The Power of Our Stories

I began a new book the other night. It was one of these moments: “I’ll just read a few pages before bed” and four hours later you’re halfway through the book and it’s 3:00 AM. The book –  We Crossed a Bridge and it Trembled: Voices from Syria by Wendy Pearlman – amplifies the voices of Syrian refugees through a collection of vignettes. Through the pages of Pearlman’s book, each refugee shares a snippet of his or her remarkable experience. And who better to tell the story of Syria’s revolutionary struggle than Syrians themselves? It is their story and Pearlman’s writing gives us a front row seat to the reality of a refugee’s plight.

As I sat there reading each story, I was transported to the moment I entered a refugee camp in Greece. When I close my eyes, I see the old jeans factory reconfigured into a camp and I smell the embers from a dying fire. It’s a moment forever etched in my memory.

I was struck by one woman’s story in particular during my time in Greece. To protect herprivacy, I’ll call her Noor. Noor was married and mother to half-a-dozen children. When I met her at the camp, it was just her and her young daughter. Most of her family had received asylum in Germany, but Noor and her daughter’s papers had not been processed yet. She longed to be reunited with her family. At night I would sit and talk to Noor in the designated “women’s space.” I would find her hunched over the sewing machine with her young daughter quietly playing at the crafts table. She worked with several other women to create long blankets to place in front of bathroom stalls; any semblance of privacy was a welcome addition at the camp.

I could sense Noor’s fatigue as I spoke with her. She felt lonely, missed her family, and was tired of living in the equivalent of a college dorm room. Despite Noor’s frustration, her eyes were fixed on the future. She grieved for her former life in Syria, but looked to her future with hope and optimism.

I befriended a few teenage girls during my time at the camp. They exuded the qualities you typically see in a teenage girl on the surface – self-conscious, slightly timid, and obsessed with Justin Bieber. But on a deeper level, these young women were rooted in resiliency. Their stories were not defined by heartache and loss, but by hopeful anticipation of the future.

Each story revealed the similarities of our human experience. When I spoke to young women, our dreams were nearly synonymous. We want a family, a job we love, and a life that produces fulfillment.

There are 18 thousand Syrian refugees in the United States. Meet one. Ask for their story and then share yours. What better way to tear down self-erected barriers than to hear someone else’s story? As human beings, we long for the experience to be known and understood. We want to know that someone shares in our struggles and in our pain.

In such a divisive time in our nation’s history where we can’t even agree on the most fundamental issues, perhaps we can agree on the necessity of dialogue. Each of us has a story full of joy and heartache. And like it or not, we’re stuck with each other.

As the generation of the future, we should long to discover what unites us as a human race. In the most interconnected period of human history, many feel more disconnected than ever.

What we fail to realize is we have more that binds us together than breaks us apart.

I challenge our generation, myself included, to get uncomfortable. Seek out those that believe differently than you. Each of us has immense power in our story. Our pains, our triumphs, and our history is unique and worthy of being shared. Collective change starts with the individual. It starts with you and me.

So when you see me, ask for my story. And I’ll ask for yours.

—by MPL