We Are Displaced

So whenever I said, “I’m not going to school today. The kids keep laughing at me; I can’t take it,” she would respond, “This is your life. Not theirs. Ignore them and focus on what you want.”

I told her about my life and how I was teaching some of the younger kids in the building to read and write because I wanted them to have hope.

I don’t think most people understand the tangle of emotions that comes with leaving behind everything you know. They are not only fleeing violence—which is why so many are forced to leave, and is what’s shown on the news—but they are escaping their countries, their beloved homes. That seems to get lost in the conversation about refugees and internally displaced people. So much focus is on where they are now—not on what they have lost as a result

To be displaced, on top of everything else, is to worry about being a burden on others.