HOLD FAST TO DREAMS by Etya Vasserman Krichmar

 

Image | Ivan Oboleninov

HOLD FAST TO DREAMS

Hold fast to dreams,
Langston Hughes once wrote.
For when dreams go,
Life is a barren field,
Frozen with snow.

Last night, I stood on a stage.

Behind me, celebrities.
Before me, thousands.
And somehow, in the dream,

I knew they were waiting for my words.
Me.
The girl who once had no voice.

My heart pounded.
My knees buckled.
Then I screamed.

“I did not, would not, and will never surrender to victimhood!”

Because I am a Jew.
And I survived the erasure of identity,
The brutality of ideology,
And the silence they tried to force into my bones.

Victimhood?
That word.
I spit it from my tongue like poison.
It is not a life sentence.
Not a stone tablet carved by fate.

It is a moment.
It is a choice.
And I—
I choose to live.
To rise.
To become.

I was born in the USSR,
Under the shadow of the red flag,
Where the Communist Party owned every thought,
Every breath.
A place where being Jewish
was not just a label—
It was a threat.

They tried to cast me in a role.
I refused.
They offered me fear as a future.
I declined.
They expected silence.
Instead, I wrote.

In the darkest corners of that regime,
I clung to light.
To hope.
To the sacred shape of my name
And the strength of my parents’ genes.

And then one day—March 7, 1978—
I stepped onto American soil.
For the first time, I could breathe.

Freedom.
Not just to speak,
But to be.

And I saw something new.
Choices carry consequences.
Freedom is not a gift wrapped in gold,
But a daily act of responsibility.

You cannot blame the world forever.

You cannot bow to comfort and call it courage.

Some wear their struggle like armor,

And others like a badge of entitlement.
But I tell you now—

When you let others define your limits,
 you lock yourself inside a cage built with your own hands.

I believe in aid
But not in chains disguised as charity.
I believe in safety nets
Not spiderwebs.

Because resilience lives not in the hand that waits,
But in the hand that builds.
And I…
I built.

I earned a degree.
I wrote a book.
I told my story
Because silence kills more surely than swords.

And on every page, I echo this:

Hold fast to dreams.

Because when you do
You rise.
You bloom.
You bear fruit.

And maybe that stage wasn’t just a dream.
Maybe that crowd was real—
Maybe it’s you.

If so,
Here is my message,
My offering:

Refuse to bow.
Refuse to be erased.
Refuse to live small.

Dream.
Even if your voice shakes.
Even if your past haunts.
Even if the world tells you no.

Dream,
until your dream
becomes
A world.

© Etya Vasserman Krichmar

Etya Krichmar

Etya was born in Kazakhstan, a former republic of the Soviet Union. In 1977, she, together with her husband and a two-year-old daughter, claimed religious discrimination to escape antisemitism and the clutches of the oppressive totalitarian regime. Etya is retired and lives in Port Saint Lucie, Florida. The Orlando Sentinel and TC Palm newspapers have published her commentaries. She is a Treasured Contributor to MasticadoresUSA. Spillwords Press nominated her story Oh, Mother! for a Publication of the Month in July 2023. Her work appeared in the White Rose, Unleashed Creative, and The Write Launch magazines. Her story, Unconditional Love, is part of the Turning Point Anthology. Knocked Sideways Anthology is releasing Not All Jews are Created Equal in the United Kingdom in April 2024. Etya draws inspiration for her stories from her experiences behind the Iron Curtain. She is a Reiki practitioner and an active member of the Florida Writers Association, Life Writers, Memoir Writing Ink, Alumni Café, Pitch to Published, and Athena Sisterhood online Writing Groups. Her website, Etya Writes, can be found on www.etyawrites.com

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