For a long time, I did not have the language for what had happened to me as a child. Sexual violence in my childhood broke me in ways I could not explain. It exhausted me. It reshaped my body, my mind and my relationship with the world. For years, I lived with a quiet confusion. I knew something was wrong but I did not know how to name it or where to place it.
I was a victim before I ever learned the word survivor. Over time, I began to speak, at first, my story was all I had, I used it to make sense of my pain and to reach others sitting in silence, wondering if they were alone. I shared my experience publicly for more than a decade and it mattered.
My story traveled across rooms, institutions, countries and borders. It contributed to conversations at national and international levels. It raised awareness. It shifted perspectives, it helped survivors recognize themselves in my words and realize they were not alone, not invisible. My story worked. It invoked empathy and sometimes, almost annoyingly, it invoked pity, which was never what I wanted. Still, it opened doors and it created change.
My story is and will always be my power through this journey, I saw firsthand how storytelling can crack open silence and bring light into places that were never meant to be seen but I also learned that advocacy is not static, it evolves and my journey does not end with my story. There came a point when I realized that continually recounting my trauma was not enough, my story gave me power and power once claimed, must disrupt harmful structures and systems. I have already paid the price of survival. I have paid the price of being known first and foremost for what happened to me. While my story has done meaningful work, I no longer want my only contribution to be my pain. I have more than a memory to offer the world.
Now, I am choosing expansion, when I look in the mirror, I see more than the worst thing that happened to me, I am more than a testimony of pain. My survival has grown into creation; I no longer bring only my pain into advocacy spaces. I bring strategy, I bring vision, I bring community. I am committed to building spaces where many voices rise, where survivors are not only heard but supported into futures filled with dignity and agency. My story is no longer just something I carry; it is a solid brick, and something I build with. It has been fortified to question, to expand and to make room for others. Through this space, I am stepping deeper into real work, to amplify voices that deserve to be heard and all forms of sexual violence including conflict-related sexual violence especially in communities like mine, where it remains both prevalent and under-addressed.
I am doing this not as the end of my story but the continuation of my power.
I was a victim.
Then I became a survivor.
Now, I am a thriver.