What Healing Taught Me About Who I Am

Written by: Alia Azariah

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month—a time to raise awareness about the impact of abuse and mobilize to protect children. A lot of the conversations this month will focus on warning signs, mandatory reporting, and systems accountability. And while all of that is critical, I want to talk about something we often overlook.

Child abuse and trafficking don’t just hurt your body. They steal your sense of self. They take away your chance to figure out who you are. When people think about child abuse and trafficking, they often focus on physical or visible harm. The bruises. The missing reports. The headlines. But what’s harder to explain is how abuse quietly robs us of something deeper.

As a survivor, I’ve spent years trying to explain that the deepest wounds aren’t always visible. They show up in the way you second-guess your needs. The way you try to survive by becoming what someone else wants you to be.

When you’re a child and your safety is constantly under threat, there’s no space to ask questions like: What do I love? What kind of person do I want to become? You learn to adapt, to anticipate danger, to perform. Not to explore, not to play, not to grow. When you’re surviving, everything is about getting through the next day. You don’t get to explore your favorite color, whether you like to sleep in, or what kind of music makes you feel deeply. You’re shaped by survival. Not curiosity. Not joy.

For a long time, I believed that healing meant becoming “normal”—getting back to whoever I was supposed to be before the trauma. But I’ve learned that healing isn’t about going backward. It’s about getting the space to move forward. To build something new. To ask, sometimes for the first time: Who am I, really?

And for so many of us, that question came far too early. We were groomed by our traffickers not just because we were vulnerable—but because we were already searching. Abuse had already stolen pieces of who we were, and someone showed up offering belonging, identity, and purpose. It’s easy to fall for the promise of being someone when everything else has made you feel like nothing.

When I finally had the privilege to search for the answer to that question, “Who am I?” The answers surprised me. I’m funny. I’m loyal in a fierce way. I cry at sweet videos online more than I’d like to admit. I’m deeply protective of the people I love and always ready to make space for more. I love bold haircuts, oversized jackets, and 90s car karaoke with my kids. I care deeply about justice, and just as deeply about loud 90s sing-a-longs in the car with my kids.

None of that got to grow in the chaos I lived in. It took time. It took safety. And it took people who believed I was more than what happened to me. That’s what real prevention work is about—not just stopping harm, but creating space for children to become fully themselves.

If we want to prevent child abuse and trafficking, we can’t only focus on what we’re protecting kids from. We also have to focus on what we’re protecting them for. Their dreams. Their quirks. Their voices. Their ability to grow into people who know themselves and love what they find.

But we can’t keep expecting kids to heal in systems that never gave them space to become in the first place. Prevention means we need to build real, practical support for identity, belonging, and safety. That looks like:

1. Access to safe, consistent adults—mentors, teachers, community leaders—who reflect back worth, not control.

2. Space for identity exploration—not just therapy, but access to sports, music, art, and creative outlets that let young people figure out who they are outside of survival.

3. Support after the crisis—healing doesn’t stop when the court case ends or the shelter stay is over. Long-term housing, education, mental health care, and job pathways matter.

4. Survivor-led programming—not just stories, but decision-making. We know what worked, what didn’t, and what we wish someone had given us.

Child abuse prevention isn’t just about stopping harm. It’s about creating the kind of world where kids don’t have to recover from their childhoods in the first place.

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Alia Azariah is a passionate advocate and survivor dedicated to ending human trafficking and empowering those affected by this grave violation of human rights. Her focus lies in creating safe and sustainable communities through education, advocacy, service provision, and social justice. With a combination of professional knowledge, personal experience, and compassion, she works diligently at both local and national levels to create lasting change in the lives of trafficking survivors through specialized training and safe housing initiatives.