How I Find Empathy and Wisdom in My Alternate Reality of America
When I was married to a narcissist, some friends would question my judge of character. Some mocked and chastised me in my own home. “You married too young,” one said. “We told you so,” another whispered. Two others gathered in the kitchen late at night, making plans, while I lingered in the dark hallway. I was too foolish, too tied down, too backwards for their wild travels ahead.
This story is not to demand justice or apologies. This story is just to say, I know what it’s like to be fooled. I know what it’s like to wait and want for a love that will never come. …
Release fear and find love every chance you get
“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution”
― Aldous Huxley, 1961, author of Brave New World
In Part One, we explored the intersection of real social justice, politics, and narcissistic abuse. We dove deeply into the grief and the anger. I also shared how I overcame my fear of getting canceled and how my mother inspires me to live freely by dancing like no one’s watching. …
Stop Apologizing For Your Sovereignty
“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution”
― Aldous Huxley, 1961, author of Brave New World
This piece is not for everyone. I’ve been dancing around the obvious split in our society between those who resist the revolution of free speech and thought, and those who embrace it. …
Do not fear this light.
Planets aligning in celebration
For what on earth could they be?
Our ceilings shattering, our floors crumbling
Lost, veiled illusions spinning for too long on the rings of Saturn.
Artists know the difference between illusion and truth.
We are all artists in The New Age
Where the word “all” is met with love, not separation.
Every poem is born real, and the ink never runs dry.
Tangled in the wires of a pen,
I’m not sure what will happen.
That’s why you’re here, aren’t you? For a pious poet’s prediction?
Open your eyes wider to the future that lives in the ink of your own pen.
Yours. …
What I Hope Will Come of The Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius on December 21, 2020
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” — Zora Neale Hurston
Collectively, we are in an elusive in-between place. We are facing unknowns by fixating on apparent certainties. We are recovering. We are exploring shadows and finding true light. I feel, with all my being, that we are birthing a new earth. It is a miraculous time.
In seemingly every part of 2020, I’m being told to grieve and fear. But the stars and celestial bodies are speaking to me in different tones.
On December 21st of this year, the winter solstice, Jupiter and Saturn will nearly touch at a striking 0.1 degrees apart. This is less than the diameter of a full moon. Even if you’re not much into space, it could be of interest that March 4, 1226 was the last time these giant planets were so close and visible to us…and this time around, they will be uniting in Aquarius. …
When hate from the left is loud, love must be louder
The most polarizing position you can take these days is uninhibited love.
When June hit, it was you who took me in for who I am. It was you who loved me unconditionally. It was you who welcomed my questions. You accepted me fully as a complicated, conflicted halfie. As my political views split with my bi-ethnicity, you gave me the space to feel whole again―to walk the other side without any expectation that I would stay there.
As the unrest for racial justice reached a boiling point, I did too. When one half of me was supposed to feel shame and the other half was supposed to feel empowered, you told me, no. …
Independents could be the new progressives of the future. Here’s why
I am the undecided unicorn voter you’ve been searching for. And I am not undecided really — I am morally torn.
Being torn in half by two questionable choices is nothing new for me. My first time was post-9/11 when President Bush declared the Axis of Evil and insisted, “You’re either with us or against us.” I was a 12-year-old “other” — a white half-middle eastern kid shunned to the margins of a town of churches and pizza places. …
Having a vulnerable conversation is the bravest thing you can do
Speak to a flower sweetly, and it will grow. Speak to a flower callously and it will still grow, just in different ways. I know this. I’ve been that flower.
Like gardeners, we choose what we feed. We can feed fear. We can feed hope. We can feed love. This language of growth is pulling me through 2020 and, through my lens as a writer and interviewer, I want to share how I am reframing non-violent communication as kind communication while navigating some difficult conversations.
One question beneath the surface of our discord is: How can we stay compassionate even under the most challenging circumstances? …
Decades before BLM chanted “Death to America,” this political slogan sparked the Islamic Iranian Revolution in 1979.
“If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it’s that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don’t know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.”
-Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-born French graphic novelist, cartoonist, illustrator, film director and children’s book…
Being biracial is like having a moth fluttering in my mind and learning to train that moth
Being biracial is like having a moth fluttering in my mind and learning to train that moth. The United States may not feel so united right now because, in the righteous night before dawn, perhaps we are learning to tame countless moths who want to be free from the systems and the labels and the bubbles that shackle our spirits. Our binary society of right and wrong, of good and evil, craves certainty and ease. Collectively, we are fighting erasure and fractured identity. We have been for a long time. It’s frustratingly beautiful.
This is what I’m seeing from my small seat. I am an Iranian American in Pennsylvania. I am white passing, an identity that feels perpetually transient. I am of the crystals of my native Arkansas and the turquoise of my mother’s Middle East. I love the flat simple land of the midwest and the cool blue eyes of my father. I dance with the paisley scarves flown from Iran and seek refuge in my mom’s honey brown eyes. …
About
