At 19 years old, Retselisitsoe – nickname Moshe – is a young woman of quiet strength and big dreams. Living in Khanyane with her mother and older brother, she understands the value of hard work and resilience; her mother works tirelessly to support the family by selling eggs and chicks.
Having recently completed Grade 11, Moshe just achieved another major milestone by completing Help Lesotho’s Basic Computer and Life Skills Course. With these new skills in hand, she is now setting her sights on a bright future, hoping to pursue a career in Occupational Health and Safety.
She will soon move away from her family to Maseru to begin her three-year diploma program; “it is kind of scary to move to the big city, but I think I’m ready.”
While the technical skills she gained at Help Lesotho are invaluable, it was the emotional journey during life skills sessions that truly transformed her. In particular, the module on Grief and Loss struck a deep chord. Before attending the sessions, Moshe believed that the only way to be strong was to bottle up her emotions so she could be a pillar of support for those around her. She didn’t realize that by suppressing her pain, she was denying herself the chance to heal, carrying a heavy, invisible burden of anger and sadness.
The sessions provided her with a profound realization: true healing requires us to actually process our emotions and experience them as they happen rather than locking them away. Through the program she learned that while we cannot replace everything we lose, we can honor the people who were important to us by remembering the good they brought into our lives and the lessons they taught us.
For Moshe, the program became a sanctuary. "It changed my life a lot," she shares. "I was bottling up so much. Here, I felt safe. I had a shoulder to cry on."
What Moshe loved most about her experience is that the growth didn't stop at the classroom door. She has been able to take everything she learned home with her, using these life skills to nurture her personal life and her relationships with her family. She is stepping into her future not just with new professional skills, but with a lighter heart and a healed spirit.
Moshe’s poem about her experience at Help Lesotho
Listen, listen to the thunders of the storm
as they tumble down my lips.
It's like I'm a trapped man behind bars
in a world that's not mine.
Trapped daily by a feeling—
pain and suicidal thoughts.
And I ask myself, will I ever be free?
Walk out there like a free man…
but it seems there's no answer to that.
Until the day the doors opened slowly,
not with chains breaking in anger
but with hands reaching through the dark.
In quiet rooms where voices were gentle,
they listened to the thunder in my chest
and did not run from the storm.
Day by day the sky inside me shifted—
not clear yet, not perfect,
but lighter than before.
I learned that bars can bend
when hope is patient.
I learned that storms can pass
even when they roar the loudest.
And now when I step outside
the wind feels different on my face—
like the world was waiting
for me to return to it.
I am not completely healed,
but I am walking.
And every step away from the darkness
is a kind of freedom.
