Moving Beyond the Pain

Anna still remembers the bombs and sirens going off at all hours of the day and night as a brutal genocide swept across her homeland of Bosnia.

When Anna was still just a child, she and her family were whisked away to a refugee camp a thousand miles away. There a stranger secretly violated her and her sister.

But the horror doesn’t end there.

Anna eventually came to America, dreaming of a better life – only to end up in a violent relationship where the man she fell in love with knocked her around like a rag doll.

By the time she got to Metropolitan Ministries, she admits to feeling like “damaged goods.”

A place to breathe

Where do you begin to heal after a lifetime of such unimaginable pain?

For Anna, the burden started to lift the moment she stepped onto our Miracle Place® campus.

“I thought the first thing I needed was to get a job and find a place of my own,” she says. “But what I really needed was to breath, heal and feel safe.”

Mom & kids, healing side by side

While being here has helped Anna to refocus her energies, it’s also given her kids a chance to move beyond their own trauma.

“My son recently made the honor roll at school for the first time in his life,” she says. “And my daughter’s been tested and will soon be in classes for gifted students.

“I’m so proud of them, especially after all they’ve been through,” she says.

“Don’t call us victims…”

While her kids have lofty expectations for the remainder of their school years, Anna has goals of her own, starting with completing her GED and then going to college to study business management.

“I want to be able to give back and work with women who have been through what I’ve been through,” she says, quickly adding:

“Don’t call us victims. We’re survivors!”

Anna knows that God didn’t save her from the genocide, only to lead her here to become the victim of even more violence and abuse. “I had faith that he would take care of me and my children.”

Looking back, she says, “I started this journey alone but I’m not alone anymore. Metropolitan Ministries has become my family.”

Right now, there are hundreds of women like Anna who have survived domestic violence and are looking for a way to put the broken pieces of their lives back together. You can help by providing hot meals, safe shelter and a place where they can heal from a past that almost destroyed them.

Give now, and help fill their lives with hope again.

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