From child soldiers to classrooms: why some children survive trauma, and others grow from it.
I once heard someone say they wished God worked like a pilot. That God's voice would cut through the noise and say, 'Hey, there's a storm coming your way. Yeah, it's going to be rough. But it ends. Sunny skies on the other side. I promise'.
She wasn't talking about the weather.
I've sat with child soldiers in Uganda, street kids in Pakistan and survivors of human trafficking—children who have every reason not to believe in the other side. You wouldn't have blamed them. In fact, you'd expect these children to have been swallowed whole by what happened to them.
But they weren't—something in them held. They still had hope, and they spoke about tomorrow as if it belonged to them, as if there would be 'sunny skies on the other side'.
They didn't go back to being who they'd been before. Innocence, once lost, is gone forever. They became something else: something more, with new strengths, fresh perspectives and a renewed sense of self. They became teachers, carers, peace-builders and advocates. They hadn't just survived what happened to them—they had grown through it.
They'd found something that carried them through the storm and kept carrying them even when it had passed. Something big enough to hold their pain and help them make sense of it.
This book is about that something: about how we find it and how we offer it to children closer to home.
What Held. What Broke. What Grew. is a jargon-free book for teachers, school leaders, counsellors, and anyone who has ever sat with a child and wondered how to help them make sense of what happened.
