When I was eight years old, my parents woke my siblings and me at 4 a.m. and told us to grab a backpack and whatever we couldn’t live without. We fled Iran in 1986 and never returned. My parents never told us why—the less we knew, the safer we were. Years later, I realized the few things I carried that morning had become priceless. I often wondered what I would have taken if I had known I’d never return. That experience shaped how I think about preparedness and taught me to consider not only survival, but the people, memories, and irreplaceable things worth protecting.
