Please check out this reflection from Maryum Saifee, who wrote this weekend on Medium about her experience as a survivor of FGM and the mental health toll that is often ignored when we talk about childhood trauma. Maryum shares her story and recommits to fighting for a world where all girls are free to be whole.

Since Seven

Seven is the age a part of me died.
Seven is the age the so-called “sinful flesh” was carved out of me.
Seven is the age I understood my body didn't belong to me.
Seven is the age I discovered the family you trust can turn on you.
Seven is the age I began overeating to calm the waves of shame.
Seven is the age I started daydreaming of evaporating into thin air.

Since seven, I’ve struggled with a community that is beautifully courageous on some issues, but cowardly quiet when it comes to girls being led into basement clinics, after hours, to be pinned down and terrorized. When I speak out, I'm often told to lower the volume. As though I'm the problem for fueling anti-Muslim bigotry, not the religious leaders who casually promote the cutting of girls from their pulpits.

Since seven, I’ve grappled with endless gaslighting. The American Association of Pediatrics giving guidance a decade ago that FGM (type 1, the least invasive form, the one I went through) is as “benign” as an ear piercing. Seven years later, Alan Dershowitz borrowed that same word “benign” to defend a physician who cut nine girls in Detroit, a case that would ultimately overturn the federal ban on FGM. I’ve learned that adjudicating types of cutting actually creates a space to intellectualize violence, further consecrating this violence into law and health policy.

Since seven, I’ve had to negotiate boundaries with family. I’ve discovered beautiful things -- that my parents in particular have a love that is immersive, limitless and unconditional. They’ve helped rewire the narratives in my head, giving me the strength to tune out the other voices calling me a shame to the Saifee name. They’ve helped unearth the seeds of self-doubt my aunt planted inside me decades ago. Seeds that have bloomed into the most toxic of flowers, pulling me down into the darkest of tunnels.

Since seven, I’ve been working to bring myself back to life. Some days better than others. Whatever's left, I pour into a frustrating fight for a world where future seven year old girls are free to be whole. Free of the kind of violence intended to crush spirits, destroy childhoods, and mute power. I draw strength from a faith that is most potent without the patriarchal filter: “Be like the flower that remains fragrant, to even the hand that crushes it.”