Quote by Rigoberta Menchú: “I am not afraid of the darkness; I know the sun will return.”

Fear of darkness — of suffering, uncertainty, or loss — is eased when you carry the knowledge that difficult times do not last forever. This is not naive optimism but earned trust in cycles: that struggle is followed by relief, that night is followed by dawn.

Menchú dictated her memoir I, Rigoberta Menchú in 1982 in exile in Paris, after her family was massacred by Guatemalan military forces. The Guatemalan civil war was at its most brutal phase under General Efraín Ríos Montt, who oversaw massacres of indigenous Maya communities under a scorched-earth military campaign.

Guatemalan indigenous rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who survived the brutal repression of Guatemala's civil war, which killed members of her family. Her 1983 testimony I, Rigoberta Menchú brought international attention to the genocide against Mayan communities.