something else entirely.

"A strange thing happened then. The Speaker agreed with her that she had made a mistake, and she knew when he said the words that it was true, that his judgement was correct. And yet she felt strangely healed, as if simply speaking her mistake were enough to purge some of the pain of it. For the first time, then, she caught a glimpse of what the power of speaking might be. It wasn't a matter of confession, penance, and absolution, like the priests offered. It was something else entirely. Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate.

If I'm not that frightened girl who heard and dared not go, who am I? But the water flowing through the grillwork had no answers. Maybe she couldn't know who she was today. Maybe it was enough to know that she was no longer who she was before."

-orson scott card, speaker for the dead.