I haven’t written a blog post in over 7 months. This outlet that I’ve found so helpful for processing my experiences and sharing my insights stopped suddenly because I questioned myself, my intentions, my abilities.

Last August I went back to Greece to volunteer in Ritsona refugee camp where I had spent 3 months volunteering the year before in 2017. I wrote many blog posts such as Because There Is Always Hope and Reflections about my daily activities in camp, the people I met, the sorrow, the anger, and the beauty of humanity. It was a powerful and life-changing experience for me, and writing helped me deal with the intensity of what I saw, heard, and felt.

When I arrived back in Greece late last summer to volunteer with the same NGO, a standard on-boarding discussion on the danger of “voluntourism” and the need to protect the refugees in camp made me question if my little blog was just more “poverty porn” like the images you see of starving children with big eyes and dirty faces.

Voluntourism is a term coined to describe the combination of travel and volunteering where a group of idealistic and privileged (not to mention often white) people travel to a country where the community they serve have a vastly different socio-economic status than themselves. These well-placed intensions can actually cause more harm than good when building a house for a day or two takes a job from a local worker or when orphanage managers keep their children in poverty to maintain an influx of donations from visiting volunteers.

I found myself questioning my intentions for being back in Greece. Was I trying to assuage the guilt of my privilege? Did I just like the image I had created of myself as a global humanitarian? Would I leave in a month feeling good about myself but in reality have caused a negative impact on the people I wanted to help? I felt like I had been punched in the stomach — my wind stolen in a moment.

I can be quite sensitive, perhaps overly sensitive in retrospect, but I didn’t feel that I should continue to write about the refugees I met for fear of saying the wrong thing. For fear of unintentionally proliferating a stereotype or misrepresenting their situation. As I’m reflecting back on this, and trying to find my voice again, I know that simply not writing about my experiences while volunteering isn’t the answer.

It’s more complicated than that. The complexities of communicating the refugee situation are many. Even using the word “refugee” can be seen as insensitive because it holds people under that label. They don’t want to be defined by their situation. They want to be seen as a young woman, an artist, a musician, a son, a mother, an entrepreneur. The term “refugee crisis” is also problematic because it connotes something temporary that can be addressed and resolved. Media coverage has waned but that doesn’t mean that the “crisis” is over. 40% more refugees and migrants arrived in Greece in 2018 than in 2017, and most are stuck in camps for years because relocation and family reunification to other European countries moves extremely slowly due to the tightening of European borders and sheer number of people seeking asylum.

But I am as complicit as the media moving on to more fashionable stories if I stop sharing my experiences and opinions for fear of being perceived as insensitive or righteous. I believe that the reason I’ve continued to volunteer with refugees both in Greece and at home in the United States isn’t just to lend my time or even to bring a bit of joy to a child as I chase him around but to also help create awareness for the human side of this “crisis.” To tell my community about the people I met in camp like my sixteen year old buddy from Syria who wants to be a doctor, the women who take off their head scarves and laugh in the female space, the baby from Afghanistan who stole my heart early one morning on the Greek island of Lesvos.

I questioned myself and that’s ok because I have to question myself and others in order to continue growing. I have to seek information and insight from all kinds of different sources to continue learning. And I have to believe that my innate sense of empathy will always guide me to communicate with integrity and authenticity —and hopefully make some small contribution.