KITGUM, UGANDA – “We have forgiven Kony,” said Janet, her big dimples pressed into her bright cheeks, eyes alive, hands folded lightly on her lap. “And today, I am a new person.”

Janet is 24 years old. Abducted by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army in Northern Uganda when she was just 14, along with 12 other girls, she spent four years in the bush, forced to be a child soldier in a war she never wanted to fight. Janet says they called her a rebel and that she was beaten constantly. Janet was sexually abused, raped, and gave birth to four babies while in captivity; three of them died. After Janet escaped from the LRA, she was suicidal, her mind and heart felt blank, and when she looked into her future, she says there was only black.

When an FH counselor began meeting with Janet in an internally displaced person’s camp, Janet’s suicidal tendencies were alarming. She was referred to FH’s New Life Center, an intensive 16-week live-in treatment program for traumatized women and girls, many of them formerly abducted girl child soldiers. While at the New Life Center the women and girls receive Christian trauma counseling, literacy classes and training in a variety of income generating skills to prepare them to return to their communities.

In the final week of Janet’s time at the NLC she proudly proclaimed, “the bad things are gone, I want to help others learn how to love and forgive like I have.” Her young daughter Alimo, the only child who survived, giggled constantly at her side. Janet continued to explain her vision to see girls like herself experience hope for the first time; to come from that blank empty space and into life. She took Alimo and placed her on her lap. “To love is to forgive, and to forgive is to forgive your enemy.”

(Note – names have been changed to protect identities.)