Books

Why me? Why is this happening to me?

We ask ourselves these questions over and over when life suddenly falls apart: after an accident, a job loss, a divorce, an illness, or when we’re grieving someone we love. And while we wrestle with our personal crises, we also live, as a society, in the shadow of wars, genocides, and extremist ideologies.

What can sustain us then? How can we look at failure and hardship through a different lens – one that allows us not only to endure, but to grow?

For many years, Hesna Al Ghaoui reported from the world’s war zones. Later, turning toward her own wounds, she began exploring how we can stay upright – and even strengthen our capacity to adapt – in an increasingly complex and morally fractured world.

In this new book, she shares the stories of people who not only survived the unthinkable, but went on to devote their lives to helping others.

Anthony Graves spent nearly twenty years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. Edith Eva Eger endured the horrors of a concentration camp. Réka Lukoviczki lost her leg in an accident. These are just a few of the voices that reveal how they faced the most dramatic moments of their lives – and what came after.

Hesna also speaks with leading experts such as Dr. Gabor Maté, Dr. Peter Levine, and Dr. Jack Saul, Dr. Christophe Morin, Linda Graham, Dr Edith Shiro among others. Together, their insights trace a roadmap from pain to post-traumatic growth. Some of them share concrete practices you can try to help you move from a sense of victimhood toward renewal and growth.

There is no simple recipe for post-traumatic growth. Instead of offering ready-made solutions, this book invites you to explore the possible building blocks of your own coping journey. The elements that matter will be the ones that resonate – the stories, ideas, or exercises that still echo in your mind days later, that help you find a new narrative and begin to rewrite your story.

Over the past twenty years, the choices, reactions, and words of the people Hesna met have reshaped her from the inside out. Through them, she has learned what perseverance looks like in practice, how to befriend fear, how resilience is built, and how forgiveness and empathy can open doors that once seemed sealed shut.
By briefly stepping into so many different lives, she has come to see her own story from completely new angles, discovering possibilities she never knew were there.
This book invites you to walk alongside these stories – and, through them, to discover new ways of understanding and reshaping your own life.