As a Survivor of Honor Killing Attempts and Forced Marriage to My Rapist, Thanksgiving is an Occasion to Honor the Land that Gave Me Refuge

On December 4, 1993, my family left Illinois and returned to Pakistan after spending a few years in the United States. I was a child then, too young to understand how geography can shape fate. Eleven years later, almost to the day, I would board another plane to the U.S., this time not as a child of immigrants, but as a survivor of violence, clinging to life and fleeing death.

I was a young woman living with purpose. I was in Lahore, pursuing my MA in English Literature while preparing for the Central Superior Services (CSS) exam, a path my family had proudly walked, a gateway to public service and national impact. I was already involved in advocacy for women and children. My life had shape, direction, meaning.

On December 7, 2003 everything changed. I was raped by the man who would later become my husband and the father of my children. That single act of brutality shattered everything I had built and believed in. What followed was a year of escalating horror. Three attempted honor killings, an unrelenting storm of psychological and physical abuse, and the crushing silence of societal complicity. In the end, it was my mother’s desperate plea, her fear that my own family would kill me, that pushed me to leave Pakistan. I was not rescued. I was exchanged. Married off to my rapist to “protect” the family’s name. That truth remained buried until 2019.

So, when I arrived in the United States on December 5, 2004, I did not step onto American soil as a woman with ambition. I arrived broken. Numb. Resigned. The fire in me extinguished. My life had been reduced to survival, my dreams traded in for silence. I didn’t know where I was going. I only knew I was running from a death sentence.

The years that followed were not a new beginning. They were a continuation of the nightmare. My world shrank to the walls of a home I did not choose, ruled by a man who controlled every breath I took. Pregnancy became a weapon, used to prove loyalty. Each childbirth was followed by serious complications. My body was breaking. My mind was unraveling. I was losing myself, piece by piece, in a silence so loud it crushed my spirit. PTSD ruled my days. Depression drowned my nights. I tried to escape, but when you have no wings, no money, and no allies, even freedom feels like a fairytale.

During those years, Thanksgiving was just a day. A long weekend. A reason to chase Black Friday sales and disappear into crowds that didn’t know my name or my story. Gratitude was not a language I knew how to speak yet.

But everything began to shift in 2013, when I took my oath as a U.S. citizen. It’s hard to describe what that moment meant. For others, it’s a formality. A ceremony. A legal status. For me, it was a resurrection. That oath wasn’t just a promise to a flag. It was a promise to myself. A silent vow to reclaim my life. To never again live in the shadows of someone else’s control. To breathe, to speak, to become.

But with that vow came responsibility. A deep, sobering awareness of the truth beneath the soil I was now calling home. This country, this land that gave me safety, was built on stolen lives, stolen children, stolen futures. The bones of Indigenous peoples are buried beneath every foundation we build. My gratitude for this refuge could not come without acknowledging that violence. Citizenship meant honoring that history, not erasing it.

Despite the trauma, despite the betrayals, despite the nights I thought I would not survive, this land gave me the space to start over. To protect my children. To heal my body. To rediscover my voice.

In February of 2015, I came dangerously close to death again. Just two months after giving birth to my third child, I collapsed into hypovolemic shock. My fifth near-death experience. My youngest was still an infant, a couple months old. I remember slipping away, feeling the life drain from my body, and something, some presence, holding me there, as if to say, not yet. Not now. I don’t know what force I was pleading with. I only remember bartering, begging to be returned to my children. And then, I woke up.

Not many people get that many chances at life. That moment was a reckoning. A divine reminder. A spiritual rupture that tore through my soul and made it clear that I could never go back to the woman I had been. Something greater than pain had pulled me back. And I knew then, I was meant to live boldly. Authentically. Unapologetically. Not for validation. Not for survival. But because I had a calling, and I had wasted enough time denying it.

Six months later, I returned to the work I had abandoned in Lahore. I began advocating for refugees in Seattle. That work would grow into my nonprofit, Americans for Refugees and Immigrants. And it was through that work that Thanksgiving finally began to mean something real.

I will never forget the first Thanksgiving I hosted for two Syrian brothers who had fled the Assad regime that same year. Essex Porter from KIRO 7 came to film the gathering. As we sat around my dining table, they shared stories of war, torture, and escape. I saw in their eyes the same fire I had once lost and fought to reignite. And for the first time, Thanksgiving became more than a meal. It became a moment of spiritual reflection.

A moment to honor the land that had given me refuge. A moment to acknowledge the Indigenous lives whose suffering made this refuge possible. A moment to feel gratitude not as performance, but as truth.

Through my nonprofit, I met families from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Bosnia, and beyond. People who had faced unimaginable horrors, yet still chose to rebuild, with grace, with dignity, with love. Their survival deepened my understanding of my own. Their courage sharpened my voice. Their resilience reminded me that healing isn’t just about overcoming, it’s about becoming.

Thanksgiving 2015 became the day my past and present met, the day survival turned into purpose.

Every year since, I’ve chosen to spend it with people who have become more than family. People whose loyalty has been proven in fire. People who have held my children when I couldn’t stand. People who prayed for me when I didn’t believe in prayer. Their love is thicker than blood. Their presence is sacred.

The prayers I receive from the families I’ve served, the quiet protection I’ve felt even in moments of persecution or loss, they humble me. I become teary thinking about it, not out of sorrow, but because I know, with a clarity deeper than language, that I am still here. Still breathing. Still rebuilding. Still speaking. Still free.

I live authentically now, even when it isolates me. Even when it costs me. Some call it courage. I call it clarity. After all I’ve endured, nothing less than truth feels worth living for.

Despite the trauma, despite the betrayals, despite the nights I thought I would not survive, this land gave me the space to start over. To protect my children. To heal my body. To rediscover my voice. And for that, I will never stop honoring the communities I’ve joined, the people who embraced me, and the land beneath my feet, stolen though it is, sacred though it remains. Survival is never an accident. It is a summons.

So now, every Thanksgiving, I recommit, not to tradition, not to appearances, not to empty ritual, but to purpose. A vow to honor the truth beneath this land. A vow to uplift the refugees whose stories mirror my own. A vow to live boldly, even when the world asks me to shrink. A vow to keep the promise I made when I stood at the edge of death, that if I was allowed to return, I would not waste this life.

Thanksgiving, for me, is not just a holiday. It is a sacred pause. It is a day of remembrance. It is my living thanksgiving.

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Anny Reha is an advocate with extensive experience supporting families facing homelessness, displacement, and crisis. In her most recent role as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’s Regional Director for the family shelter system, she oversaw shelter providers in the Boston and Northeast Massachusetts region, that provide housing, safety, and stability for some of the area’s most vulnerable communities, including survivors of domestic violence, migrants, and children. Driven by her own lived experience as a survivor and mother of a survivor, Anny brings deep empathy and resilience to her work. She has built a career across healthcare, community clinics, LGBTQ+ and refugee services, re-entry programs, and emergency response, including serving in COVID-19 isolation facilities. She is also the founder of a nonprofit dedicated to culturally sensitive, trauma-informed care. Anny believes that while trauma is never a choice, healing is, and that every woman deserves the chance to rise, dream, and lead without compromise.