2023 is a year of healing…
INSPIRE. PRESERVE. RESIST
Yoga… I saw an ad for becoming a yoga instructor in 2022, and I just laughed. Me? A yoga instructor? I had been practicing for a couple of years to support my increased anxiety as a result of the pandemic, but I wasn’t a skinny blonde. Not for me.
The add kept popping up and having been a school building administrator at the time, I thought that this could support students in their own mindfulness more. So, I took the plunge and became a yoga instructor on top of a mother, wife, daughter, writer, and K-12 educator… A woman in hijab with a busy life can teach yoga.
I’m an Arab American Visibly Muslim female originally from Chicago’s Southwest Suburbs, but currently living in the Western Suburbs. I grew up in a community where everyone was considered family. I went to public school and I would have teachers actually ask me “How come you have so many cousins?” We just called everyone a cousin. Our community is a collective community where we just learned to give. We give to our families, we give to our community, and we give to people all over the world in need.
We give so much. But, now we need to give to ourselves in times of struggle and that is the space to heal. I currently teach classes that cater to Muslim women’s affinity and in mediation I always say, “our self-care is a radical act of giving… when we give to ourselves, we give to our community because we as women are the backbone of it.” Although our culture is stereo typically patriarchal, really, we are a community of matriarchs who have built us all up on the notions of love and hard work.
Like many products of immigrant communities, we are cultivated to measure our worth through productivity. Our ancestors worked hard so that we can thrive. Now as we thrive, we come together in healing…
Healing looks different in the year 2023. We are healing from difficulties are ancestors faced coming to this nation and healing from our own pasts and struggles. My father comes from a multi-generational Palestinian family that traveled back and forth between the United States and Palestine to build a life for themselves. My mother came to the United States in her late teens, not knowing the world she was going to enter. They worked and worked and worked and built a humble life for themselves and their three daughters.
Trauma metabolizes itself from generation to generation. It’s form is different. And we indirectly deal with our trauma in different ways… sometimes it’s overworking ourselves to continue to accomplish more. There are people who doubted the Arab Community of Chicagoland- and we’ve proved them wrong.
Whether it be in mosques, churches, homes, gyms, spas… let’s give back to ourselves in peace. Heal.. heal from the work, heal from the self-doubt, heal from the imposter syndrome, and heal from the struggles.
We’ve made it.
We grew up in a community that loved us…all of the cousins that weren’t totally related to us. And we all worked together to provide a life for our children to come.
Let’s all come together in this blog and take collective breathe in #30DaysArabVoices as we breathe for our community, breathe for our families, but most importantly in healing and self-love breathe for ourselves. We made it!
This blog post is part of the #30DaysArabVoices Blog Series, a month-long movement to feature the voices of Arabs as writers and scholars. Please CLICK HERE to read yesterday’s blog post by Abeer Ramadan-Shinnawi (and be sure to check out the link at the end of each post to catch up on the rest of the blog series).
Sarah Said identifies as a Palestinian and Syrian Muslim American. Sarah father’s families roots are in Beitunia, Palestine. Her mother is originally from Homs, Syria.
