03/26/2026
We asked our community to share how the Bangladesh Liberation War has impacted their and their families’ mental health. Thank you, Opola Karim, for your vulnerability in sharing your story! .raang
Swipe to read, or see the full story in the caption below.
Content warning: violence and trauma
A War I Never Saw, But Still Carry
I was not there in 1971, but the war lives in me through the people who raised me—and in the way it has shaped my own mental health.
My mother never met her father. During the Bangladesh Liberation War, he witnessed violence so brutal—bloodshed, death, fear—that it made him physically ill. He passed away before my mother ever had the chance to know what a father’s love felt like. That absence shaped her entire life. She grew up searching for something she could not name, learning to survive without guidance, without protection, and without an example of how she should be loved.
Instead of childhood, she carried responsibility. Instead of education, she carried a household. And later, in her own marriage, she carried pain—because how do you recognize healthy love when you’ve never seen it?
My father’s story is different, but just as heavy. As a child, he lived through the chaos of war—seeing bombings, fragments scattered across the ground, fear hanging in the air like smoke. His family had to hide in a Hindu household to survive. Without that act of courage and humanity, my father—and I—would not be here today.
But survival came at a cost. The fear, anger, and violence he witnessed didn’t disappear. They followed him into adulthood, shaping how he expresses emotion—often through anger, silence, or distance. In his family, love is not spoken. It is replaced with survival, with status, with land and wealth.
Continued in comments
