Families Mentoring Families Blog

Seven surgeries and thirty days later, one woman is rewriting other women's stories!

October 11, 2026

She hoped seven surgeries would save her from waking up.

Ellen came back to Ghana from Lebanon unable to keep water down. Local doctors said she'd need seven more surgeries just to survive, and even then they couldn't promise she'd ever be whole again. She wasn't hoping to live, only that the surgeries would be enough that she wouldn't have to wake up anymore.

At the FMF Family Restoration Center, our directors Timothy and Mary asked her to give the program thirty days. They taught her to rewrite her story with LIFEstory Transformation and to dream again, and they helped her believe her body could heal when the doctors said it couldn't. Within thirty days she was off all pain medication, and she never had a single surgery.

Today Ellen is a LIFEstory coach running her own business, the assistant director at the Restoration Center, and a cosmetology teacher who mentors the women walking through the same door she did. When I asked her what the women there receive, I expected her to say safety, or education, or support, and she said hope and love.

This is what one small stone looks like when it's carried month after month. A monthly partnership with LIFEstory Partners funds the next Ellen: the literacy supplies, the transport on the day a survivor is finally safe, the sewing machine for a graduate starting her business.

Here's how you can carry a few stones with us:

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