Much has happened since my previous blog post. On a logistical end, my IT issues have been resolved and I have begun working more directly with Heartland clients. I find it especially difficult to articulate the vast array of feelings and thoughts that cross my mind when doing my work. There is awe at the strength of our clients for enduring countless struggles, all for the hope of a better life. Along with it, a deep sense of appreciation for the comparatively easy, coddled life I have. On a practical level, there are feelings of incompetence whenever I make a phone call and stumble across language barriers. Many of these individuals know 2 or more languages even before English, a truly outstanding feat as anyone who’s tried to learn a language knows. To complicate matters further, my work has not been near the caliber of a clinician, it has been largely logistical: making calls to schedule appointments and check in with clients. Yet my feelings emerge all the same. Perhaps it is the knowledge that I am contributing to an effort greater than myself or the hope my efforts aren’t going unnoticed among the staff and clients. Likely it’s both.

For the sake of confidentiality, I cannot share specific stories, so in place of such, I simply ask the reader to imagine the life of a refugee. Refugees across the globe come from any number of backgrounds with one thing in common, trauma. Some are fleeing from wars that destroyed their homes, others leave their towns under the cover of night with nothing more than the clothes on their backs to escape persecution for their religion, political, or sexual/gender identities. A family’s difficulty does not end after their individual exodus either; most spend years, and more often than not the remainder of their lives, in United Nations refugee camps which I discussed in my last post. Yet these are still preferable to the life they left.

I don’t write about such trauma to glorify their resilience, as it is apparent enough. Nor do I intend to use the struggles of others to build some sort of empathetic veil of white savior-ism over myself. If anything I write to show how we as a nation, and as humans have failed one another. What an exercise in forgiveness it must be to seek refuge in the same nation that began the political unrest that eventually led to the destruction of your home. What continued bravery to willingly come to a nation whose previous administrations built a cult of hatred for the refugees it helped create through the insatiable hunger of its bloated military-industrial complex or the boundless greed of its corporations. Thinking in the wake of such unconscionable despair leaves quite the hefty psychological toll. After all, what am I, a single undergrad, to do?

I have no answer to the problems at large. But I do know that I can help those who are here now. I can assist Heartland’s clients as they build new lives, even with duties as small as facilitating communication between clinicians or counselors. I hope I can help a few souls find peace in a disorderly, chaotic world. If I can do that, I will find some solace.