Girl From Mogadishu (2019) Movie
Holding Safety
In the Evening Light
This evening I found myself sitting quietly in the sunroom, watching a film about a young woman from Mogadishu.
As the story unfolded, something shifted inside me.
I noticed my heart trembling. Tears came...
I was looking at the faces of the young girls, mothers, and grandmothers and feeling something difficult to put into words.
Not sympathy.
Not pity.
Something older.
Something deeper.
An ache that seemed to stretch beyond one woman, one family, one country.
A generational sorrow.
An ancestral sorrow.
The kind of sorrow carried by women across time.
I sat watching in silence, feeling the weight of something much larger than the story on the screen.
Recognition
What affected me most was not that her life was the same as mine.
It wasn't.
Our countries are different.
Our cultures are different.
Our stories are different.
And yet, as I listened to her speak, parts of her story felt painfully familiar.
The fear.
The vulnerability.
The helplessness.
The feeling that life can be shaped by forces beyond your control.
The feeling that decisions about your future can be made without your full participation.
At fourteen, I experienced an arranged marriage.
My journey is not hers.
Her journey is not mine.
Yet as I watched her, I realised I was not watching as a distant observer.
I was watching as someone who recognised something of that landscape.
Something in me understood.
Not intellectually.
Viscerally.
Through lived experience.
Through memory.
Through the traces left behind by my own journey.
I Am Safe
I was quietly repeating:
"I am safe."
"I am safe."
"I am safe."
part of me was being pulled so deeply into the story that my nervous system needed reminding.
I am here.
I am home.
I am safe.
Yet even as I repeated those words, another thought appeared.
How do we fully receive our own safety while knowing that so many others are not safe?
How do we sit in the warmth of our homes and hold awareness of women and girls whose lives are shaped by conflict, violence, poverty, fear, displacement or oppression?
How do we remain open-hearted without becoming overwhelmed?
For a while, I simply sat with those questions.
What Safety Is For
Gradually, something became clearer.
My safety is not something to feel guilty about.
It is something to embrace.
Something to inhabit fully.
Because if I cannot allow myself to feel safe, how can I help anyone else feel safe?
If I cannot stand on solid ground, how can I offer steady ground to another person?
The more I reflected, the more I realised that safety and compassion are not opposites.
They belong together.
Compassion without safety can overwhelm us.
Safety without compassion can close us off from one another.
Holding both at the same time requires a certain spaciousness.
A willingness to remain open to suffering without drowning in it.
A willingness to acknowledge pain without losing sight of what is good, loving and life-giving.
A Prayer
As I sat there, my prayer began to emerge.
Not a formal prayer.
Just a quiet conversation.
God, help me to help others.
Help me use what I have lived through.
Help me use what I have learned.
Help me meet people with understanding.
Help me sit beside them when they are afraid.
What surprised me was the realisation that I wasn't praying as an outsider looking in.
I wasn't simply feeling sorry for someone else's suffering.
I was praying from a place of recognition.
A place that knows something about fear.
Something about powerlessness.
Something about grief.
Something about finding your way through experiences you never chose.
And in that moment, I found myself feeling grateful for the work I do.
Grateful that what I have lived through can become something more than a private story.
Perhaps some of the meaning in our suffering emerges when it allows us to understand another person's pain.
Not fix it.
Not remove it.
But understand it.
To sit beside it.
To hold space for it.
To let another human being feel less alone.
The Frozen, the Flame and the Three Flowers
As I was watching the film, I found myself thinking about the book I am writing.
The Frozen, the Flame and the Three Flowers.
Something about this evening felt connected to all three.
The frozen places created through fear, silence, survival and loss.
The parts of ourselves that become hidden or protected.
The flame that continues despite everything.
The life force that refuses to disappear.
The courage I saw in the young woman on the screen.
The courage I have seen in so many women.
The courage it takes simply to keep going.
And then, perhaps, the flowers.
The parts that continue to grow.
The parts that continue to love.
The parts that continue reaching towards life.
Even after pain.
Even after loss.
Even after generations of sorrow.
A flower does not erase winter.
It simply reminds us that winter was not the end.
A Different Kind of Understanding
Tonight I found myself thinking that there is a difference between empathy and understanding.
Empathy allows us to feel for another person.
Understanding comes when we have walked through our own valleys and recognise something of their terrain.
Not the exact same path.
Not the exact same pain.
But enough to know what it means to be afraid.
Enough to know what it means to feel trapped.
Enough to know what it means to search for strength when none seems available.
Not because I have all the answers.
Not because I have somehow escaped suffering.
But because I know something about it.
And because I know something about what can happen on the other side.
The resilience that emerges.
The wisdom that grows quietly.
The strength we never knew we possessed.
The Vastness Required
What stayed with me most was the challenge of holding opposites.
Feeling safe while thinking about those who are unsafe.
Feeling gratitude and grief at the same time.
Feeling hope and heartbreak in the same moment.
Perhaps this requires a kind of inner vastness.
A spaciousness large enough to hold both.
Large enough to remain open.
Large enough not to turn away.
I don't have any conclusions tonight.
Only a deep sense that stories matter.
That courage matters.
That compassion matters.
And perhaps that our own healing is not separate from our ability to help others heal.
The more fully we embrace our own safety, the more capacity we may have to sit with another person's fear.
The more honestly we face our own wounds, the more gently we can meet the wounds of others.
Tonight, that feels enough.
🌿
Dr Maliheh Taheri
M.A.L.I. Neuro-Somatic Practice
