Quickly disenchanted by the corporate world, I created what I thought was my dream job, a job that took me all around the world and allowed me to interact with diverse cultures. Through the timeless wisdom found in their folklore, myth, artistry, and ceremony, I learned that to live into our greatest potential takes a deep, devoted life, rooted in connection to oneself, others, and the collective. When this “dream job” came to its natural ending, I felt lost and confused. It was amidst this confusion and questioning of what I might become next that set me on a new path.
Two core threads wove together to support me in this exploration: contemplative and embodied practice. Working with somatic embodiment practices helped me understand and re-story trauma encoded into my nervous system, reframe femininity, and come into a new relationship with my body as a living system in need of ongoing care and regeneration. Spending time in deep study within a comprehensive paradigm rooted in contemplation and applied healing practices has given me language and structure for a new way of being that’s allowed me to confidently pursue my path by better understanding my uniqueness and by freeing myself from limiting societal narratives. My mission is to bridge eastern and western modalities into a unified space that serves my community in our evolution towards greater vitality, possibility, and expansiveness.
My story is rooted in a desire to transcend limitations to discover my highest potential.
Bridging worlds…
I’m someone who grew up having to think about which country to cheer for at the World Cup, which Arabic accent to put on, how much time I had to answer “so where you from?” I’ve always felt myself as a bridge: between cultures, countries, histories, paradigms, ways of living and seeing life…. In a world that relies on blacks and whites, I am the grey. The in between has been my home for as long as I can remember.
This role of connector or bridge has been the result of my unique life path. I grew up in many different and often contrasting environments, and quickly understood that to survive I had to learn to adapt. So I got very good at that. I observed and studied people everywhere I went. I learned 4 languages, lived in 7 cities, and visited over 50 countries. And although this chameleon-like skill to adapt laid the foundation for a long journey of self reclamation, it did teach me beautiful lessons about people - how similar we all are in our desires, fears, and needs, despite our best efforts to differentiate from one another.
But most importantly, this ability to relate to people has earned me the third cup of tea. In far eastern cultures, you are invited into a home for a cup of tea as a guest. If the host family feels comfortable with you, you are then offered a second cup, and this is a big compliment. But you are only invited to a third cup when there is a deep bond and a sense of kinship that is felt. The third cup is a rare honor that I am humbled to have received, literally and metaphorically, in different places.
The trust that the third cup symbolizes is my diamond in the darkness. For all the hardships that can come with the feeling of not truly belonging to any one place, I have the gift of being invited where others aren’t, and this has largely been the source of my growth and wisdom. It seeded the idea at a young age, that I am here to pave my own path. It’s made me question all the paradigms I’ve been born into: from my role as an Arab woman, to my role in my family, lineage, society, and the world.
Pilgrimage & Travel
I’ve always been drawn to adventure. To me, exploring unknown territory has meant discovering new parts of myself. Every journey has been a mirror in this way, revealing new facets of my nature that are dormant within the comforts of daily life.
My story with travel and adventure started young. I boarded my first plane ten days after I was born; attended my first month long camp at age nine, 5,500 km from my nearest relative; took my first unaccompanied flight at eleven, cross Atlantic. I’d visited over twenty countries by the time I hit my double digits. Being exposed to different cultures from a young age has been my greatest blessing and teacher.
In my teens and early twenties, adventure meant backpacking across Europe, Asia, and everywhere in between. But slowly, my desire to explore wide morphed into a desire to explore deep. My first pilgrimage took place within the context of my Muslim heritage - I performed Hajj, which brought me to several holy sites in Saudi Arabia including Mecca. My second pilgrimage was on the Camino de Santiago, where for 450km I carried all my belongings on my back and walked across Galicia until I reached Santiago de Compostela. And my latest pilgrimage was a solo tour of the Ring Road by bike, a stunning (and very windy) 1,500 km around Iceland. Each of these journeys has had a profound imprint and changed me in its own unique way.
While I continue to deepen my relationship with pilgrimage and all the ways in which it transforms us, I now view life itself as a pilgrimage. To me this means a life of attention, awareness, openness, and surrender.
Home & Culture
I come from a culture where each person is born into a role with it’s own set of rules and parameters. While this structure has allowed our ancestors to survive and prosper, it can feel out of place in our world today. Our Arab heritage is abundant in beauty, wisdom, love, compassion, and support. I wish to honor these pillars of tradition, while creating space for change and growth.
I believe we are a transition generation. We are here to change the status quo - to make space for more freedom while preserving the beauty inherent in our culture. And we’re all stewards of this change. It’s happening despite us. The question is whether or not we are going to participate in it.
Our responsibility is to make choices for ourselves, based on our essence and nature. For the firs time, doing the (seemingly) “selfish” thing is what is going to best serve our community. I’m here to do this work for myself and to facilitate it for others. I desire for us all to de-homogenize from mainstream culture to embody the fullness of who we are.
That is how we change the world… for the better.
