I love this photo of me sitting with a woman named Negar. Negar came to the Female Friendly Space with her two adorable, young sons most days. She spent time with me discussing why she and her husband decided to leave Iran, describing the journey that brought them to Ritsona refugee camp, lamenting the challenges she endures every day in camp, and sharing her hopes and dreams for the future. She also trusted us to share her story in our Waiting in Ritsona photo series on the emotional toll of waiting for relocation and family reunification while living in Ritsona. I wanted to share this photo because we’re laughing. She told me that she cries every day, but she can still laugh.

I’m back home in San Francisco writing at 5am because of the inevitable jet lag that comes with international travel and reflecting on the amazingly rewarding experience of working with Lighthouse Relief in Greece for the past 3 months. I already miss my friends in camp and the other volunteers, and the reverse culture shock of being back in the US is throwing me for a bit of a loop. I almost walked out of Whole Foods yesterday without finishing my shopping because of the overwhelming aisles of food, the crowds, and the sheer volume of noise that I could actually understand. I’ll adjust and get back in the swing of my old routine, but my perspective on life has changed.

My first blog post talked about how a boy threatened to throw a rock at me on my first day in camp. Several rocks were hurled at me in the months that followed. It pissed me off every single time. I got right up in those boys’ faces and told them to stop when they were aiming those rocks at little girls. But despite the anger and fear I felt, I would rather be in camp being pelted by rocks then not be in camp at all. Boys who are throwing rocks are just angry and frustrated themselves, and we help them deal with those emotions through distraction and physical exertion such as a football game. Ten minutes after a boy threw a rock at me, we were running around the field laughing and high-fiving when he made a goal.

One of the sweetest moments during my time in Greece was holding a baby named Daniel and feeding him a bottle while I sat and talked with his family of ten aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandma the morning after they arrived on Lesvos in a rubber dinghy after crossing the treacherous Aegean Sea from Turkey. His father told me that their village in Afghanistan was taken over by the Taliban, as were many villages, so they decided to take the risk of migrating to Europe because it was the safer choice compared to staying in Afghanistan. As I hugged and kissed them goodbye my heart broke and I had to hold back tears because I knew the bus that they were getting on was taking them to the notoriously overcrowded Moria camp where they would probably be stuck for years before hopefully getting asylum somewhere in Europe. But I would spend every morning like that if I could in order to have that connection and provide people with a warm welcome in a terrifying time of unknown.

To truly be in life, I’ve learned that I have to take the bad with the good. I had been skimming along the surface, not fully experiencing and engaging in this crazy life. And it is crazy. I’ve seen and heard things that have made me sad and mad and less naïve about the world we live in. I’ve also seen pure, selfless giving. I’ve seen humanity triumph – if only for a moment. I’m so grateful for my ridiculously blessed life. And I want to fully live in it. I want those rocks thrown at me because I know that eventually there will be a goal and high five on the other side. Meaning is found in the symbiotic relationship between the two. We can laugh and cry in the same day.