“I was born during the Civil War here in Lebanon. I remember spending most of my early childhood underground in shelters, hiding from the bombs. Being outdoors was always considered a dangerous thing. When I was 21, a friend invited me to hike in the mountains. It is hard to explain but coming from war, the feeling of being in the mountains gives me such a sense of freedom. When the 2006 war started, I was 22. I could not handle the stress so I left Beirut and I went to the only place where I felt safe: the mountains. As the years went by I started to climb more and higher mountains. Physically I am not the strongest or the fastest mountaineer but it has always been my passion that has given me strength. In a few days I’ll be flying to Antarctica to climb Mount Vinson. People have told me that I should get married and have children instead. I had to break a lot of walls to get where I am today. I have climbed 26 mountains and I am the first person in my whole family to get their PHD. I want to show that it is possible, as a Lebanese woman to climb each of the seven summits. Some have called it rebellious, I call it following my heart.”
(Beirut, Lebanon)

“For a long time I thought that I was unhappy because I was living in Lebanon. I have left Beirut many times. I travelled a lot, mostly to South America and I discovered a spiritual side to myself. Every time I came back to Beirut, I thought of it as a place with negative energy. Maybe it has something to do with the war and everything we went through here but last summer that changed. I went to Amsterdam to get my NLP practitioner certification. NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming. learning NLP is like learning the language of your own mind. I learned so much from that experience and also from the Dutch culture. Amsterdam was an eye-opening-experience. It is a city with so many different people with different ideas and ideologies but they all co-exist. It made me realize that it is not Beirut that is the problem, it was me. I was keeping myself from being happy. All I gotta do is just live my life, be myself and the rest of the world will catch up. Eventually.”
(Beirut, Lebanon)

2/2 “I could never admit that I was an addict until that horrible incident. I had returned to Lebanon after graduation and one weekend, I went to the mountains to a rave with my friends. I was supposed to go with my girlfriend but she was so fed up with my addiction that she broke up with me. At the party I saw her kissing another man. I was hallucinating and in my mind she was looking at me while kissing him. After four days of partying and using drugs without any sleep or food I was exhausted. I tried to find my friend who I left my car keys with but I could not find her. When I called she said that she was already back in Beirut. I asked her to come back to bring the keys but she refused. Never before did I experience such a deep sense of loneliness. I started to cry so intensely and everyone who passed by started to cry as well. There I was, an addict, alone without any help from my friends, without my girlfriend. I ordered a cab, who brought me my car keys. I went straight to my mother’s house and I said to her: ‘’I am not leaving the house until we find a rehab.’’ It was the first time I admitted that I was an addict. The next day I quit my job and I went to a rehab in the mountains. I went to rehab for 1 year and 3 months and for the first time I started to mourn my father. I started to talk about my feelings and everything I had been through. Slowly I got my life back on track. I am now an art director and I love my job. I still go to weekly meetings organized by the rehab. I can not describe how thankful I am. I got a second chance to life.”

½ ‘’As a kid I was never allowed to play outside. My parents were always afraid something bad would happen to me. There was not much to do at home but play video games. That is how I developed a gaming addiction. When I turned 12, my dad passed away. Instead of mourning my father, I suddenly felt this immense freedom. For the first time in my life I could just leave the house and come back home when ever I wanted. At the time, I was really into metal and I had long hair and piercings. At school I was bullied a lot. At 17, I graduated high school and I went to Cyprus to study graphic design, a huge passion of mine. One night, I went to see a friend and he offered me to smoke a joint. I thought we were smoking weed but it turned out it was another, much stronger drugs called K2. After one week I was completely addicted. During the next four years all I did was use drugs. At some point I even became a dealer myself. Everyone knew me but nobody really knew me. Everyone wanted something from me but nobody was my friend.“