Special Tribute to Sara Mansfield Taber

Throughout our work with Afghan women, our team of writing-circle facilitators has been particularly moved by the talented writing and artistic creations of our students. In 2023, our friend and colleague, Sara Mansfield Taber, brought several of us together at ROOM to explore how to share these creations with the world. Sara insisted that there must be a way to publish these pieces without doing inadvertent harm; she kept us on task through months of deliberation, consultations, and strategizing that resulted in a secure, anonymized corner of the internet. Because of Sara's passionate determination, the first issue of We Are the Light was published in November 2024. In subsequent issues, we have been able to continue to uplift heartfelt and powerful creations by women across the globe whose voices are seldom heard and whose futures are threatened.

We are honored to steward Sara's legacy as curators of We Are the Light. We hope you will join us in empowering and celebrating these incredible women by reading and sharing their works.

In gratitude,

Carole Geithner and Shari Nacson

Curators of We Are the Light

Sara Mansfield Taber

I am a social worker and psychologist who has breakfasted on notions about the unconscious for fifty years, but I had never before experienced, as in this sudden materialization of my late parents, such a clear example of my unconscious not just determining but dictating the steps I would take to work with Afghan women.

In Vietnam in 1975, two dramatic, bone-shaking blows occurred in my parents' lives. My parents began living in Vietnam in 1973 when I was a sophomore in college in Minnesota. My father had been posted to Saigon as part of the US mission to drive out the North Vietnamese forces threatening to overtake the South Vietnamese government we were supporting in the name of democracy. His job, along with two other CIA officials, was to create and oversee a “black ops” radio station designed to spread propaganda that would d