Fifteen years ago I arrived in Cairo, six weeks ahead of my first day of my “study abroad” program at the American University there. I would be staying in a Cairo suburb for four weeks and taking a basic Arabic class.

Upon my arrival, I knew little of the language beyond a simple “hello.” My excitement over this new journey quickly dissipated and turned to fear and a sense of overwhelming anxiety that first night as I found myself in an apartment in a suburb of this very foreign place where no one spoke English.

I realized I had no toilet paper, no idea how to ask for toilet paper, no idea how to turn on the hot water (or if I even had hot water) and felt like I was suffocating in the intense desert heat. The regular call to prayer was disorienting.

It is amazing to me that just months later, I would converse effectively in Arabic with other Egyptians, would have traveled (by myself) to Jordan and Jerusalem and then traveled with just one other student through Lebanon Syria and Jordan. By then, I found comfort in how regular and peaceful the call to prayer was. I think back and am amazed at how much had changed in just a few months – and how much would change.

There were many disorienting moments in those first weeks where I wanted to give up and catch the next flight back to New York, but I worked through my discomfort. I focused on learning more Arabic. I stepped out of my comfort zone and made friends. I discovered, of course, that despite what seemed to be huge differences in religion, culture, class, there were also so many similarities between myself and many of the Egyptians I met. I learned of the diversity of Islam and how it is practiced and lived in so many ways, just like Christianity is in the United States.

That trip truly did change my life. It is cliche to say that about travel and study-abroad experiences, but often it is also true. I would meet the future father of my children there – another American also studying abroad in Cairo. We would start our romance with a trip to Bethlehem for Christmas and kiss at the pyramids at Giza to ring in the new millennium. We still, on occasion, request a kiss from each other in Arabic. I also made other lifelong friends and gained a valuable understanding of the region and its people, so many of whom were extremely warm, generous, accepting and caring.

Given that experience, the daily news right now can be challenging for me to read-watch-follow. During my trips to Syria in 1999 and 2002, I spoke with people in Damascus who longed for freedom and desperately wanted to contribute to their country in a truly democratic way. I listened to hushed whispers in Egypt about the tight dictatorship of Mubarak and disappearances of opposition leaders working toward democracy. I even had many of these individuals tease me about my vote “also not counting” after I returned to the region for a summer visit following disputed Bush-Gore election.

I want to be optimistic about a truly democratic future for Egypt and Syria, but I am also fearful this change will not come or that too many lives will be lost in the process. I sometimes struggle to forget the faces of the children I taught English to, and the mothers and grandmothers who treated me with love and protection as a woman traveling alone. I want to forget because it is hard to think of those same children grown up now and living in the throes of such instability and violence, or of those mothers and grandmothers grieving the loss of their children in all of the bloodshed.

What I learned is that they are no different from me and no different from you. They want freedom. They want opportunity. They want a safe and stable home for their families. They want to live lives full of love and joy. And I also know that the families of the unaccompanied children who have come across our border want the same things. Many already have family members here who are contributing to our society. I appreciate the way people around the world have treated me so warmly and with such care as a foreigner among them, and I want to do the same for anyone coming to my country in need of help – no matter the circumstance in which they come.

I see so much divisiveness, so much anger, hate and fear, and I long to find ways to help us all cross those divides and realize what we all share. I wish for a media cycle that is not driven by fear but is driven by a commitment to tell stories of hope, to empower us to channel anger and fear into ways to help, ways to engage in constructive dialogue, ways to work together, despite our differences, toward positive changes.

So I’m challenging myself: What will I do today, this weekend, tomorrow, to promote positive change? How will I reach across a divide to find common ground? How will I empower myself and others to “be the change?”

How will you?

It might seem scary, uncomfortable, disorienting at first. Trust me, it probably will, just as my first weeks in Egypt did. But I also suspect it will be worth it in the end.

Start small and see where it takes you. You might be pleasantly surprised at where you end up.

Jennifer Fischer is co-founder of the SCV Film Festival, a mom of two, an independent filmmaker and owner of Think Ten Media Group, whose Generation Arts division offers programs for SCV youth. She writes about her parenting journey on her blog, The Good Long Road. Her commentary is published Saturdays on SCVNews.com.