Let me paint you a picture

 This is one of the beautiful Bhutanese refugee women living in Salt Lake City.

This pictures is worth more than a thousand words, I think. In this picture we see a thousand lives, countless decades lived fleeing. Fleeing or held in a camp, a camp for people without a nation, without a people or a home to call theirs. The lines of age, but also of insight, wisdom, unfathomable sorrow, and also hope. Seeking refuge. Refugee.

Refuge.... what does it mean?

Two years ago I was hired by one champ of a professor to co-develop a refugee and immigrant health course. Now, under the "legitimacy" of MPH student, I get to co-teach that class with him. Here's the thing-- neither of us has any substantial on-the-ground experiences with refugee populations, but at the end of the day we both felt passionate about the importance of having a class about refugee health at BYU. Okay maybe I carried us on the passionate part, and Dr. Cole took the prize for being supportive and enthusiastic :). Anyway we've done our ground work, and where we couldn't fill in the gaps with our personal experiences or research, we brought in guest lecturers. Tonight we had two great guest lecturers visit our class and confirm to me that my job is the best in the world. I get paid to research, do work, and teach about mitigating/preventing the overwhelming conditions and challenges that refugees face. And I get to constantly learn and be exposed to this amazing group, and the amazing men and women that work with them. This is a population of incredible, resilient, and loving people. But they face so many seemingly insurmountable challenges that they need advocates and support, and I hope that's what our class can create.

I think a lot of people are surprised to hear that thousands of refugees from countries all over the world live right here in Salt Lake City, Utah. Who knew right? But they're here, and hopefully here to stay. Just a few weeks ago I had the privilege of attending Utah's Refugee Conference, were we heard from amazing members of the refugee community and practitioners/professionals from refugee service providers. It was there that I attended a session on the effects of torture and trauma, hosted by Utah Health and Human Rights. This incredible non-profit offers counseling, therapy, and a variety of other social and health services to victims of trafficking and refugee torture or war crime survivors. One of the speakers particularly moved me, and I invited her to guest lecture for our class at BYU. She graciously accepted and I was thrilled, because her experiences and insights were something I could never offer our class on my own.

So tonight we got to hear from her and the lecture was even better the second time around. Dr. Bennett discussed with us the effects of secondary torture on children and the effects of torture on families in general. It was one of the most fascinating, eye-opening, and heart-wrenching lectures I've ever attended. One thing she started off with was a discussion based on a few drawings created by her child clients during play therapy sessions. Here's an example of what some might look like:

The drawings she shared showed the children with their families, or their views of what "home" meant. In the families the children were often left out or drawn disconnected from their parents. Many family members were left without hands or feet, or even facial features in some instances. These drawings offered an insight into the world of the child, who was processing a trauma that they might have seen or could sense, but that they couldn't talk about. The lack of feet and hands, so that they couldn't defend themselves or run. No mouths to communicate, or eyes to see. In one drawing of what a little girl described as a "home" we saw a house floating in the air. When asked who lived there, she responded "no one can live there." For her, home was a concept she couldn't identify with or really conceive of, having never had a real home herself.

It was heartbreaking to hear about how torture often causes families to fall apart and push away from each other; she described it as an explosion within the family. Like a bomb that goes off and every person bears the impact, but has a different experience and walks away from it carrying their own pieces of shrapnel. She discussed how for torture survivors, they often live in a world where time has collapsed, and so in every moment they can still experience fear. Fear of torture, fear of violence or rape-- however "irrational" that might be here in America. For them, that is the reality of their life and since the time of their torture, events of the past feel like part of the present or the future. She discussed how, although compartmentalization is an incredible and amazing coping mechanism, if we carry our trauma with us in a compartment it eventually begins to seep into all the parts of our lives and poison them. Compartmentalization doesn't last forever, and in order to deal with the trauma and carry it in a way that can be managed, it has to be delt with.

 This was really a whole new world for me. I knew that people are constantly tortured, raped, and exploited in every moment in every location on the globe. It still overwhelms me, but I have come to accept it. But gaining this insight into the way that trauma and torture can haunt and terrorize a person or child for their entire life, poisoning precious moments with family or turning a haven into a prison-- this was a new way of understanding for me. The burdens that these people carry are such a heavy and almost insurmountable weight; and yet they carry on resilient and hopeful.

I feel like a lot of time we just float through life and don't think very much about what's going on around the globe. People hear about conflict, rape, trafficking, whatever. They say things like "that's too bad" or "how horrible" or "those poor people." But how often do we do anything about it? It's much easier to feel horrified or sorry for a moment and then move on. But I think at the end of the day we'll regret that move, and see that not only did we have a lot to offer that we selfishly held to ourselves, but that we had so much to gain as well from our brothers and sisters who have learned to shine and live with hope and laughter despite unfathomable challenges.

I feel grateful every day of my life for the innumerable blessings I have received. It's not fair and I don't know why, except that God wants me to do something with them. It's easy to get caught up in academia or career, our families or even church, or whatever else. But at the end of the day I believe that we have a real responsibility from God to reach out and care for each other, and to carry each others' burdens. My burdens have been so, so very light compared to most. Surely not so that I could carry a weightless load all my life, and never understand the pain and horror that most of the world experiences (and most women in history for that matter) on a regular basis. Rather that I-- and I guess I really mean we, we who are blessed with the freedom of this country, with health and strength and peace-- could help shoulder that load, and carry each other.

From what I can tell the images in this video are from Sarajevo, the genocide in Bosnia-Herzevogina

There's a passage from the foreward to A Thousand Sisters that I love. After describing the predicament and questions asked by a survivor of conflict and violence, Zainab Salbi says this:

"Then there are the questions with which the rest of the world must wrestle: What if one has the privilege of not directly experiencing or even witnessing injustice in front of one's eyes? What if one never has to know what it feels like to be lynched, whipped, raped, chained, mutilated, enslaved: or know the pain of witnessing a loved one be killed without being able to do anything about it? What if one doesn't know what it feels like to lose a home because a bomb fell on it, or because it was invaded by soldiers or rebels in the middle of hte night while you were sleeping in your own bed; or be forced to walk days and weeks in the middle of the forest without any food just to save your life and that of your loved one? What then? Is that carte blanche to ignore, to do nothing?

For much of the world it is. Much of the world is content to stand by and do nothing while the war rages on in Congo, while people die by the millions, and while women are raped by the hundreds of thousands. But, thankfully, it is not so for everyone. There are activists worldwide who do what they can on behalf of others who are oppressed, though they may not share that plight.

These are the people who realize that their own privilege-- the privilege of not witnessing, atrocities, the privilege of being heard, or having the resources to survive-- is a responsibility to humanity, a responsibility to be shared with others, and a responsibility to the world. That story, the story of a few individuals acting upon injustice even though they have not witnessed it firsthand has always existed, and that is the story that adds to the hope survivors share when they triumph over the evil they have witnessed."