Holding Onto Hope: Farzaneh’s Journey to Safety and Belonging

If you want to see this moment through Farzaneh’s eyes, you can watch the short reel we created about her family’s journey.

How do you keep going when your rights vanish overnight? When every day feels like another door closing? For Farzaneh, those weren’t hypothetical questions. They were her reality the moment the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan.

Before everything changed, Farzaneh was a university graduate working in marketing. She believed deeply in education and opportunity, not just for herself, but for every Afghan woman. But as the Taliban seized control, she watched that future collapse in real time.

“Day by day, their freedom is limited. Life is totally difficult for Afghan women in Afghanistan,” she told us. “Families are worried because the girls don’t have any bright future.”

As a woman, she felt her own rights shrinking. As the wife of someone who had worked for an American company, she also knew her family was in danger. They fled to Pakistan and spent more than a year facing instability, extortion, and overwhelming uncertainty. In the midst of it all, they experienced a devastating loss, their first child. Even as they grieved, they kept pushing forward through the long, complicated visa process.

And still, somehow, Farzaneh held on to hope.

In 2023, that hope carried her family to Chicagoland through a Special Immigrant Visa. For the first time in years, they felt safe.

“Now I am a human, and I have rights here, and I have lots of opportunity,” she said. “Now I’m in a secure and peaceful country. My life and my husband’s and my family’s, my kids’ lives, are secure and safe here.”

But arrival was just the beginning. Farzaneh was eight months pregnant in a completely new country, without friends or family. That’s when she met Bern and Barb, World Relief Chicagoland volunteers who quickly became so much more. They helped with childcare while her husband started working, taught her to drive, and encouraged her as she began pursuing her dream of becoming a nurse.

Two weeks after arriving in the U.S., Farzaneh welcomed her youngest daughter. Today, she lovingly calls Bern and Barb “Baba and Mimi.” They aren’t just helpers anymore, they’re adopted grandparents, offering connection, stability, and belonging in a season when her family needed it most.

This is the kind of transformation your support makes possible.

Through your generosity, World Relief walks alongside families like Farzaneh’s long after they land in the U.S., providing housing support, job services, English classes, legal help, and, most importantly, a community where they can belong and rebuild.

Last month United States Citizenship and Immigration Services internally announced a halt to Green Card processing for thousands of refugee families in a similar situation to Farzaneh. These families fled violence and persecution and followed every rule required to enter the US legally as refugees. Withholding Green Cards will make life harder by barring them from access to resources like SNAP food benefits.