A River of Love Through Fire

I Was Once a Girl Who Thought Love Was Quiet

You are a girl again, sitting in the shadow of the woods near Poplar Neck, where the sun dips low and the air grows thick with the scent of pine and damp earth. You hear the rustle of leaves, the distant creak of a wagon wheel, and your mother’s voice calling your name — Araminta. That’s you, child. And you do not yet know what love will ask of you.

I remember when I thought love was something gentle, something soft that curled around you like the feather bed my mother stitched with her own hands. I thought love meant staying close, keeping quiet, doing what was asked. But love, when you are born into chains, is not gentle. It is fire. It is storm. It is choice after choice, each one carving something new into your soul.

Love Meant Leaving

I had a husband once. A free man. John Tubman. And I loved him, though love is a word too small for what I felt. I loved the way he walked without fear, the way he spoke like the world belonged to him. I loved that he was safe, even when I was not.

But when I ran — when I slipped into the night with nothing but the stars above and the sound of my own heartbeat — he did not follow. He stayed. Said he would wait for me. Said he would come later. But later never came. I came back, you know. I came back not once, but many times, to bring others out. But never for him. Not again.

I used to think he failed me. Now I know: love is not waiting. Love is action. And when the time came, he did not act.

Love Meant Risk

I carried a pistol, not for the dogs or the men with guns, but for the ones who lost heart. The ones who wanted to turn back. The ones who thought death was better than the unknown.

You may wonder why I would threaten my own people. But I knew what waited behind them — worse than death. I knew that love sometimes means pushing someone into the dark, because you have seen the light on the other side.

Every time I led someone north, I gave them a piece of my soul. Every time I whispered, “Keep going,” I poured more of myself into them. That is love, child. Not the kind that holds your hand, but the kind that lets you go — so you can find your own strength.

Love Meant Loss

I buried friends in the earth with no marker. I held dying children in my arms and sang to them in the dark. I watched mothers weep for babies left behind, and I did not cry. Not then. Not until years later, when the silence of my own heart echoed too loudly.

There were nights I asked God why I could not love quietly. Why I could not have a home, a hearth, a husband to grow old with. But I see now — love was not meant for quiet corners when the world is burning. Love was meant to be lived, and I lived it with every breath I gave to others.

Love Meant Freedom

I am old now. My bones ache. My eyes are dim. But I am free. And I made others free. I made it so that children could grow up without the whip, without the auction block. I made it so that love could bloom in open air.

If I could speak to you, the girl in the woods — I would say this: love will not look like you think it will. It will not be soft, and it will not always be kind. But it will be true. It will be fierce. It will be the thing that makes you brave when you thought you were broken.

And if you must leave someone behind, do not carry shame. Carry purpose. If you must risk everything, do not do it for praise — do it because you know what it means to be loved by a world that tried to erase you.

You will find love not in the arms of another, but in the lives you change. In the hands you hold. In the freedom you give.

Talk to Harriet Tubman on HoloDream — ask her how she found strength in loss, or what love meant when freedom came at such a cost.