Celebrating Grief

Every year, there are less days to celebrate and more to recognize as “Americans” and I put that in quotes because many of us are trying to reconfigure what that means today. As a Syrian born on stolen Tongva land, I struggle to celebrate. For many of us, especially those of us coming from immigrant backgrounds, Thanksgiving is not necessarily a day of celebration, but a day of gathering. At home, that’s what it always was with dad. I recently posted a memory shared from Facebook, from seven years ago today, when dad and I spent a post-dinner conversation that meant the world to me.

Thanksgiving Day was a day of sports viewing, of cooking, of snacking, of online browsing, of random conversations, and of Syrian desserts with tea. Seven years ago it also included literary discussions, my blog, and my dad’s faith in my art as a writer. As hard as some have anticipated today would be on us, it was more weird honestly; and though I planned on making this week’s post about the concept of life support, I bookmarked it for next week and let today focus on the celebration of memories as a part of the grieving process. On understanding the temporariness of all things as a part of life.

As kids, we knew, if a Lakers game was on, 🤫 🤫 🤫. Dad legit assumed coaching duties on the couch and reprimanded every player through the T.V. when he didn’t “pass the ball!” or “shoot! shoot it, c’mon!!!” Listen, my youngest brother, Karim, was named after Kareem Abdul Jabbar. That’s how hardcore my dad was. He got mama in on it and there’s that story. It’s still too painful to process, though it hits in sporadic crashes. I’m just trying to remember we’re each on this earth for a certain time period, to lay the bricks down for a certain purpose. When we accomplish that purpose, our time is complete here. My dad must’ve completed everything he was on this earth to do and God said, “It’s time.” I look around me, at the life he built for us all, at the skills he taught us knowingly and unknowingly, at the genetics and love we inherited, at the connections and support he offered so many people in the world, then I know. I am reminded, God’s timing means everything and soon enough mine will be up. Once I finish all I’m here to do, however long it’s meant to take, and then I will be in dad’s arms again.

In Islam, the belief is a human is built of components. The core is the soul, known as nafs in Arabic. The soul houses the spirit or spirituality, which is essentially a connectivity and sensation. However, on this earth, a soul cannot exist without a physical manifestation, and hence, the human body. I never actually saw the body so clearly as a vessel for the soul until I saw my dad’s body in its five month disintegration. When I saw him fall into three separate comas, the last being the finale—despite a racing heart rate that I felt with my shaking palm.

The last intense hug he ever gave me, we cried our eyes out and maybe it’s because our souls somehow knew this would be it. His time was up, and as sad as that is for our hearts to digest—because we yearn for who we love—trying to frame things in their temporariness in life makes parts of it a little easier to swallow.
Until our times are up and we are reunited with our lost loves, we have work to do on this earth for ourselves and our communities. This is how we serve and fulfill. Sometimes we don’t even know what our callings or missions are but when we finish them, we are summoned back. Sometimes we know exactly why we are here and it makes the temporary time we have on earth even more worthwhile. Seek out your missions if you have not yet found them and seek out the good company to nurture your soul’s spirit in the meantime. It makes the journey a little more livable too. Celebrate gratitude for what you had and what you had the chance to experience, not just once a year but all year long, and until then, heal wholly!

Striking Grief

When I graduated from college, my dad gave me a beautiful necklace—two circles, one inside the other. I’m not big on jewelry (it’s too high maintenance for me) so while I loved it, honestly I didn’t wear it often. I don’t remember what I was talking to him about one day at the hospital, but I remembered the necklace and brought it with me the next day. Whether he recognized it or his post-stroke reception enjoyed the glimmer of the silver, gold, and diamonds, his eyes were fixated. The problem? It sat in my jewelry box so long it got tangled up in so many knots. I realized that was a major reason why I didn’t wear it. So I pulled up a chair beside his bed, propped a pillow up for him to see, and got to work, determined to untangle the gift he gave me.

Without pause, he kept his gaze on my fingers, diligently working. About an hour later, after squinting, grunting, and somehow creating then undoing more knots, it came loose. The chain was free and ready to be worn. I held it up, beaming with pride, like it ironically represented my efforts to get the degree I initially received when he gifted me the necklace. As the embracing circles hung between us, both our eyes watching them sway, I chuckled. “Dad, I just noticed these circles are us, a representation of a dad and daughter bond. You’re the big circle, protecting and giving the little golden circle her foundation to shine.”

Since that day, the necklace hasn’t left my body, and everyday I’d come in, I saw his eyes search for it. Its metaphorical layers weigh heavy around my neck, showing me the nuances of grief. What makes grief so fragile is unlike lightning, it always strikes twice, or more.

On top of literally watching my father leave us, shrinking daily for five months, grief spread itself wide like an ink stain. I don’t have any advice or tidbits to share, just the already shed skins of my grief and the ones I see peeling before me.

My favorite social media post is the one that reminds everyone to be kind because each person fights a battle unseen. What makes being a writer, a blogger, and an author unique, is in fact our visibility. However, that yields the presumption people have that they know all of us so well. Truth of the matter is, even the most vulnerably open of us, have unspoken unshared layers, levels of other grief above our known ones. So today’s post is simply this reminder. Grief is nonlinear, has no concrete timeline, and is not happening in a vacuum. I hope to shed light on what we went through, what we learned, what we are still learning, and how to navigate the trauma. Next week’s post will be more concrete (about life support). So practice kindness, practice silence, practice honesty, and until then, heal wholly!

Competitive Grief

Competitive grief is no mystery to me. In TWO previous jobs, both my supervisors laughed so hard when I stated I was tired, belittling the possibility that I could be. Oblivious to everything going on in my life—domestic violence, a divorce entirely on my shoulders, four hour DAILY commutes, insomnia, managing side projects, writing a book, applying for a graduate degree, and more. I wasn’t allowed to be tired because I didn’t have children? Because I was under the age of 30 back then? Being single or childless does not make someone less entitled to experience grief, loss, exhaustion or trauma. Having a spouse and/or babies is NOT the only struggle a human can endure.

Now, what I was not familiar with, before my father’s illness, were grief credits, and how they—alongside competitive grief—could take an emotional toll on the immediate family grieving. This post will be more difficult to write than others, not because it’s emotional, but because I know some people may take offense. It’s so hard to express truths today without someone somewhere blowing everything out of proportion, but I’ve been a talkative one since birth. That’s all I ever heard my dad say about me. Every memory he ever shared was about the sassy, straightforward, talkative nature I possessed since the young age of two. He’d talk and his face would light up and I felt indescribably special. Like I knew, no matter what, our foundation was there together. I miss those stories—rather I miss him sharing those stories with me.

It’s been one month now exactly, and I often catch myself replaying his final hours in my head. Watching his body change colors and knowing that as this prism flashed before me, I was losing my dad forever. I don’t know how, but within hours the world was aware of his death, though none of us announced it till the next morning, when we confirmed funeral arrangements. According to Islamic teachings, the sooner a body can be buried, the better. It’s a sign of respect and closure. But somehow, we faced the reprimands. Started having our grief compared, critiqued, and “outdone” by others. This did not entirely surprise me though. It started the moment word got out that he suffered a stroke after the first surgery.

No one should mistake what I’m about to say on my behalf, and on behalf of my immediate family, but it was utterly strange to us that people who were never really there in our times of need, were suddenly beyond eager to impose themselves upon us as supporting roles here. I received messages from people who had previously insulted me and my work, claiming primacy to my heart and emotions. People who literally offered no support on our work for Syria or our publications, were now talking about how far back we go. Instead of focusing my energy on my dying father, I was being hounded to reply to texts from entitled people who said they deserved to visit him or should know every detail about his diagnosis. It was what left me crying more often than not at 3:00 a.m. before I finally fell asleep and woke up to re-live the whole cycle all over again a few hours later.

There’s offering kindness and then there’s straight up ego. I said it before in ‘Stolen Grief” and I’ll say it again; you cannot be absent from people’s times of light and expect to be welcome in their times of darkness. I tried, so hard, to look at it like an overreaching optimist and find gratitude in the “care” that was being offered, but when it drains you, is it genuine care? When you catch that it’s attempts to add grief credits to their social resume, is it authentic?

We had people show up unannounced, telling us that they know we requested no visitation but wanted to impose anyway because they “love” us so much. Every time that happened I cringed and thought, do you hear what you’re saying? It’s about YOU then, not the grievers.

I anticipated it would only get worse if/when daddy died and it did. The people trying to push through to see my dad’s body post-mortem and getting agitated if my crying mother or brother said no. The fact that when it was time to offer the dirt before the grave was closed, somehow my mother and I got marginalized and pushed to the end of the line, while everyone else, unrelated to my dad, was up there pouring dirt and tears over his body. Mama and I were locked elbow to elbow, too frail and broken to fight people for our rightful status. It should’ve been common sense.

Over and over, I kept telling myself, “Share your grief, Dania. Your dad meant a lot to many other people.” But there came a point where it felt like my grief, the grief of his wife and children, was not shiny enough or loud enough so the world felt like it needed to overcompensate. It was hard to separate between authenticity and facade, especially with social media.

I still don’t know how I feel about social media posts commemorating the dead when it’s not immediate family or immediate circles. When Raihan and her beautiful family passed, I refrained from offering anything aside from the news article and prayers. She and her family are buried right beside my dad and it kills my heart. There’s so much emotion to unpack and digest with that concept alone—my father, my friend, her family, and my other friend’s brother, are all buried, not only in the same cemetery, but the same row. Talk about a reminder of the afterlife!

But everyday I see new posts about her and I wonder how the families feel seeing that. Does it give them joy? Does it hurt? Grief is not cookie cutter and I think the biggest takeaway is this: When you want to be there for someone grieving, check yourself first. Why are you inclined to offer what it is you want to offer? What are your intentions? How are they coming across? Reflect on that. If you cannot yet pinpoint the answer, offer the most basic of positive messages and then hold off before offering more.

Do not expect them or ask them to respond. Do not demand information from them. Do not badger them to see you/let you visit. Do not post things without checking with them. Personally, I feel like there’s a certain level of intimacy that exists in grief. It’s a very fine line between sharing grief and knowing when the grief belongs to the immediate circle of the deceased/suffering. To say I know how to thread this fine line would be a lie. I still don’t. I have been guilty of posting things in the past to share in the grief of others, thinking I was part of the collective experience, ignorant to what it may actually be doing. God is teaching me very important lessons now in the death of my dad and I’m listening.

I’m still learning how to share grief but I also learned, quite vividly, how to protect it too. Grief should never be a competition.

Until then, heal wholly.

Shared Grief

Three weeks ago today, at 6:23 p.m., I watched my dad take his last exhale. His heart rate—reaching a high of 176 that afternoon—suddenly became so faint, the doctors scrambled to get an ultrasound pulse reader to try and find it. I told them there’s no use. I saw him leave us and I slowly backed away and into the chair that became mine for months.

It still hasn’t hit me and some people have told me this type of grief doesn’t kick in till later. I fear that may be true and a part of me has sensed it since the moment he was diagnosed in May. The way my body remained surprisingly tranquil throughout it all scared me. Was this the calm before the storm? And if so, when will this storm strike? And if it does, what will become of me?

Loss has never been my strong suit, but to be honest, the losses I’m referring to are not death. They never have been. They have been relationships ending—a divorce or a breakup or a rejection. They have been jobs that became so toxic I had to leave. They were friendships that ended when I got ghosted. And occasionally, they’ve been files or poems or journals that I eventually learned to move on without. Actually, all of those “things” I eventually learned to move on without. But how do you move on without a father? And how do you navigate through a grief, that for the first time, is not just yours?

When we all gathered around my father’s body—mama, my brother, my uncle, and the two doctors who were my dad’s friends, along with the nurses who became so much like family I miss them all everyday, I realized, unlike every loss before, I am not experiencing this one alone. Suddenly, at age 30, I am re-learning how to share and it’s not easy. How to practice a balance between allowing myself to grieve while also making room for others who are entitled to grieve, to do so as well. There’s no Barney or Blue’s Clues or Elmo for this y’all.

A week later, mama and I were in the car, and I said, “I know this is even harder on you because we as adult children don’t have a status change in this loss, but you’ve become a widow.” Widow. She let the word fall from her lips and said, “Yeah, and I never imagined I’d ever be one, especially not like this.” We started recollecting who else from our community was a widow and remembered that a few of them showed up to dad’s funeral and squeezed her tight. I nudge her to continue connecting with them. Group therapy can be as simple as friendships built on solidarity, as a start.

Then there are my brothers, one who doesn’t live here and landed hours before the funeral, and one who spent a good amount of his time with dad on boys’ nights out his whole life. I’ve seen more of their tears now than ever before and I open my soul for them. I am not a son so I do not know anything more than the loss of a daughter., which means I cannot fathom the pain his parents feel either, and I remind myself that I had to and have to share that grief with them too.

It’s not easy, grief. Add on complicated layers of other things experienced in conjunction with the loss, and it becomes a fiasco that’s left us questioning how we are still standing. But there’s something very powerful about the concept of shared grief that I never got to experience in any of my other losses, and that is the unique sense of not being alone, while still being alone. Bear with me, because these coming posts on grief will unpack a great deal of things that don’t make sense but do, all at once.

Despite the numerous texts I received (and still receive) I feel very alone. I always have in times of loss. It’s hard to reach out and ask someone to listen because even you get tired of hearing about your own pain. Then if you do find the courage to reach out, it’s hard to openly express your pain without the fear of judgment or the fear of having spirituality shoved down your throat. Yes, I know, it sounds awful, but not being able to be angry or question things or not uphold a rose colored lens of optimism in these times is often opposite of what many of us crave in our healing. So it becomes difficult to find the company you can completely let your guard down with.

I sort of found someone. He sort of volunteered. It’s a complicated history with a strange present and a completely unknown future, but it helps. They—his presence and my needs in grief—have taught me how to better share grief and how to better be there for those grieving, especially those I am sharing the grief with.

To share grief is to exercise another level of empathy, which takes a great deal of energy, but comes back just as rewarding. It itself becomes a sense of healing power for you, just as much as it heals those you are sharing with. There will be difficult times, moments when you need your own space, where you feel entitled to a selfish second of not caring about anyone else except your own heart, and that is understandable. Take that second to yourself, letting others around you know you are doing so, and then come back. Remember that you are not entirely alone in this grief. Others are hurting too and your love feeds off each others' because it's not just the grief that you are sharing, it's the healing too.

I feel it when my brother laughs. When we all gather around our cat, Kai, and bombard him with kisses. When we capture mama's snoring. When we find a movie on T.V. we love and make popcorn and escape reality for two hours.

As I tell people, it’s not going to be an easy journey but we have no choice but to go through it. In the meantime, I feel called to share the lessons we learned (and will learn) in this experience because there were and will be things experienced that I hope others do not have to encounter.

Until then, heal wholly.

Stolen Grief

Recently I asked folks to share their definition and/or expectations of community. What does that word mean to you? What do you expect from a community? Google defines community as “a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.” Pretty generic, right? It also defines community as “a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.” The results were not too surprising, but they were disheartening. My internet poll yielded the following responses to these first questions:

- Welcoming, accepting, and inclusive
- Helping you up when you make a mistake
- Connection, not competition
- Love, fellowship, mutual support, & sharing food
- Nurturing space of honesty and loyalty
- Mutual care and respect

There is an underlying commonality in these answers, however, something is most definitely missing when a good majority of community members feel a sense of disconnection from their communities. I asked two follow up questions: Does the community you’re in meet your expectations? Why or why not? The answers were as follows:

- Never
- No, I feel unwelcome and unaccepted
- No, I am marginalized and judged
- No, I wish for a community more open minded and tolerant
- Yes, because I have multiple communities and each compensates for the other’s lacking

Interestingly enough, the final answer above was given by men only. The other responses were from multiple women. That made me wonder how influential patriarchy and male privilege/entitlement are in the failing of community environments.

In the 2015 article “What is Community Anyway?” by the Stanford Social Innovation Review, it stated that “…insufficient understanding of what a community is and its role in the lives of people in diverse societies has led to the downfall of many well-intended “community” efforts.”

While the article (found here: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/what_is_community_anyway) is focused on supporting community initiatives, it brings up a good number of points of what is often neglected, further hindering communities today.

These include forgetting that a community is still about the people—the individuals that make up the community, not recognizing where communities overlap, oversight of the fact that communities are created within other communities, neglecting the various formal and informal institutions that communities have developed for themselves, and lastly, not realizing that communities are organized in different ways.

As a child, your community is not one you create, rather it comes from your parents/guardians. It’s your family’s friends and their children. If you’re an immigrant or a refugee, or a child of one, often your community is of the same background. School is where we begin building our own personal communities. It is where we choose our friends, who we want to do group projects with or who we want to hang out with after school. This develops further through social networking—the old fashioned one, where folks actually socialized in a physical network offline.

Communities evolve through experience—individual or collective—and it is through this evolution that awareness is born. But how much power does awareness have on changing communities? And how long does it take? Activists, educators, and survivors have been speaking out for decades on social change, but communities seem to be slow in their evolution, especially the one(s) I grew up in. While we’ve started “addressing” certain stigmatized subjects, implementation efforts and follow through remain superficial and that has long hindered my ability, and many others, to feel fully embraced by our communities.

If I had to define an ideal community, I would define it with an Arabic phrase (بتسند الظهر) that essentially translates to support or has one’s back. A community should be a place of refuge, unity, acceptance, and shared growth. It should consist of openness, respect, and the recognition that it is made up of very diverse people, regardless of the shared characteristics, just like the backbone—different vertebrae, one essential goal. Idealistic? Maybe, but our community is long overdue for its evolution from crab mentality and selfish agendas.

Grief is an incredible indicator of community, specifically how well the community allows its members to grieve, regardless of whether it’s something personal or communal. While human beings share quite a great deal of commonalities, there are plenty of differences that have a right to be respected too. Understanding and implementing this is key for community success. The ways in which people grieve are extremely different. While some prefer the volume and crowd of company for healing, others prefer solitude to process and adjust. At the end of the day a heart knows its optimum coping strategies, any interference or imposition simply becomes stolen grief.

Mastering this requires empathy, not sympathy. Sympathy is essentially why communities are stealing its members’ grief. Sympathy creates an unbalanced power dynamic that reduces those suffering from grief to a “less than” status from those “offering” their services. Being there for someone is NEVER about you, it is about the person or persons you are supposedly there for. It is about working hard to listen to what those suffering need and what they desire. Imposing your presence, your words, your food, your coping mechanisms, are all perfect examples of how not to be there for someone. Just because you may desire someone to cook for you or be by your side, does not mean someone else wants the same.

Another factor to properly being there for others is understanding that it is not conditional. By this I mean, you cannot be absent from people’s lives during their times of light and success, and then expect to be welcome during their times of darkness and turmoil. This I emphasize immensely as my family and I experience it firsthand. It is utterly strange to us that people who turned their backs on each of us during times when we needed community to encourage our hard work, are now suddenly flooding our space, claiming to be longstanding beloved supporters. Grief can bring out very vivid truths, so to those enduring it I say be prepared.

Community can often stifle and steal more than grief so I write this in hopes that my generation does not repeat the cycles of what it has gone through. We deserve better communities, especially in such aching times socially, culturally, religiously, politically, and always personally. Community is where we should find our backbone, our strength, to keep going in this world.

However, when communities fail to offer that, we seek human connection through smaller groups. I am immensely grateful to the handful of villages I built in the failures of my communities, especially now in my time of grief. This year I chose to be even more vigilant of who I surround myself with and honestly it has been incredible. Reduce your social spheres, it will enhance your social experience. You become more conscious of your surroundings. You feel safe expressing your truths. You are understood, accepted, and rarely judged. And most importantly, a culture of mutual respect is developed.

Do not use your remedy on my wounds / I am not you. I wrote this a few years back and I stand by it just as strongly now as I did then. This is the epitome of community, especially in grief, recognizing the many diverse wounds, and then working to create the multifaceted remedies (plural) to heal and strengthen the people who house those wounds. Until then, our communities will remain fractured, further producing alienated members, carrying a facade of unity.

Body Weight

Every time the nurses remember to update my father’s body weight, on the chart that remains neglected way too often, the number goes down. But when I look at him, it seems as though his body is sinking deeper into the sea of a hospital bed. Its white sheets resembling the foam of angry tides, and my father is the ship holding on for dear life.

I watch him and relive the concept of body autonomy, especially when outside these hospital walls, women across the country (and world) are fighting for the rights to their own bodies. As nurse after nurse handles my father’s body—with as much consent as can possibly be obtained under such circumstances—I think of the number of times women get touched non-consensually. The number of times we’re told we do not own the rights to deciding what we can and cannot do with our bodies.

A few months ago I wrote a post titled “Empty Wombman” (http://ladynarrator.blogspot.com/2019/01/empty-womban.html) where I describe what we women, who choose a childless lifestyle, endure. To sum it up, women are only significant when our bodies are affiliated to someone else—a man or a baby. We are merely vessels to house something else, and when I decided to peruse the comments section of all the abortion news articles online, that is precisely the echoing sentiment I found. People berating women who were pro-choice and telling us that these bodies are in fact not ours, but an abode for someone else’s. My father’s face contorts and I feel his discomfort so vividly, but unlike the hands that touched me before, the ones on him are trying to heal him and we pray they do. 

When I stumbled across an excerpt from the book of rabbits by Vince Trimboli, I knew I was going to fall hard for it. For starters, the foreword by Nancy Lynée Woo, is a spectacular introduction to the book and the context of Mary Toft, who (I will admit) I was not very familiar with and yet I related to her. I related to a woman driven to madness by her society that made her subconsciously feel “less than” for not producing children that she found herself forcibly fake-birthing the most bizarre things, including rabbits.

Vince Trimboli does a remarkable job bringing the details of her story, the things in between the lines of her history, to life in such hauntingly gorgeous poetry that I couldn’t let go of. I messaged the publisher instantly and said, “This book needs to be selling like wildfire!” I ordered my own copy instantly.

I don’t know if it was reading such depth about women’s bodies finally portrayed so truthfully and with the right kind of sardonic tone (when appropriate) by a man or if it was the overall perfection of the poetry, but I was addicted. Maybe I felt like I met an ally at last who was not afraid to put our truths on paper.

If I wanted to highlight the best poems of the book, it would be the entire collection because there was not one that didn’t move me so intensely. Some of the ones I pinpointed (pictured in this post) are Men’s Bodies are Interesting, Field Guide: Interpretation, and the Haiku: Facts About Birth. But again, those aren’t the only good ones. Below is an excerpt that the publisher, Moon Tide Press, highlighted on their site, and the link offers one more poem to enjoy too. To learn more about Vince and order a copy of the book of rabbits, visit https://www.moontidepress.com/copy-of-april-2017.

WHY SHE BIRTHED RABBITS

Perhaps this was her idea of revenge for not being invited to her junior prom. Suitors her age longed for girls who had never woken up, pooled and ready to push. Her night shirts had long been stained with milk, and boys wanted crisp white V-necks, sleeves to roll their pack of cigarettes in, the other exposing their underarm as they reached up, punching the invisible face of their fathers.  Perhaps she had been tired of being unnoticed by them. Pitched on picnic benches, knees hugged up to her chin. Was this to escape a life? She had wanted to dance to a slow song. What she wanted was her body to be hers again. Then, maybe she would be hers again. Birthing rabbits is a strange ordeal. No one ever gives you corsages after.

American Girl pt. 2

Photo obtained via post on Facebook mentioned in this article

“Would you ever date someone outside of your faith and/or culture?” Strangely enough that question has surfaced quite frequently these days. Before I answer, I make it a point to clarify to the questioner that “outside my faith” and “outside my culture” are two vastly different concepts.

To grow up as a proud Muslim Syrian in America means by default my daily existence itself requires constant explanation and justification, whether I want to or not—and sometimes even to my own people. So when I get asked this question, I cannot help but ruminate over the thought, do I want to also justify or explain my existence to the man I am with…for the rest of my life?

Some say it’s possible, some say they do it, but in the last three years I have experienced enough to make me doubt receiving the same liberties I offer every man who crosses my path. How long will a man accept a partner who doesn’t engage with him in social drinking? A partner who does not believe in pre-marital sex? A partner who chooses to fast one month out of the year for Ramadan? A partner who will forever worship her Lord by proudly practicing the act of wearing the headscarf? When people from both my own faith and my own culture have issues with all of the above, can I really hold on to the hope of being wholly accepted from those of a different faith and a different culture on an intimate scale?

I’ve refrained from putting this into words—maybe a form of denial or a fear of retaliation—but a recent experience became my tipping point.

More than once, I learned of some painfully racist and discriminatory statements being said by Christian and Jewish Arabs about Islam, Muslims, and of course the Muslim woman’s headscarf. On a typical day, I wouldn’t be too fazed, considering hateful comments are made multiple times a day by non-Muslims against us, however, this becomes difficult to digest when it’s individuals I know personally, who parade themselves as open minded, liberal, and welcoming friends seeking a unified world.

These are folks who opened “safe spaces” for marginalized communities to create and share art. These are folks who are keen on supporting refugees. These are folks who would have dinner with us one night and the next night post horrendously despicable words about my faith if a terrorist attack occurs, suddenly recanting their claims of peace, love and community.

The latest came about shortly after this year’s Women’s March, when a woman posted a rant about Linda Sarsour’s viability (or lack thereof) to lead the march with a headscarf on. Why? Because this headscarf is supposedly a male tool of oppression she should not be wearing if she chooses to be the physical representation of this march. In summary, this woman doesn’t think Linda Sarsour fits the look of a free-looking woman. I hope you too see the irony in this.

The author of the rant was clearly speaking from a place of unresolved trauma, emphasizing her experience of being born and raised as a Muslim in the Middle East, where she was coerced to wear the headscarf. She responded with love to everyone who praised her piece, but when I kindly inquired as to why she was attacking a liberated woman who was choosing to practice her faith in the West, she ignored. The Women’s March is geared at upholding the rights and liberties of women, including the ability to choose how they dress.

Her ignorant post, bashing a faith she may or may not have left, read like nails on a chalkboard to me, especially considering her status as a supposed healer in the community. But what made all this harder to swallow was seeing who was supporting and sharing her post.

A Jewish Arab man. A Christian Arab woman. Plenty of other non-Arab, non-Muslims who found the right weapon to use. Individuals who I know firsthand, that invite me to spaces focusing on inclusivity and open borders, who send me messages of love and new year wishes, but turn around and write comments such as, “If you want to be a true American, you should take that off because America is not the place for this,” beneath interviews with prominent Muslim American women leaders, like Sarsour. Non-Muslim folks who try and explain my own faith to me, and what my scripture does or does not say, simply to make a statement on how distorted their definition of Americanism is.

Interestingly enough, they would never tell a Jewish or Sikh man that their American identity is void due to the Kippah or Turban. So is it only because this is a religious practice chosen for implementation by a woman that it is a problem to them? Or is it because it is a practice of Islam and we are currently the desirable bullseye of everyone, including Muslims themselves? Are we only acceptable when we’re diluted enough to become the drinkable secular people of faith? Only desirable when we’re the Muslims who eat pork, drink alcohol, don’t pray, don’t fast, don’t wear the scarves, and boast our promiscuity so proudly?

It’s painful to say that I’ve accepted hearing this from mainstream America, but to hear it from non-Muslim Arabs and secular Muslims makes me wonder if they too believe that true American assimilation is in fact a bleaching of our religious, cultural and spiritual traditions? Are they so desperate to be accepted into the false definition of Christian White America that they’re willing to divulge themselves of their truths and strip everyone else of it too?

This year marks 23 years of proudly wearing the headscarf everyone mistakenly calls ‘hijab’ (that’s not the accurate term). I identify this last point simply because it’s a root to a great deal of the misconceptions revolving around this religious practice and choice. Yes, choice. God mandates things upon us in scripture but also emphasizes free will, headscarf included. What media and majority do not highlight is that some of us have to fight for the right to wear this. Instead the focus is solely on the communities that coerce women into it. Those definitely should be discussed but without the vilifying of this religious practice, but fair representation is hard to find.

Day after day I log onto social media to find another ugly attack on this element of worship by so many different individuals, some too painfully surprising, and it only adds to the struggle. But then that also adds to the power of being a proud Muslim woman. I chose this 23 years ago and I choose it everyday with the grace of God, and I am utterly grateful to the mother who remains my roots and backbone and the handful of wholeheartedly supportive communities that see us as we are meant to be seen—valuable contributing mortal humans in society. Those who see us visibly and not as something with a barrier. I am also grateful to the women who work hard to integrate our needs into modest fashion so that we can rock this faith in style. Every time I touch that stage in my curated apparel and headscarf, I feel ready to conquer the world.

See us for who are, as we are, and do not strip away our rights and the choice we make to worship. True liberty is intersectional and not custom tailored to a one-sided agenda.

P.S. The accurate term for the headscarf in Arabic is khimar.

Empty Womban

“We give birth to other beautiful miracles too like...books.”

To hear voices dictate the actions of our womanhood is no longer a surprise; it’s purely exhausting now. I accidentally stumbled on a Ted Talk, while searching for one of my poems and a video suggestion kept appearing with the title "I don't want children -- stop telling me I'll change my mind." I highly suggest you watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_xXC37CDSw&fbclid=IwAR1OO3a2kRIJ9SGB3K09TU-_E2GsNMe6020WOm6peePhKBjdZEHLbSmjllA.

Those 14 minutes and 36 seconds became an awakening, a precursor to the revolution. After watching it and crying at the finale, I felt compelled to post it. It moved me, shedding light on elements of this same lifestyle choice I made over ten years ago, that I didn’t even consider. For example, the verbiage used when communicating with women that insinuate we not only have to have children, but by default we must want to have them. As if both are just a given. Spoiler Alert: They’re not!

It’s not that I didn’t know or experience this often, but hearing it—listening to a woman also experiencing the same things—brought it to life for me. This is why I write and speak out. Sometimes it’s not that something is unknown, it’s that it is unheard. Solidarity blooms from sharing stories.

 Another element Christen Reighter, the woman from the Ted Talk , shared that shook me was how medical professionals treated her and this childfree lifestyle. In all honesty, I struggle to call those in the medical field "professionals" unless they master the art of humaneness. After all, it was a “doctor” who told me I could not call what I experienced domestic violence because I was not beaten to a pulp. What a relief to know that the field of medicine is producing top-notch empathic healers. (That was sarcasm, if you don’t yet know me.) As someone who briefly worked in healthcare, the single biggest complaint from patients was, in fact, communication from doctors. When I saw the corporate puppet master behind the medical industry, I knew why. That’s a whole other article I don’t feel like digging into quite yet. Plus a handful of remarkable women of color physicians are working tirelessly to tackle this.

Christen and her Ted Talk were introducing me to a future I had not yet prepared for: sexism in surgery. And before I started to imagine how much harder it would be for those of us who are non-white women to come forward with our childfree life choices, my Facebook comments came into the picture.

Not long after I shared the Ted Talk, *it* hit the fan. Christen talks about how her childfree life was always a first date conversation and I chuckled because it has always been for me as well. What amazes me is how problematic I am repeatedly told that is (bringing it up on the first date), but I never understood why. Why is that a problem? Why would I waste any time past the first date if it's abundantly clear he and I are not on the same page about something this big?

A random man, someone I don't recall adding on Facebook, caught wind of the post and went off. In summary, he dismantled the viability of my existence as a woman and as a Muslim due to my childfree life choice, something not at all foreign to me. My ex-husband was the first to do so, repeatedly. What angers and hurts me (and many other women) is the continued silence of other men in these abusive situations, not the rant of the one condescending jerk. It further reinforces women’s underlying fear: deep down, men really do support these patriarchal beliefs.

Not once have I expressed this choice without receiving the disgusted facial expressions, the pestering and invasive questions of why or what’s wrong with you? For two years my ex-husband believed I was trying to hide a medical condition that rendered me infertile by saying I choose this lifestyle instead. The man I dated last year was only content with this choice because he was 55 and had two children of his own. Had that not been the case, he would not have agreed. How do I know? Because during the breakup he suggested I consider polygamy because I was "never going to find a man who would be okay with this" so I'd be better off being the other woman.

After sharing the Ted Talk, even women were questioning my reasoning for why. I owe no one an explanation so I never justify my choice. However, everyone does owe me the right to live my life as I see fit. This man on Facebook, however, didn’t seem to think so. He moved the harassment from public comments to private messages. Insults about how doomed I am with this western brainwashing, causing me to lose sight of my true Godly purpose. That I need to get reeducated on my faith because my headscarf is looking more like a front. Needless to say, his ass was blocked.

For the first 24 hours, I wasn’t fazed. Just a day in the life of being a free-thinking woman. By the second day though, something started to brew. Every single Muslim man I have ever met on this planet holds the same beliefs as this Facebooker; they just won’t say it aloud. This guy was merely gutsy because he had nothing to lose. On the same sad note, I find that a great majority of Muslim women share the same sentiments with half a handful of exceptions. Muslims have a long way to go, especially with regards to child rearing and sexuality, but to be fair, I will not sit here and pretend non-Muslims are masters at feminism and women's autonomy either. Case in point: GOP.

It’s a disheartening and frightening realization to come to, our worth as women nullified when we don’t have children. I wonder often about those who physically cannot have children. How do these communities and societies view them? Disposable? Insignificant? The answer is yes. I know one too many stories of infidelity because the husbands valued the nonexistent humans to be above the women they married.

There is also the fact that men lie about this to get their way. I have uncovered many a men who try to start dating me, pretending they're on the same page, only to discover they're either just trying to get sex or on an undercover conversion therapy mission to "fix" me. (Then men ask us why we don't trust so easily.)

We're exhausted. People need to once and for all break out of these traditional constructs that convince them of ridiculous roles that limit their viability as productive members of society. However, seeing as how only two people stood up to that Facebooker, both of whom were women, I'm not too optimistic about concrete social change.

I just want to live in a world where a woman is recognized as nowhere near less valuable simply because she cannot or does not want to have children. And men, men need to unlearn most of what they know and re-learn how to see us as human beings with the same bodily autonomy and rights to live that they hold. We women are capable of "birthing" so much more than children and should be appreciated and respected for what we provide this world for its survival. From beautiful miracles of revolutions to nonprofit organizations to legislative changes to educational opportunities to books (https://www.amazon.com/Oceans-Flames-Lady-Narrator/dp/1547259256).