Building on Anna's brave move to share her story of self... Here is one from my life 🙂
I became a reporter because I thought stories – and the truth – could right wrongs and change the world. I had seen it happen. I grew up during the Watergate scandal, when Washington Post reporters painstakingly tracked down President Nixon’s election crimes. People were outraged. Nixon resigned.
Twenty years later, I was in a refugee camp outside of Rwanda. I had been covering the government-led genocide for months as an NPR correspondent. Now the tide had turned. The government and Hutu majority were fleeing the country chased by a Tutsi rebel army. I was doing a story in a camp for children who had become separated from their parents in the chaos.
A small girl in a tattered dress, maybe six years old, had followed me during my interviews. As I prepared to leave to file my story, she clasped my right leg with both arms and wouldn’t let go. I asked an aide worker what would happen to her. He said most children would die within a week since there were not enough people nor supplies to care for them. With my deadline approaching, I knelt down and unpeeled her arms from my leg.
I have regretted the choice ever since. That day, I chose my job over a life. I chose what was expected over what might have been. I could have taken her with me and faced whatever that would have meant for my life.
A few years later, I left reporting. I didn’t want the awards. Journalists were supposed to be dispassionate observers. I wanted to be part of the stories, and part of caring for others. If we are not in the stories, then who are we? Can we love with all our hearts and leave?
That day unpeeling clenched, but slight arms from my leg started me on a winding road… a road that has led to Weave. I still believe stories matter, and I still want to change the world. Now I work with weavers everywhere, people so enmeshed in their communities they can’t imagine leaving. And I help get their stories into the world, so more of us can be inspired to not just stand back and observe, but to love and heal, immersed in the messiness that comes with it.