Surviving War, Reclaiming Self: A Journey of Forgiveness

Dr. Nyempu Karmue-Hall is a global nurse leader, educator, and health professional with over 26 years of experience across clinical, academic, and community health. She is the founder of Nurses In Charge Inc., a faith-based nonprofit dedicated to empowering and uplifting nurses and midwives worldwide.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This is where we talk about forgive yourself, the resilience in this amazing soul. Here we go. So, ladies and gentlemen, my rasters all around the world. I give to you this conference, this ninth mental health conference, that we bring here month after month. Our next conference is coming up on April 25th. Same time, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. I already have a couple beautiful speakers lined up that I can't wait for you to hear what they have to share, especially when it comes to acceptance. You have to accept who you are. You have to, as I said, love yourself. You have to believe you have to forgive yourself. You have to accept who you are. Be nice, be kind, be beautiful from inside and show that love. Let your spark connect with others and show the world love, especially right now. And when I tell you this, we're talking about wars, and you're about to hear a story. I give to you Dr. Nimpu Kamu Hall, who is a global leader, educator, health professional with over 26 years of experience across clinical, academic, and community health. She is the founder of Nurses in Charge, Inc., a faith-based nonprofit dedicated to empowering and uplifting nurses and midwives worldwide. Ladies and gentlemen, I had the privilege of being part of one of her world global conferences. And she put together and bring together stories and beautiful, wonderful nurses who sacrifice their self and their lives every single day to put their life there to help others. This is the person that you're about to hear from. Everyone, Dr. Nimbu Kamu Hall.

SPEAKER_03 2:29

Hello, everyone. Thank you so much. Um Ra for having me. I'm always honored to be in your circle where you uplift those who come around you, you bring people on so that we are healing as we encounter that space. So this is a little bit about me. We don't have enough time for me to tell you my entire book that is yet to be written. So I my name is Nyepu Kemo Ho. I was born in Liberia, West Africa. I grew up in a beautiful village in the central region of Liberia. And I drew so much strength, courage, wisdom from these two powerful women, of whom one is still alive. She's 96 years old. And um, so my paternal grandmother, stubborn, beautiful, just full of wisdom, she would take me around the village when we had um programs that were honoring the chiefs, andor there were delegates coming to town. She would put on her design um the traditional um musical uh dancing um ornaments. She had made one for me, she had made one for herself, and we go dancing when my dad wasn't around. He did not approve of it. So she waited till when he was not around, she would take me around for us to dance, and um we we got many applause and we got prizes, and so that was one of the very first, I would say the memory that I still hold on to very, very dearly because she's passed on now. Then my maternal grandmother, she's quiet, she's reserved, she is very humble, and she would tell me stories. She's a storyteller, she would tell me stories about you know olden days, how you know um the warriors were fed and they would, you know, skip families and uh harm certain families and all that. So she told me folk tales. So between these two grandmothers, they really gave me a strong foundation. Then came my mother. My mother is a nurse now, she's been a nurse um 45 years. So having this beautiful background, everything came to a traumatic heart. Everything I enjoyed doing my grandmother's, everything I enjoyed. Observing my mother go to work at the hospital dressed up in white, her shoes are polished, her uniforms are as uh ironed with starch. She looks radiant when she goes to work. She's coming back home, and the neighbors are saying hello to her, and she is highly revered. Again, by the age of 12, we have a civil war in Liberia. The brutal civil war that claimed thousands of lives, sent us into um into um refugee camps, into neighboring countries. So you can see I had a beautiful beginning that just went out of the the out of reality in a in in in a split second, you would say. So from the age of 12 into the age of 14, I lived running for my life with my family, of course. And um, by the time I could get to the US, I had spent all of these years working, started working at the age of 14 in a refugee camp to help my mother pay for food, get us shelter, pay for our rents. So leaving Liberia was not something that I ever wanted to do, but it was out of desperado, you can say. So he was never with us throughout the war. It was my mother. So everything we saw during the war, if you've ever seen a movie that just shows you all of the um the actions of, you know, um in one movie I would I'll bring closer to your mind if you ever seen is Black Hug Down. That movie was actually a story told about Liberia, but the name, the the plot and everything was changed just for uh political reasons and also sensitivity to the viewers. So um everything I would tell you during this time just has to do with the exposure to brutality, killing people, um family members, relatives, neighbors, just leaving where they ever lived at, running for their lives, um, rebels, you know, mix um uh miss, I would say misfiling people and saying you're from another tribe. So it was a tribalistic war. So that war now, we've gone through the war, lived in refugee camps, and I could not wait to you to arrive to the U.S. By the time I got to the US with my family, I was 16 years old with a third-grade education. All I wanted to do is to go to school. So I'm taking you from the beautiful beginning I had growing up in Liberia before the age of 12, and everything shattering at the age of 12, between 12 and 16, and now arriving into the land of opportunity, a place where everybody wants to come. The great USA, who wouldn't want to come here after living such a life? So I have put everything on hot, literally put everything into um I would say repressed memory. Because now I am in the United States. It's time to live life, it's time to go back to school, it's time to um have that freedom that you always hear about, the land of the free. So, so those who are listening to this story who are from Liberia, who are from Somalia, who are either from Iran, you listen to all of the war that's going on around the world. There are children like me who their lives were robbed of their teenage years, their adolescent years into their toddlerhood, you name it, then they would they would never get that back. So, and once you lose it, that's it. You always your your brain, your your psyche always hungers for the missing pieces, the years, the gaps that were lapsed, that was stolen from you. Not by choice, but those years were just literally you were robbed of it. And I was my siblings were friends and neighbors who some are gone. So the beautiful years in the US brought me into um a I would say one that is full of joy, that is full of repressed memories again, one that is just um full of the the stereotypes. Counseling is not for our community, and if you go to counseling, you will say things that you'll regret. So we don't go to counseling. We're brave, we're strong, we can survive it. So none of us went to counseling. Almost, if if any African go to counseling, very few. I don't want to speak for everyone. So fast forward, I am now married, I have a daughter, she is in the fifth grade, she's doing her assignment, and she calls me to help her like I did every every evening before that, before that, that that um age, before that year. Then I could not help her with this a specific assignment because I just could not understand why I could not grasp the material. She was doing a science project and she was doing an experiment. She needed her mom to help her. I could not understand the concept. And then I was dumb found out. Like, I've never seen this before. How come I cannot help her? And then, you know, she went to her dad, dad started to help her. Then by evening time, it dawned on me that I never sat in fourth grade, I never sat in fifth grade, never started in sixth grade, never start in seventh grade, I was never in eighth grade. So I had no clue what those materials were. I could not help my daughter to her assignment. But because I had repressed my traumatic exposures from the war and never got counseling, it came. This was I I believe it was um what was thought of earlier as the breaking moment, that time where everything just came to you. So then I remembered and I cried bitterly that I had, you know, those years were stolen from me. Because by the time I got to the US at the age of 16 with a third-grade education, I had to sit in ninth grade. So that was one of my very first times. Looking back, I had to forgive myself because I felt guilty that I could not help a child do her homework. So I had to forgive myself. But before forgiving myself, I had to forgive those who did this to me, those who robbed me of my past. But that did not happen in that moment. The forgiveness did not happen then. The forgiveness actually just started happening a few years ago. But I had to set them free and then start to understand that it was not my fault that these things happened. It was not my fault that I lost those years, it was not my fault that could not help my daughter do her assignment. So this has really led me over the years in the past five years to start thinking what's my purpose in life because it is not only to be a nurse, it is not only to work at a hospital, take care of patients, but what is it in life that I have found that I can also help others? And this is how nurses in charge was born. As a faith-based, as a faith-based non-profit organization that allows nurses to truly find their divine calling, get the help they need if they need it, right? And be totally in have that authority in their in their in their professional lives. Because we cannot help our patients, we cannot help society if we cannot help ourselves. So nurses in charge does a lot around that. Where nurses are being strengthened again, nurses are nurses who are going through burnout, can understand why I am burnt out. Why do I burn out easily as compared to my colleagues? Because we're all we're all branded differently. We we're all from different parts of the world, and we were we are all from different family backgrounds, community backgrounds. And um, because trauma can be personal, it can be environmental as well. So every environmental interactions that we've encountered, every exposure that we've encountered makes us completely different from the other nurse and or midwives. So when we burn out, some some nurses and midwives may burn out uh more um rapidly as compared to others. So it's it is more a slow and gradual process for for some as compared to some of those nurses who they easily um into line of of traumatic traumatic impact. But we have to get to a point where as much as we can give, we can give back to ourselves. And for me, I had to start forgiving myself for the things that I was incapable of achieving and the things that I was incapable of doing for myself, the things that I was incapable of giving when I wanted to give of myself or give services. So I had to stop for a moment and come to a realization as to what is the root cause of all of this. So, Ra, I say thank you for the opportunity because um every time I get on trauma talk or before while I'm preparing for trauma talk, it takes me back to to pieces of my life that I've never gotten the chance to capture, analyze, and truly heal from your points of view. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

You're welcome, but doesn't it doesn't it feel good? Yes, it feels good reflecting, it feels good going back there and go like there's nothing I could have changed because there's no way, there's no time machine, there's nothing could where I am here standing right now. Is it so? When you go back there, you learn, you take it in, you forgive them and forgive you. You love you more at that moment. You tell you, thank you, thank you, because if you didn't have that moment there, you wouldn't have been here, and to be here, to be able to go back there, absorb it, understand it, and decide to move forward for you, and that's what you did. You see, this is what I tell people we may complain about something we may be missing at this point, but when it is that you come to realize what other people are going through, right now, think about the Middle East, think about kids, think about all the people that don't even have water to drink, the simplest things that you take for granted. The air that you breathe that is going to be clear and good for you and healthy for you. There's some don't have that. There's some don't have a bed to sleep on. Someone might complain about sleeping on a cut while someone is sleeping on the floor or on the mud or on the side of the street. Be grateful, be thankful for what you have. Understand the blessings. Just as I said in the beginning, there once was a man who had the blues because he had no shoes. Down the street he met a man who had no feet. So while he's complaining about walking barefoot, there's a man out there who don't have feet to put his shoes on. So Dr. Nimbu Kamu Hall as I keep saying give yourself a pat on the back. And thank you. For always coming on your trauma talks and keep sharing. I think you started with me in 2020 was previous. We had a virtual conference, then you came on the stage on Broadway. You were on Trauma Talk Thursdays. It's always a pleasure to hear your story. I'm sure the rest of beautiful ladies want to ask you a question. So let me pop you on. I think Vi Ned went out. Dr. Vi if you're there. Okay, she's not there. So you girls ask a question.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

Um, how has happened for all these struggles what you had in your in the beginning of your life? You still choose this profession where you see the struggles and hurts every single day.

SPEAKER_03 23:04

So um at the age of nine, when I was asking Clive, what do you want to be when you grow up? I said, I want to be a nurse. I knew I wanted to become a nurse at the age of nine because my mother is my inspiration. She has been a nurse now all my life, 45 years now. And um so that did not change, regardless of having the Civil War. Actually, the Civil War solidified my longing to become a nurse because nurses were really needed during the Civil War. They were the ones that was taking care of neighbors that were wounded, they were the ones delivering babies in the homes because the hospitals weren't suitable for delivery. So my mother was intricate during that time and I admired her even more. So um, yeah, nothing has changed my my longing for nursing, and um, the higher I go into education, I pursue nursing higher. So, yes. It's my call.

SPEAKER_02 24:12

You have a big heart, you have a huge heart, Miss Love.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Y'all can keep asking anything else you all want to ask. I'm trying to get Dr. Vi, okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

The one thing that kept coming up for me as you were talking was just how how deeply we're all impacted by different levels of mental health availability and the cultural norms that sometimes say we're not going to counseling or we have to remain strong. And I would just love to hear from you like what we can do globally for the mental health field to make it more accepting or more welcoming, and what we can really do to extend beyond just the counseling world and really like find that comfort throughout all the multicultures that there are, find that comfort to like face the help that we could be receiving.

SPEAKER_03 25:25

Well, Lancy, thank you for that question. First of all, we need to make mental health care accessible. So when I needed mental health during my burnout and um burnout situations, I did see a mental health provider, a psychologist, yeah, a psychologist who they did the entire assessment, but their office was too full. They never had a counselor for me. So if I had a counselor and then I can go to my community members and say, it really does help, it will resonate the reality of that. But most of the the struggles that we're having in our communities, especially in minority communities, is that mental health services are not that visible and accessible. And and because it is expensive, and so affordability becomes issues, so then people just turn either to their religion, they turn to faith, and and or turn to their traditional beliefs that you are a warrior, you are strong, you can do this without telling somebody your problems. You have family, you have your God, you have so for this reason, a lot of people that I know turn to God Almighty and and and get counseling that way because the conventional means of counseling is um ineffable and it is not accessible. So why struggle doing that? When you have to go to work, you have to take care of family. So when all of those things happen, it it makes people to not um to not believe in the system, but somebody needs to benefit from the system from the services, and then others will believe it.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

Wow, so true. We have Dr. Vine joining us again. All right, thank you so much, Dr. Nimfu. Thank you so much, everyone, for joining and sharing on that panel. I want to do this right now, put everyone backstage, and you know, we're supposed to have some extra speakers. Everyone, we had um Tana Berg's marriage when pulled out to a meeting for the UN. Tana is a 23-year-old two-time author. Tana has told his story on trauma behind the glamour. He has been here in New York in person in our studio. He has been on trauma talk Thursdays, he's a TEDx speaker, he's an autistic, amazing, talented young man, and he really couldn't make it today. And we apologize. We also had Suzy, who I'm telling you, I know she's burnt out from this week with this book launch that we are in, Art of Connection, 365 Days of Resilience, where we met so much amazing people. My amazing friend, right here, Nina V. Gaza, is a sister on it. We are number one international best-selling authors all together, and that book is a best-selling book, an international number one best seller, right? Nina? Am I right or wrong? Tell us a little bit. Yes, tell us a little bit about your quote in the book and what inspired you when you wrote your quote and you actually spoke about resilience quickly in a minute.

SPEAKER_02 29:17

Resilience, it's sometimes it is not what we imagine. It is not when one brave man stays against a hurricane. It is not what uh one brave uh brave brave woman swims over ocean. It is something inside of you which help you hold yourself and your head high when it is practically impossible. And you show not only yourself but you show your surrounding that you can if you can, they can do too. It is cannot be underestimating that's influence that we're all all different, right? When I was in my young age, when I just get into the um uh the managing positions, right? And I was saying, okay, I can do it, you can do it, right? But it is not just that because everybody different, but you need to find that little rod inside of you, still rod, what we're helping to hold us in other people as well. That's what amazed me, all this. That person comes and is shy and uh um cannot open his mouth and uh sitting very quietly. In one moment it is blue like a beautiful rose or beautiful, I don't know uh there are other different uh flowers like chrysanthemum or so, and a chrysanthem actually is the best comparison because it stays long and fresh for a long time, and keeping yourself, keeping your stairs, keeping this road inside of you and influenced all others around you, that's real resilience.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Yes, that is so true. Wow, I love it, I love it, I love it, and thank you for you know so the art of connection. Susie was up and down this week, and I know she's burnt out from that, so she couldn't join us. Nina, thank you so much for that. That that really touched me in so many ways, and it actually makes you feel good with the changes that you make in your life, especially when you change your mindset, you practice what you preach, you understand the things that you say to others to help them. It's only the little bit that we could do, and actually, it takes so much of us to come together because it's not just like saying, Oh, yes, if I could do it, you could do it too. No, we want you to know that you could do it, we want you to know if I can do it, you can do it, but you have to hear. Listen, it he didn't just slap his finger and say, Oh, look at that. If you decide to become a real estate agent today, you are going to be a millionaire by tomorrow with the most commissions. Hell no, that's not happening, that's not gonna happen. It steps the same way I started seven and so seven plus years ago, and I started climbing that ladder. I knew what I wanted certain things to be an author, to speak all over the world, to do all these different things, and I didn't even know I was gonna start singing. I never even knew my singing journey would take me to the Grammys. I didn't even know what you get what I'm saying. I didn't even know, but all I knew was I started a journey and I continue stepping and learning, reflecting and understanding, as well as looking at where I can reflect, forgive, and keep moving forward. Understanding this is what I want to share, and this is what I want to be around. If I want to be around your energy, is because I want to be around your energy. If your energy has no respect for me, do not understand who I am. I do not want to be around you, don't matter what it says about forgive yourself, energies, people. Energies, this is a big topic that Dr. Tash and I had to do on Wednesday, but she came and she got sick, you know. And I'm so happy that she's feeling better, but she got sick, and we have this topic coming up sharing of energies and being a wrong, the type of energy that you're wrong. It it it don't you don't understand what it does to your life. As Nina said, they do this energy healing, she does energy cleansing, and the only way to do this purely from inside and for it to work for everyone is because she has to be clean inside herself, and you could hear it from her how amazing she is. And Dr. Nimpu, hats off to you again for always doing this for me, and I love all of you, Lindsay, for taking the time, Dr. Vi, Dr. Amerson, Dr. Monica Sanchez, Yvonne Chocen, you know, all of you that did this today on forgive yourself.