Wildflower Fields

by Mudita Arora

- More than the Journey

Upon all the facts and devastating stories shared online, has anyone really stopped to think about what it actually means for someone to be displaced from their home? How many of us dig deeper than the numbers or headlines, into the quieter parts that hold the reality of new beginnings, the process of rebuilding, and perseverance.

When you think of wildflowers, you may as well think of refugees, or at least a close metaphorical image of them. Not even in a poetic sense, but in a very literal one if you think about it long enough.

They don’t arrive somewhere and ask whether it makes sense for them to grow there. They just do, even in places that seem unfamiliar. The reality is that life doesn’t pause for conditions to be right, more often, they learn to be right for it.

I was young sitting in my classroom when our teacher said we had a guest speaker. It turned out an older student, who was once a refugee himself, came in and shared his story. At the time, I couldn’t fully register what I was hearing, being quite young, although his words were powerful enough to stay with me till this day. I remember it more as a feeling than clear details, like something important had been said, even if I didn’t fully comprehend it. He spoke about leaving his home country and coming to Finland as a refugee, telling us about his journey and everything that followed after.

A couple of years later, learning he had written his own memoir, Long Way From Home, brought that memory back in a different way. It made me look at his story again with more understanding. He was an unaccompanied minor leaving Afghanistan after losing both his parents, and travelling across multiple countries before eventually reaching Finland.

What stayed with me wasn’t the journey itself, but how long it all actually continued after the “arrival.” It wasn’t a clean ending or a fresh start. It was constant adjustment, learning new systems and ways of living, while still carrying everything from before.

Just as important was the support he had along the way. Without it, both the journey and what followed would have looked very different. That detail stays significant, how even small forms of support can shift what feels possible in moments of uncertainty. Today, he is a student in Finland, a lover of history and politics, a writer and public speaker, and an activist. These roles do not sit outside his journey, they are shaped by it. Not an ending, but a continuation of a story formed through everything he had to move through.

He reminds me of a wildflower, and not just him, but many others who have gone through similar journeys, pushed to leave everything behind and still finding ways to continue. There is a particular kind of persistence in that, trying to rebuild a life somewhere unfamiliar, without guarantees of stability. It raises a simple but necessary question of what it means to begin again, and what responsibility exists on the side of those who can make that process less isolating.

According to the World Health Organization, over a billion people are on the move globally, with more than 117 million forcibly displaced. The numbers are vast, almost abstract, and risk losing meaning when reduced to statistics alone.

The real impact comes when you hear the stories and voices behind them. That is what has stayed with me for years, not the scale of displacement itself, but what it actually takes to keep rebuilding once you have already arrived somewhere new.

His story reminds me of a wildflower, building life and meaning wherever you end up.

“Like wildflowers, you must allow yourself to grow in all the places people thought you never would.” – E.V. Rogina

“Long Way From Home.” https://jawiddanish.world/about.

“Refugee and migrant health.” World Health Organization, 25 March 2026,

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/refugee-and-migrant-health. Accessed 8 June 2026.