Refugee Resilience // editorial portrait photographed for Maine Women Magazine

Editorial assignment was to photography M.L without showing her face for Maine Women Magazine.

“[Not having asylum] affects everything,”

Transitions are often difficult, but for M.L., 57, identified here by just her initials because of her legal status, change has involved one brutal awakening after the next. She immigrated with her sons to the United States in December 2014 to escape a political situation that made her afraid for her safety and for her children and their futures. Leaving behind what had been a happy upper-middle class life, M.L. arrived in Maine thinking that her husband would soon join her and their two sons, now 16 and 22. Instead his attempts to get a visa were blocked. M.L. was forced to adjust to single motherhood, immediate poverty and Maine’s coldest season all at once. Read the full story here