I walked through the A21 shelter door, amber in color with a heavy brass handle. The Grecian air whipped through the house as three faces stood in the hallway to joyfully greet our staff team and apprehensively meet me, the girl from California who wanted to talk to them. They hugged and kissed us like we were friends, while other girls remained sitting patiently in the living room.

We were there to interact with the girls and I was sent to gather stories of their life in ways nonthreatening and noninvasive.

Some women sat quietly on the couch as I tried casually striking up a conversation about their future and their dreams. Some meekly answered about going back to school, while others dreamed big dreams of opening a restaurant in their small, hometown. The circle of women knew I was an outsider, but cautiously allowed me into fractured parts of their lives.

One girl sat quietly on the couch and watch the other girls dream their dreams. Her dark locks hung wildly on her black skin and she moved her head back and forth, swaying to a rhythmic beat only she could hear. She smiled and took pleasure in listening to her new friends, but she remained silent.

Trying to get trafficking victims to share their story isn’t something done easily. Knowing the time wasn’t right, I shifted the time to simply engaging in conversations with the girls, getting to know them at conquerors, no longer victims. We ate cake and afterwards a small group of the girls invited me to play Uno with them. We tried communicating in international hand sign gestures while laughing wildly at ourselves. Except for her, the girl with sweet eyes, wild hair, and black skin.

But as time passed and Uno came to an end, I saw the girl with the wild black hair get up from the couch and begin to move freely in the living room as music played. She and the resident intern found music online from her home country in Africa and in the sound of the music, she let herself go.

In the beats, in the rhythms, in the melodies, she became alive. She moved as freely as her wild hair and smiled as she drifted to a place far away; a place of freedom, a place of hope, a place of home.

Her feet pounded on the floor as her shoulders pulsed forward and back, back and forward. I watched this young woman and wished I knew her past. Selfishly, I wanted to know how she ended up a victim of trafficking, what happened to her, and why life silenced her dreams.

But as she danced freely in the shelter with happiness and hope as her partners, I knew why we opened a shelter Greece. I knew why we continually to fight for freedom.

We fight for her to be free. We fight for her to smile. We fight for her to live. We fight for her to dream. We fight for her to dance. Again.

I swallowed back the lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. I watched her and knew her past didn’t matter because her future has just begun.