I'm meeting a woman at a Heartwings nail salon. She's with us for the first time. The Romanian woman is 22 years old and the mother of a five-year-old child. She tells me how she's doing and says, “Prostitution sucks a lot.” I'm looking at her eyes. How many faces of young women who are sexually used by men day in and day out have I already seen in this week alone? I also see this mixture of despair and defiance in the Romanian woman's eyes. I feel hopelessness sweeping over me. How does she get out of there? Can their body and soul ever be healed again? I know how painful and arduous it is to leave the milieu.
I'm focusing on her nails. But then make me look up again and look at her face. Now I see her, I see a woman in her uniqueness — Mia! I can see how beautiful Mia is now. I feel that there is so much future there. There is no room for hopelessness. “You're meant for something else, Mia,” I say to her. Mia whispers, “Thank you.”
There is a lot of hopelessness in the milieu. Sometimes this hopelessness also wants to overwhelm us. We're fighting it. Because we believe that there is a good future for every woman. And if the woman herself can't see that yet, we want to carry hope in front of her like a candle. Until we see the sparkle in her eyes again.
