It was 1998, between the Gulf War and the Iraq War and during the time of US imposed sanctions on Iraq that I followed my intuition and traveled to Baghdad and Basrah. At the time it was a 12-year prison sentence and a million dollar fine for a US citizen to make that journey.  

Even though I had traveled to the former Soviet Union-specifically Russia and Ukraine– during the 80’s and was engaged in citizen diplomacy on the human level, I would never have called myself a political activist.  Not then and not now. In fact, I took pains to not engage in such conversations during my nine trips to the Soviet Union, even when asked.  We were there to engage in people-to-people diplomacy—nothing more and nothing less.

My motivation for going to Iraq was not really clear to me.  

A dear friend, hospice consultant Geri Haynes, was actively engaged in reconciliation work between the Palestinians and the Israelis. However, most recently she had made several trips to Iraq with Doctors without Borders and I went to hear her speak one evening at a church in Seattle.  She described the suffering of the people, the broken systems, the flaws in the Food for Oil Program and I found myself thinking, “My taxes are supporting that system. I have a right to go.”

And my intuition added, “You need to go.”  

As in most of my life, when I hear that voice, I just say, “yes,” without much forethought.

A Catholic organization called Voices in the Wilderness was sponsoring a self-funded trip and five people from Seattle had signed up including a newly minted doctor and a well-known political activist.

I signed up, too.  

As a professional storyteller, I had one goal.  To spend time with people, to listen to their stories and to bring them back to the US and tell them.  Just like I’d done during my nine citizen diplomacy and storytelling trips to the former Soviet Union. 

I knew it would be a challenge.  It was the Middle East after all and there was Saddam Hussein, Iran, many competing narratives and points of view. I knew adding my voice to the mix (whatever that turned out to be) wouldn’t be easy.  Especially since I was not political and did not want to engage in polarizing conversations. I wanted to bring understanding and compassion to the conversation.  I knew at the outset that I would be experiencing Iraq through a different set of filters from those with whom I would be traveling.

 Geri counseled me before I left.  She said, ‘Michale, this journey is going to be very different from what you experienced in the Soviet Union.  There you were able to make a difference which you could actually see and measure.  You have the memories, the stories and the well-documented press to prove it.  But this will not be the case in Iraq.  You will see things that will cause your heart to hurt. You will see suffering that you have no control over.  You will see doctors without medicines, people in pain, children without food and you will be unable to help in a tangible way.  Knowing you, that will be extraordinarily difficult. But here is what you can do.  You can bear witness.  You can listen.  You can, by your very presence, bring a measure of peace to someone, even for just a few moments. You can show compassion and love.  And you have to be able to tell yourself, that is enough.  It has to be enough or you shouldn’t go. It will be too traumatizing.”

So, armed with Geri’s wise counsel, I left on my journey. 

We landed in Amman, Jordan, a land of rich history and culture.  I was in awe. We spent a day exploring archeological sites, eating laffa bread freshly baked in tafun ovens, and walked across terrain that had existed for thousands of years.  

On day two, it was time to cross the desert to Bagdad, Iraq.  Over land it would take 14 hours. The van that carried us was outfitted with velvet curtains that attempted to protect us from the 120-degree heat rising up unmercifully from the desert.  Inside the van it was dark and hot and felt ominous. 

 I realized, listening to the conversation my fellow sojourners were engaged in, that I was woefully uninformed about middle eastern policy, tribal wars, the US history of involvement, and the culture. I could not engage in the discussions, could not offer any insights or perspectives, could hardly even track the conversations. I found myself questioning what in the world I was doing, coming to a country that I knew so little about, and that was in the throws of tribal and international conflicts that had gone on for centuries. I felt stupid, uniformed and incredibly naïve. 

We could smell Bagdad before we entered the city. Raw sewage. Broken pipes.  It was woefully unkept. The infrastructure had been bombed in the Gulf War and evidence of decay was all around us.  Taxis were being held together with duct tape: fractured exhaust pipes, shattered windows, door handles that no longer worked.  

Each of us carried a piece of paper written in Arabic that explained why we were there.  To bear witness to the suffering of the people during this time of US led sanctions.  The others proudly showed their papers to people.  I tended not to.  I realized early on that was not why I was there.  I was not there to take a political stand.  I was there just to be.  To show love.  To show kindness.  To listen to people’s stories.  And to bring them back with me to the US. That was it.   Nothing more. 

What I knew for sure was this.  I knew how to listen.  I knew how to draw out someone’s story. I knew how to retell someone else’s story in a way that would elicit understanding and empathy. In a way that would stick. That would be my form of activism. 

We had an itinerary that including visiting schools and hospitals. I had brought school supplies with me.  Hundreds of crayons, reams of paper, boxes of pencils, great quantities of art supplies.  Four giant duffle bags filled with goods including toys and clothes for infants, toddlers, and school age children. I brought as much extra luggage as the airlines would allow me to carry.   

Prior to leaving, I had put out a call for funds to purchase all these items and my Seattle network did not disappoint.  One day a friend stopped by with her 11-year-old son to make a donation and he asked to see the photos I had received from my friend Gerri, taken on her recent trip to Iraq. The images were of children in the hospital—malformed, malnourished and suffering.  They were incredibly difficult to look at. His mother said to show him.  I did.

He fingered the photos, one by one.  Then he said, “Michale, did all the children in these photos die?” 

“Yes, Jaime.  My understanding is that they did.”  

He was very quiet.  

And then he said, “You’re going to go shopping today for toys for the children, right?”
“I am.”

“Can I go with you? I’d like to help pick them out. I want to make sure that if the children are not going to make it, their last few hours are happy ones.”

He came shopping with me.  Our first stop was Fred Meyer.  He went up and down the aisles filling cart after cart with toys.  Each one hand selected by him.  He would say, “Oh this is a good one!  It will bring smiles!  No, not that one—it won’t bring enough happiness but this one will.” 

He was so delighted to be helping, to be creating positive memories for children he did not know but was already carrying in his heart.  He was actively contributing to a story that was yet to be told. Just watching him tenderly and lovingly make each selection, filled me with such hope for what the world could be.  And he showed me that in the midst of great pain, there is also the opportunity to create great joy. 

Once we arrived in Baghdad, settled into our hotel, met with members of several NGO’s doing incredible work, we then planned our itinerary.  

Our first stop was an elementary school.  I was not prepared for what I witnessed.  Many of the children had hair that was red at the roots for lack of proper nutrition.  The children were sitting four to a desk where there should have only been two.  They could not get school supplies so children were practicing their writing in chapbooks used by children in previous years, trying to write in margins, wherever there was a tiny space in which to practice their letters.  I heard anti-American slogans being chanted in the schoolyard.  The teachers, kind and gracious, talked about the challenges they faced trying to educate the children. I handed out one of my duffle bags full of supplies. We asked questions, we listened. And then we left.  I got back into the van and broke down.  

I had spent over 15 years as a professional storyteller traveling to hundreds of schools across the US and then in the Soviet Union.  I had never witnessed this level of need. This level of injustice. This level of inhumanity.   Geri was so, so right.  I did feel small and helpless.  

Each day we went to a different school and then to hospitals.  That too, was an eye opener.  I saw whole wards of children who would be dead by month’s end, piled up sewage in hospital bathrooms that had only one working toilet for an entire wing, mattresses without sheets, moms trying to care for their little ones because there was a shortage of nurses. I saw hospital pharmacies with empty shelves, doctors making their rounds with mothers begging for help by tugging on their white coats. They had nothing to offer their sick children.  Most all the doctors I met had been trained in the West, spoke English fluently and patiently answered even our most difficult questions.  Some of them worked two jobs just to afford bottled water for their own families.

“How do you do it?”  I asked one doc. “Day after day.  The parents weeping.  The children dying.”

He smiled and said, “I do not have the necessary medicines, or incubators that work, or more than one pair of surgical gloves to perform all my operations, that is true, but what I do have is love. I dispense that freely to everyone I meet.  There is no limit on love.”

 I stood in reverent silence.  In that moment, he was my teacher.  Regardless of what we lack, what we do have and can always give, is love.

One day we visited the Saddam Hussein Teaching Hospital.  I went from bed to bed in the children’s wing, touching a child here, embracing a mother there.  Listening intently as the doctors shared their histories.  One young boy caught my eye and I spent some time with him with the help of a translator.  He seemed so mature for what I thought was a 10-year-old.  I found out later that he was 16 and his growth had been stunted due to the chemical toxins left behind in his village after the Gulf War.  

I witnessed the birth of a baby…something that had been on my wish list forever having not had children of my own.  I entered the birthing room at the very moment the infant made its way into the world.  The child cried, and there was an audible sigh of relief in the room.  The baby was wrapped in a swaddling cloth and at the direction of the mother, the child was placed into my arms by the female doctor.  A most unexpected gift. A balm for my hurting heart and a sign that indeed, new life is always emerging. And that is worthy of a celebration, always. 

And then I walked into a cavernous treatment room.  Yellow paint peeling on the walls, plastic covered mattresses on bed frames and there, in the midst of it all was a young woman, pregnant, with soulful eyes, alone. No husband, mother or sister to be seen.  I asked the doctor about her.  

He said, “A couple of hours ago I had to tell her that her 7 ½ month old fetus was dead.  She could not carry it to full term for lack of nutrition. She is devastated.” I looked at this young woman, having heard this news with no one to support her.  To comfort her.  Instinctually, I went to her. I sat on the sheetless mattress, cradled her in my arms and held her as she wept.  And wept.  And wept. I wiped the tears from her cheeks, caressed her arms and spoke to her softly as her mother would, had she been there.  After a time, she said something to me in Arabic.  I asked the doctor to translate.  “She is telling you,” he said, “that when you touch her like that, you make the pain go away.”  

It was in that moment I realized why I had made the journey to Iraq.  Why I had defied my own government in making this decision.  Why I had chosen to even separate myself from my own group so that I might seek out my own path, my own purpose for this journey.  I did it for this one single moment..  Because I knew that in the future when this young woman would speak about the day she was told that she had lost her baby, she would also say that it was a woman, an American woman who held her, caressed her, and made the pain go away.  

Every encounter we have is a story in the making. This day, I was reminded of that truth in a profound, life changing way.

 I was indeed traumatized by what I witnessed in Iraq so much so that I was unknowingly tearing calloused bloodied pieces of skin off the soles of my feet at night and each morning had to have them wrapped and bandaged by our doctor so that they wouldn’t become infected. 

We went into homes, drank tea and listened deeply. A taxi driver insisted I take his prayer beads at the end of my ride because, “You have come all this way to listen to our stories.” I felt sadness, anger, sometimes even hopelessness but in the midst of it all, I made a promise to every person who shared themselves with me.  I promised that when I returned to the US, I would tell their stories.  Not unlike I had done when I traveled to the Soviet Union in the 80’s.  

But when I returned to the US, I discovered no one wanted to hear the stories of the people I’d met or the experiences I had.  The Iraqis’ had become the “other.” Marginalized. Subhuman. Not worthy of compassion. Their stories were dismissed. And I was dismissed for trying to tell them. 

And this was before 9/11 and the subsequent invasion of Iraq.  

And perhaps for the first time, I had stories lodged in my throat that couldn’t get out. Then those stories turned inward, permeating my cells and began to make me ill. Why? Because I had not kept my word to those who entrusted me with their stories. And because I had no listeners, I had no story. Consequently, they had no voice.

Even when I did manage to squeak out a story or two, I didn’t tell them well.  They didn’t open the heart.  They didn’t create empathy and understanding. I knew why.  It was because I was too embroiled in my own rage, my own feelings of injustice, my own unresolved grief about what I had witnessed.  

As a result, I got to experience first hand, the isolation and deep depression that comes when an important story is left untold.  

The depth of that pain, brought to a head in Iraq, became a turning point for me personally. It forced me to seek professional help for my own unresolved trauma from childhood as well as what I witnessed in Iraq. To get help for what I discovered was my undiagnosed ADHD. To learn how to forgive. To have compassion for myself and others. 

And through that process, I came to understand something very important.  In order for me to create “peace in the world, I needed to make peace with my own story. 

This all happened in 1998.  

At that moment I had no idea where it would lead me.

My specialty had been bringing literature to life through storytelling.  To hundreds of thousands of children across the globe. Creating peace through my US/USSR Young Storytellers for Peace Program and US/USSR Teachers for Peace program.  That endeavor morphed into helping children who were critically, chronically and terminally ill use story as a tool for healing through my Storytelling Residency Program that I founded at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

But Iraq changed me. 

Broke me.  Opened me.

And helped me to crystalize how I wanted to contribute next.

And that’s exactly when the corporate world came knocking.

Asking me to help leaders shape and tell their own stories.

The pain of having my Iraqi stories silenced became my fuel, my “why” for creating spaces for telling stories in the work environment. Safe, open, collaborative, honoring, deeply listening spaces where people would know they were being heard.  In many cases, for the very first time. 

Where……..

They would not be silenced. 

They would not be interrupted. 

They would not be judged. 

Where their stories could live safely and never leave the room without permission.

Where they would be supported in speaking about the things that mattered to them.  Where they could offer up their insights, their learnings, their challenges, their “medicine” in service of the Collective. 

And in the process of threading their personal wisdom together into a completed tapestry, each of the tellers would emerge more confident in themselves, their leadership, their gifts, and their ability to communicate in order to build build trust, connect, create alignment and shape the culture. 

Had I not had this experience in Iraq. 

Had I not been traumatized by what I’d witnessed.  

Had I not come back bearing stories that no one wanted to hear. 

Had I not gotten professional help.

Had all that not happened…

I would not have had the courage, the resolve, the commitment to create such healing environments for stories to grow.

Nor would I have known at that time that I would make a thirty-year (and counting) contribution working with adults from all walks of life, from corporate leaders, educators, healthcare workers, entrepreneurs, to everything in-between, helping them to unearth and share their deeply needed wisdom for the purpose of creating a more humane and caring world.