Week 9 • September 12, 2026
I cut Good Girls Cry, Bad Girls Mourn in half. I never thought that was possible.
When you have written every word and spent time connecting to them, to kill your baby is the hard thing.
I don’t know if it is coincidence, or the effect of being in Dubai — fast-paced and so energetically vibrant — or about the story I’m about to share. At first it felt unrelated to my creation. It isn’t.
Dubai became a space to process an unfinished story of the past I didn’t know I was still carrying.
I didn’t realize that growing up I carried a fear when people look at me — as if they think I don’t belong, or that I can’t afford this place. It comes from childhood, from fear around money, from going anxious in rooms that feel out of reach.
When I was young I was suspected once of stealing something from a mall. I didn’t. They searched my body and found nothing. I left with shame, and with a belief I didn’t know I was carrying.
Only when that look was not on people’s faces here did I see it. It was never my fault. When a place cannot offer basic security, people watch for a thief before they see a person. A girl who looks like she wants something gets treated as the thief. Here, people are not walking around deciding who might steal. So the look was not there — and I could finally tell their fear from my shame.
I let out a big cry and let my little young girl release that it was never her fault.
In doing so, I let go of the fear of being misunderstood, and the need to explain myself that had also shown up, unconsciously, in Good Girls Cry, Bad Girls Mourn.
That’s how what looked unrelated to my creation became another source of it.
Until next time
Lalita Janette