A Teenager’s Confidence, Restored: Maryam’s Story
At sixteen, Maryam’s world was her friends, her studies and the easy, busy social life of any teenage girl — group chats, shared jokes, and dreams about what came next.
She loved school and the crowd of friends she had grown up with. Like any girl her age, she cared deeply about belonging — about being part of things, not standing apart from them.
Pulling away
Then surgery left her with a stoma, at one of the most self-conscious ages of all. Her worries centred on how she would be seen — by classmates, by friends, by herself. She began avoiding school and the social world that means so much at her age, and the difficulty of finding reliable supplies during the war deepened her sense that she could not move freely.
Confidence, restored
Dependable products gave her freedom; a nurse’s guidance gave her control; and a connection with another young woman who had been through it gave her something irreplaceable — the knowledge that she could still be confident, still be herself.
Back among friends
Maryam went back to school, and back to her friendships and the ordinary teenage life she had missed. Her story shows how, with the right support at a vulnerable age, confidence can be not just protected but fully restored.
An illustrative story. To protect the privacy and dignity of the people we serve, this account does not portray a real, identifiable individual. It is a fictional story drawn from the real experiences and outcomes of Giving Island’s work, written to convey the human reality behind the supplies we deliver.
Behind every story like this is a simple thing: the right supplies, delivered in time.
