Echoes of Escape: Healing Refugees, Healing Myself

I came to the United States as a refugee at age eleven, fleeing religious persecution in Iran. Decades later, as a family physician, I found myself caring for newly arrived refugees during the Afghan humanitarian crisis of 2021. Launching and leading a refugee clinic forced a convergence of my personal history and professional identity that I had long avoided. Each patient encounter echoed my own experiences of displacement, fear, and hope, transforming clinical care into an act of witnessing, healing, and shared humanity. Through caring for refugees, I confronted unresolved trauma, discovered unexpected healing, and reaffirmed medicine's moral and spiritual dimensions. As refugee arrivals slowed and policy shifts led me to step away from this work, I carried forward its lessons: that family medicine is uniquely positioned to hold vulnerability and resilience together, and that caring for others whose stories mirror our own can deepen both professional purpose and personal healing.Abstract also available in عربي (Arabic); Deutsch (German); Español (Spanish); Francais (French); हिन्दी (Hindi); Indonesia (Indonesian); (Chinese); (Japanese); Portuguese (Portugese).