Voices That Time Cannot Silence

“There are voices that time tries to erase… but they echo still, in the hearts they’ve touched.”

I am a history major, so you know I enjoy reading, or watching anything that has to do with history.

And recently I dug into a woman named Dorothy Thompson.
She is strong woman much much like the women who raised me.

She was a voice the world tried to silence.

A journalist. A fighter. A woman who saw tyranny rising and dared to speak when others turned away.

She stood on the front lines of truth, without a a gun, and used her words. She was expelled from Nazi Germany for telling the truth.

Because truth was never a choice for Dorothy. It was a duty.

But what made her powerful wasn’t just her defiance.
It was her humanity. Her belief that people mattered. and that freedom was personal, and that compassion was as strong a weapon as any sword.

And in many ways, that’s who my grandmother was to me.

She didn’t write for newspapers, but in her youth she was an amateur editor.
She didn’t battle dictators, but she went to Reed College in Oregon, and some proclaimed saw her as a socialist, but she was more than that. She was American.

My grandma was a beautiful woman too strong for her time. She was married, a husband who secretly had another family, and left her to become a drunk. That didn't stop her from pushing onwards, and getting her education while taking care of three kids. She fought every day ,with kindness. With grace. With a strength that didn’t need to shout to be heard.

She was American through and through — not in the flag-waving sense, but in the quiet, enduring values she lived: hard work, faith, second chances, and the belief that everyone deserves dignity, and love.

Especially a strange 6 year old Vietnamese kid who had just set foot in this country.

She gave me a chance when the doors of the world was closing on me. She taught me that being American wasn’t just about where you were born — it was about the heart you carried. The courage to care. The strength to believe in better, even when the world was at its worst. She carried me through the storms of life, and stood by myside unconditionally, and was always once phone call away.

And even when Alzheimer’s began to steal pieces of her mind…
Her love? Her spirit? That stayed.

Because the soul remembers what the brain forgets.

I remember how she would pick me up after school, and we would drive around, counting bird nests, eating ice cream, and just conversating, so that I would understand, the English language better, and by doing this she unknowingly pass me her values to pass down to my children.

Sitting beside her, even in her silence, and still feeling her lessons — like echoes. The way she’d squeeze my hand just tight enough to say,
“Hey kiddo, how has life been? What's new? Are you still writing?”

And that’s what brings me back to Dorothy.

Because both of them , one a world-famous journalist, the other a quiet grandmother, taught me something the world needs to remember:

That strength isn’t about being loud.
Wisdom isn’t measured in years remembered.
And that the most powerful legacy… is love lived out, even in the dark.

So maybe your voice isn’t being broadcast around the world.
Maybe your mind, or someone you love, is slipping, memories fraying like pages left out in the wind.

But I’m telling you: You still matter.

As Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said, they will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”

Dorothy Thompson made people feel brave.
My grandmother made people feel safe.
And in that way, they both changed the world.

So if you’re facing Alzheimer’s, or watching someone you love disappear piece by piece…

Don’t focus on what’s gone.
Focus on what remains.
The touch. The warmth. The look in the eyes that says, “This is not the end.”

Because love, real love, isn’t stored in memory.
It lives in the soul.
And the soul cannot be silenced.