JOIN THE SHIFT: EVERY LIFE MATTERS

"Have you ever harmed someone?" an inmate asked me in one of our SmilingOne sessions, early 2008. I stood face to face with my own darkness. I was angry, and had not yet looked deep enough into my own story. It caused harm to me and those closest to me.

We can have a vision of where we are going, but we can only really see the path when we begin to heal the fractures of our past.

I'm Karina. Founder of The SmilingOne Foundation. When I registered the SmilingOne domain in 2005, I had no idea of its true meaning. For me it was a symbol, a question I was asking myself. What if all these scattered, fractured pieces inside me could come into ONE? What if I could stop pretending I was okay, stop faking the smile, and finally just be me.

Little did I know… how fast intention travels.

A year later I arrived in this beautiful land, South Africa. She captured my heart from day one. Oh, and SHE had big plans for me - she was about to take me into her rawest places.

It was October 2007 when I met a Social Worker from Brandvlei Maxim...