New Beginnings as Children Author

Do you feel you have more to give? Feel like what you’re doing is meaningful, but you’d like to try something new or approach from a different angle?

Well, you’re not alone. As a humanitarian aid worker, I deployed to crises for several months supporting children and families affected by Conflict, Typhoons, Earthquakes and Tsunamis.

In my younger years when I heard traumatic stories in the field, I held my emotions tight and lock them in the softest parts of my heart.

I listened intently and developed if not only for a few brief moments a connection with a complete stranger. I felt tears were not appropriate nor required to show care and empathy.

But, by the time I was sat on the plane at the end of my deployment, I let tears flow and prepared for the embrace of family on the other side.

This worked for a while… until my deployment to Cox’s Bazar.

The Rohingya Refugee Crisis made the greatest mark on my life. This was the deployment I chose vulnerability. Work pressure, responsibility and long hours alone made me hit my emotional threshold much earlier than normal. I had trouble sleeping, dreamt of spreadsheets but mostly recounted horrific stories survivors had shared with me. Sean (my now husband), would talk to me on the phone telling me stories about someplace else to ease my mind to sleep.

In the camps children shared their deep awareness of the struggles of their parents, and what impacted me most was their incredible resilience and power of their voices.

The connection between the children I met in crises was their knowledge that education was the key to a hopeful future.

This sparked a fire in me to create a picture book for Rohingya children and for the world to see our common need to feel safe, loved and hopeful for a bright future. Published last year!

Since then, my fire has kept burning and during a 14-day quarantine, one week before my COVID friendly wedding, I wrote my first children’s picture book. Ahead of its publication, I’m excited to share this new journey with you.