At nine months old, I was diagnosed with Familial Mediterranean Fever—an ultra-rare form of a genetic disease that would come to define the landscape of my life. While most children were learning to walk, I was learning what it meant to endure pain that doctors struggled to explain.

FMF is an invisible illness. Between episodes, the world sees normalcy. But beneath the surface lies a reality of chronic pain equivalent to labor contractions, hospital visits that stole weeks of childhood, and the quiet question that haunted my darkest moments: Why me?

My journey has not been one of defying odds—it has been one of transforming them. Through discipline, through faith, through the quiet, daily decision to show up when everything suggested otherwise, I discovered that adversity is not the absence of opportunity—it is the refining fire that reveals who we were always meant to become.

Today, I share this truth with readers and audiences around the world: our struggles carry meaning beyond ourselves.