20 Years Ago Today, Everything Changed
Today marks 20 years since my first workshop in a shelter for teenage mothers in Sri Lanka (pictured here is 19-year-old me, as I meander down memory lane). What began as a simple beading session grew into something far deeper—a lifelong journey of solidarity and transformation. A path threaded through grief and grit, heartbreak and healing, held fast by sticky notes, hope, and community.
I’m writing to honor that journey, to thank you, and to share a few moments that have shaped who I am and what Emerge has become over these 20 remarkable years.
The First Workshop
On June 6, 2005, I walked into a dimly lit shelter for teenage mothers in Sri Lanka. My body still remembers the knot in my stomach when I first met an 11-year-old nursing her 6-month-old son, and the flutter in my heart when I simultaneously saw her incredible strength. She had taken a stand against her father. She had said no in a world where speaking up could cost everything.
Our first beading workshop was full of commotion and anticipation—toddlers shrieking and giggling as they ran through the room, while the girls sat quietly, hesitantly asking permission and stringing beads. In that wild but tender space, something sacred began to unfold. Slowly, each girl started to reconnect with her own sense of beauty and choice.
I didn’t know it then but I was stepping into a story that would stretch across decades, cross borders, and change my life forever.
Medani* and The Language of Beads
Many of you have heard about Medani, the young woman who arrived at this shelter eight months pregnant and wouldn't speak. But something shifted when she began stringing beads she had chosen herself. Amidst the rhythm of creating, she spoke her first words.
At the time, I didn't yet know of Dr. Bruce Perry's research on how patterned, rhythmic activity in safe environments helps calm the nervous system and promote healing. But I saw it in action. Whenever Medani shut down, the matron or psychologist would call me. I'd bring over boxes of beads, and within 30 minutes, she'd be laughing, smiling, and speaking to the girls around her.
The beads cracked open her heart and allowed light and love to flood in. And if I'm honest, they cracked open my heart, too.
This young woman helped me understand the deeper work we were doing. She taught me to stay present, to listen to more than just words—to listen to the body, to silence, to the spaces in between.
Valentine’s Day, 2007
Two years into this journey, I took a semester off from college to deepen what would become Emerge. I spent my first Valentine's Day with the girls—and encountered a moment that changed everything.
I’ll be honest: Until then, Valentine’s Day had felt like a manufactured holiday to me. Overpriced flowers. Candy hearts. Commercialized affection. But that year, it began to mean something entirely different. A day not about romantic love, but about presence. Witnessing. Choosing to show up for one another.
I brought chocolates to share, and the girls made cards for their loved ones. But amidst the joy and laughter, Medani was noticeably missing.
I found her in her room, staring at her bed, smoothing her sheets over and over again. Her silence was louder than words. She had just learned she and her son would never be allowed to return home. The abuse she had endured had "disgraced" her family.
She wouldn’t cry. Wouldn’t speak. Wouldn’t let me hug her. But, she reached out and clenched my hand. And, wouldn't let go.
I don’t know how long we sat there, if it was minutes or hours. But I remember the pain and the thick silence. And I remember the moment she reached beneath her pillow, and pulled out a Valentine. She wrapped it in half a sheet of crumpled purple tissue paper from her shelf and gave it to me.
In that moment, without verbal language, I knew there was no turning back.
Emerge was no longer a project. It was a promise. A bond. A family.
That day and that moment changed everything. Shortly after, I wrote to some of you to let you know I had decided it was time to formally start an organization. This work, this community, wasn't going anywhere. We would hold fast, we would dig in, and we would love deeply.
A Vow To Her
When Medani turned 18, the shelter had no plan for her next steps. Instead, without warning, a prison vehicle came and separated her from her son. She was sent to a distant factory, hours away from the community we’d worked so hard to build.
Some of you may remember the letter I sent then. I wrote:
“Despite being an adult, she was not autonomous. We couldn’t be there physically, but we stayed connected. I promised myself I wouldn’t let more girls slip through the cracks. We must, we must, develop a way to support girls in their transition into the world.”
A few months later, I returned to Sri Lanka and mapped out the 14-hour round-trip bus journey to see her. In my bag was a necklace with a small red heart pendant to remind her of the day we became family: Valentine’s Day, 2007.
But on the very day I was set to travel (Valentine’s Day, 2009), I got the call: she had run away, chasing freedom.
I never got to give her the necklace. I never saw her again.
But two years to the day after she had chosen me as family, she chose herself. She chose to reclaim her own path.
That night, sitting by the waves, I made a quiet vow—to her, and to every girl like her: We would build a space where girls aging out of shelters wouldn't be lost to the system. Where they didn't have to run to be free. A space rooted in dignity, autonomy, and healing. One that would honor their power and walk beside them as they claim it. A place where they could feel supported and sovereign at the same time.
That vow became the seed of the Emerge Center for Reintegration—Sri Lanka’s first program for teen survivors of sexual abuse transitioning from shelter into the community.
A Dream Realized
In 2016, that dream came to life. The Emerge Center opened as a vibrant, living-learning community—a bridge between institutional care and independent adulthood. It was a place where girls could learn to navigate daily life, take the bus, buy groceries, pursue education, and step into their futures with confidence.
It thrived. Until COVID hit. For safety reasons, we had to pause.
But in 2024, we proudly reopened the Center post-COVID, rebuilt from the ground up based on participant feedback, hard-won lessons, and a deeper understanding of what it means to truly walk with someone on a healing journey.
In just 3.5 months, every participant in our first post-COVID cohort transitioned into either continuing education or employment. All experienced post-traumatic growth. Three-quarters experienced a reduction in trauma symptoms.
These outcomes weren’t magic. They were the result of years of steady care, deep listening, and fierce commitment. They were the result of you—every staff member, supporter, volunteer, and champion who has poured heart and energy into this work.
The Ripple Effect
In that first cohort of our relaunch last year, we had a participant—I’ll call her Dilini*—who didn’t know her birthday or have a birth certificate. In Sri Lanka, these documents are required for a national ID, legal employment, even a bank account.
Our team traveled the country tracing Dilini's history—the children's homes she grew up in, the family that adopted her temporarily, the probation officers that had worked with her. They held her hand as they visited her past and she was flooded with memories of trauma she had repressed for years. In the end, while we continued to search, Dilini chose her own birthday.
The day she picked?
Valentine’s Day.
She had no idea that, years earlier, on that same day, I had realized this work had chosen me. That Emerge had become more than a project... A path. A piece of my heart I could never walk away from.
The irony isn’t lost on me. I once dismissed Valentine’s Day as a kind of performance—roses wrapped in plastic, card aisles lined with clichés, love measured in price tags. But over the years, the girls of Emerge have rewritten its meaning.
Now, it marks something deeper. A day when love is reclaimed, not received. When girls step into their own power, write their own stories, and choose tenderness in a world that hasn’t always been kind. It’s no longer about grand romantic gestures—it’s about resilience, presence, and the quiet courage to begin again.
On Valentine’s Day 2025, Dilini came back to visit the Emerge Center after graduating. She brought a chocolate cake she had bought herself from her first job, greeted our team and the new cohort with warmth and laughter, and gave our Reintegration Officer a great, big hug.
And today, exactly 20 years from our very first beading workshop, another alumna is choosing love in her own way: by getting married. She’s stepping into a life she has chosen, with joy, clarity, and deep courage. Her journey hasn’t been easy, but today, she begins a new chapter on her own terms.
“I am soooo happy,” she wrote to me last night, as she prepared for her wedding and snapped a photo with her Emerge bag—the one that reads, “Stronger than the storm.”
These are the ripples. Quiet. Fierce. Life-affirming. A testament to what grows when we dare to love differently.
This is Love
Across the years, these moments have reminded me that love is not soft. Love is fierce.
Love holds your hand when everything else falls away.
It shows up with cake on your chosen birthday.
It builds spaces out of silence, new systems out of sorrow, and futures from the fragments of what's been broken.
It starts small but ripples outward.
Our journey to get to today has not been smooth. It has been filled with heartbreak and loss, anger and frustration, and also with profound wonder and awe. You all have showed up during my heartbreak and celebrated in my wonder, carried thousands of pounds of donated beads to the post office for girls a world away, and contributed your time, heart, energy, and money to build something better for the girls of Emerge.
You helped build something that lasts.
As I reflect on these two decades, I feel lucky to have experienced the full amplitude of my emotions, and even luckier to have done so in community. We've stood beside each other in the dark moments, the tender moments, the life-giving moments, and the celebrations. Together, we've chosen courage over comfort, tenderness over distance, and love—again and again—even when it was hard.
And because of that, we’ve not just grown. We’ve transformed. Not in spite of the pain, but because of the love that held us through it.
To all of you who have walked with us, thank you. Thank you for believing, for bearing witness, and for choosing to keep showing up.
This is love.
With all my heart,
Alia
*As always, I have used pseudonyms to protect participant confidentiality
