Dear Humanity: Smile Anyway |

Dear Humanity: Smile Anyway |

A collection of short essays and conversations on joy, growth, and the beautiful mess of being human.

Welcome to Dear Humanity: Smile Anyway.

This space was created from a desire to see light even in the moments that feel heavy. To laugh, to heal, to grow, and to keep becoming. Each essay is a love letter to the human spirit, written with honesty, hope, and tenderness.

Here, I write about the small things that make us who we are: resilience, kindness, wonder, forgiveness, and the quiet courage of starting again. I believe that even when life feels complicated, there is always room for joy. There is always a reason to smile anyway.

Through stories, reflections, and heartfelt conversations, I hope to remind you that being human is both fragile and extraordinary. That our laughter and our pain belong to the same truth.

Thank you for being here, for reading, for feeling, and for smiling.

With love,

Dydine

The Traveler’s Prayer
Kind Kulture Kind Kulture

The Traveler’s Prayer

To travel is not just to move through the world, but to move through the unknown within ourselves. Every immigrant, every refugee, every soul who has had to start again carries both a wound and a promise — the wound of loss and the promise that peace will find them again.

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How to Survive After Surviving
• Personal Journey • Healing and Resilience • Gratitude and Growth • Storytelling and Speaking • Travel Reflections • Life Lessons Kind Kulture • Personal Journey • Healing and Resilience • Gratitude and Growth • Storytelling and Speaking • Travel Reflections • Life Lessons Kind Kulture

How to Survive After Surviving

Lately, I have been reflecting on what it truly means to survive after surviving.

As a survivor of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, survival was the first language I ever learned. My earliest memories are not of playgrounds or laughter — they are of loss, fear, and silence. My introduction to humanity was genocide.

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Written by Dydine Umunyana Anderson, author, speaker, and founder of Kind Kulture & Umunyana Coffee.

Read more essays on forgiveness, resilience, and the art of healing at Dydine.com/blog or subscribe on Substack.

Woman with braided hair wearing a red coat sitting at a wooden counter, writing in a notebook inside a cozy café with large window, plants, and sunlight.
Three people sitting on a stage with a blue curtain background, participating in a panel discussion. The woman on the left is holding a microphone, the man in the middle is looking down, and the woman on the right is smiling. There is a small table with water bottles and a framed picture in front of them. Audience members are visible in the foreground.
Black and white photo of two women sitting on stage chairs reading and speaking into microphones, with a small table with glasses in front of them, in a dark setting.