Courage and Resilience
Last week following a dear friend’s encouragement, I shared my personal journey in Kenya’s Business Daily. For someone stubbornly private, it was one of the most difficult things to do. It felt like cracking a nut open with your nails. I’m usually an onion, layered. This felt like nut cracking. But I did it willingly. I challenged myself to open-up.
I’m in a season for yes! (must be the isolation)
So, I said yes to telling an incredibly personal story. It was cathartic and has greatly helped me in grieving my mom and grandma’s recent passing. This is not a story I would have told when they were both alive and it is also one, I later realized I needed to tell in order to find the footing to move forward.
In it I touched on various topics from the difficulties of my childhood growing up with a mom and brother that suffered depression and schizophrenia and how that has shaped my expectations around matters of trust in my adult life.
Dealing with unexpected underhandedness of some female work colleagues. Building social capital (and networks) from zero, over and over again. Independence, single parenting. I spoke about my dreams for a home and belonging.
It has resonated with many, in whole and in parts. The feedback has been overwhelming and for that I’m grateful. Thank you for hearing me, seeing me and sharing your own experiences, assuring me that I’m not alone.
It wasn’t the story in which I recognized the many women who have also been my champions, who have stood by me, walked with me, who I learn from every day. They are many and I talk about them all the time. This story was about the things I don’t usually talk about!
I also didn’t talk about refugees who inspire me every day. It was after all a personal story not a professional interview. But my life is barely that compartmentalized when it comes to refugees.
Refugees have had much greater things to overcome than I ever will know. They are forced to flee, they do not choose to move freely like I have had the privilege to. A refugee’s desire for home, a million times overshadows my own dreams for one in its poignancy. Because for them, this is not a choice about where and when. It is not a choice they get to make at all. And those social networks? Well try escaping for your life, with only your life, nothing more. If you are lucky, you might keep your family together, many can’t and end up separated. Then arriving in a refugee camp, often times in the middle of nowhere and even though you have your life, shelter and some basic supplies provided by humanitarian organizations, your life, your dreams and hopes for your children as you knew it is no more. You have no social networks in your new ‘home’, you have trauma. Imagine the resilience and grit it takes to overcome that. Imagine that. And that is the image I wish you to hold every time you meet a refugee. As a university student, an intern, an entrepreneur or a resettled refugee trying to rebuild their life. Meet them with compassion and pride in their accomplishments and think about what they have had to overcome. And then treat him or her like a most deserving human being, only better.
And yes, I’m available for all those interviews you are asking me to. On only one condition, that we tell a refugee’s story.
June 20 is #WorldRefugeeDay. A day to celebrate the courage and resilience of the tens of millions of people forced to flee their homes due to war or persecution.
