Self-Connection for Survival

This week’s blog is by Leora Ward, creator of Healing in Service. Leora has worked for many years in the social justice, women’s empowerment, and humanitarian fields.

How do we really know when we are whole? How do we know when we are healed?

I have been stewing on these questions for a while. And, when I look at them on the page, they seem silly. They seem like the embodiment of my privileged, Western upbringing… only questions that would come from being raised in a society that obsesses about success and encourages women to uphold an unrealistic notion of perfection. And, when I take a gentler and more loving look, I see hope. These are questions borne out of a desire and a longing for true happiness. When read without judgement, they are simply the innocent questions of an aching heart.

My curiosity about my own journey and why I became a humanitarian worker has haunted me for years. I never knew how to respond when asked, “Why did you choose this work?” I sometimes answered out of guilt, sometimes out of ego. Sometimes I would say that my grandparents were Holocaust survivors and it was my duty, or that my sister worked for Continue reading

A Personal Reflection on World Humanitarian Day 2016 and women’s safety

This post is written by Sarah Martin, via The Cassandra Complexity, for World Humanitarian Day. Please also take a moment to sign this petition for better aid worker protection.

smartipants's avatarCassandra Complexity

Sarah Sudan The author in happier times in South Sudan circa 2005/2006

In 2012, I took a Hostile Environment Awareness Training (HEAT) course before I went to Libya with the British government for the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative. I was really nervous as in mid 2011, there had been an attack on the hotel where I had been working in Kabul, Afghanistan days after I left and I realized I had never felt safe in that country and didn’t trust UNDSS to ensure my safety. I was most nervous about how I would react to the “fake kidnapping” part of the training- and as it turns out – I was fine, but one of my colleagues was not. She was a survivor and experienced a flashback during this section of the training. Our mostly male trainers had no psychologist on standby and were not prepared to support her so I was…

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Maternity and mortality

This post was written by an anonymous Missing in the Mission blogger on July 30, 2016. The views expressed are those of the author and not of any aid organizations.
Kunduz intensive care unit

“August 2013: Files lie on a desk at the ICU of Kunduz Trauma Center. Photo: Mikhail Galustov” Source: What Was Lost in the Kunduz Hospital Attack by MSF-USA on Medium.com.

A maternity hospital we are supporting in Northwest Syria was bombed last Friday. I found out in a series of emails from colleagues Saturday morning, with links to gut wrenching news coverage. My Syrian colleagues confirmed the events with cell phone photos and videos sent through WhatsApp and Skype.

Health facilities being targeted in war zones with air strikes isn’t front-page news anymore. While I was supporting the Syrian team in Turkey last month, we had a team meeting on the 28th of June. The security update announced that in the month of June there had been 27 attacks on health centers in Syria so far—one a day. Attacks on health facilities are also not unique to the hell that is the war in Syria right now. Conservative reporting by the WHO found 57 attacks on health care in 17 countries during the 3 months between January 1 and March 31, 2016. Nor are the perpetrators of these health care Continue reading

The Liebster Award

LiebsterAward.pngPeer support is what we’re all about, so how lovely to receive a message from PoojaG — a prolific young blogger who writes Lifesfinewhine — saying that she nominated Missing in the Mission for something called a Liebster Award. Which is a bit like a chain letter circa 2004 but then you give it a chance and realize… it’s kinda fun.

The Liebster is given by one blogger to another. It’s not officially judged or based on any criteria other than wanting to show support, encourage newer blogs, and spice things up with some personal questions. The rules vary but in general getting a Liebster means 3 things: answering questions posed by the person who nominated you, nominating other (preferably less-established) blogs, and writing questions for them to answer.

This week’s post will be a bit different but we hope you enjoy it all the same.

PoojaG asked:

1. Who inspired you to start blogging?

The very first blog I remember reading is Sleepless in Sudan, during my first overseas mission as an aid worker in Darfur. It was truly a radical thing to have a blog, even an anonymous one, in that environment. To bear witness to the things one would see and hear, in a country where this could easily get you expelled (ask Jan Pronk). It was also Continue reading