This is my why
Today, as I guided a group through a Loving Kindness Meditation which consists of extending benevolent wishes to others, such as “May all beings be at peace. May all beings be safe. May all beings live with ease”.
One participant shared that she struggled with this practice.
She said with doubt: “But that’s not the world we are living in.”
I acknowledged her truth and the reality of our days. I am aware of the world we inhabit, fractured by conflict and pain. Yet this practice is not about denying reality—it is about opening to another one. It is about holding a vision: a world where people feel safe, at peace, and at ease within themselves.
I, then, shared my own story.
As a refugee, forced to flee from my homeland, I faced the darkness of at a very young age.
I felt the sting of injustice.
I carried anger, especially at those who had caused the destruction not only in my life, but in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
As an adult woman, I remember watching TV and seeing people in Baku, Azerbaijan, smiling and having fun at an outdoor concert in the summer time. I felt the weight of pain. How could they live so joyfully while we suffered so deeply? They betrayed us.
It took decades and a lot of personal development work to recognize that my anger was keeping me from happiness.
To allow myself joy meant I had to heal and to forgive.
And that felt unbearable, because war leaves a child with immense scars:
a loss of safety,
a loss of belonging,
a loss of trust in humanity.
Yet deep within, my Soul whispered: true liberation cannot come without letting go.
Forgiveness did not mean excusing what happened.
It meant loosening the chains that trapped me in my past.
Still, fear resisted: “If I forgive, am I letting them off the hook? What about justice? What if it happens again?”
Those voices were strong,
but the call of my Soul was stronger.
My journey became not only about healing my own wounds,
but also the wounds of my ancestors,
those marked by genocide and exile in another century.
And I came to see:
when we commit to the deep work of healing,
peace begins to ripen.
First it takes seed within us,
then it ripples out into our families,
then into ancestral lineages,
and simultaneously into the generations to come.
If millions of us, were to take this inner journey,
peace would no longer be a distant hope.
It would become the ground we stand upon.
War would fade into antiquity,
as an outdated model of dealing with conflict.
This is my why.
The work I do is rooted in helping others discover their own inner peace, so we can all live in peace.
This is not just my personal journey. It is the seed from which this company was born, the vision that peace is possible when we begin within.