The Red Thread and Why I Write

by Marie L. Decius

Dearest Reader,

I never knew there was a name for the feeling that ties all my stories together. But now I call it the red thread.

It’s not something I read in a book or learned in school. I felt it—in the cracked voices of the women who raised me, in the creases of my grandmother’s hands, in the ache of remembering what history tried to forget. This thread winds through every word I write, stitching together past and present, blood and ink.

I write Haitian women into the light because I was raised in their shadows.

I write because I’m a mother trying to give her children something solid to stand on—names, stories, fire.

I write between nursing my baby and preparing for law school, between unemployment checks and midnight revisions, between my country’s history and my own survival. I write because if I don’t, who will?

The Red Thread isn’t just metaphor. It’s memory. It’s resistance. It’s the whisper of Sanité Bélair, the echo of Ida Faubert, the murmur of every market woman, healer, and poet who came before me and refused to be silent.

This blog will carry their voices forward. It will share bits of Haitian history that never made it into our textbooks. It will follow my journey as a writer, mother, veteran, student, and woman of faith. And I hope it will connect us—because maybe the red thread runs through you too.

With fire and ink,
Marie