children grow up believing someone will come when they call.
Others learn to listen for footsteps.
To read the weather in someone else’s face. To become very good at keeping watch.

I was one of those children.
And for a long time, I mistook surviving for living.

This is a story about the little boy I was, the man he became, and all the years we spent trying to keep each other safe.

But it is also a story about what happens when the heart, after everything, still dares to open.

More writing at thelightweleaveon.com

#TheLightWeLeaveOn #InnerChildHealing #ChildhoodTrauma #TraumaRecovery #TheInnerChild by @christopherjsterling

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3 days ago

Some people give us songs.
Some give us a reason to hear them differently.
And every so often, someone gives us both.
And suddenly, even the distance has somewhere to rest.

For all the little songs that become a kind of home. 🌙☀️

#TheLightWeLeaveOn #LoveAcrossDistance #PoetryOfLove #LittleHolyThings #loveandlight by @christopherjsterling

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3 days ago