Today I celebrate the freedom and privilege of owning and expressing my femininity, in a system that has taught many of us to minimize ourselves in the name of shame and peace-keeping.

I celebrate a newfound gratitude for my roots, and the generations of Arab women in my family who’ve gifted me their resilience, humility, goofiness, and unquestioned devotion - the very tools with which I am able to navigate + deepen my independence in a new world. 🌹

I celebrate the magnificent power behind pursuing a career in the arts, and the courage of the most marginalized voices who embody subversion over subservience - knowing that this visibility comes with tremendous sacrifice. Theirs has pushed me to grow, and must be protected/cherished daily.

I celebrate the stunningly inspiring, heart-giving, BRILLIANT, and uplifting women in my life who spark endless joy and love to everyone around them. ♥️

Happy International Women’s Day, today and every day!!

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"Fall Asleep" - for the daughters of immigrants whose dual-identity balancing act often intensifies our sense of safety within our own skin. And for those of us who've been caught in the vulnerable dance between the familiar, and the pull towards something greater. It's a terrifying limbo, but all the more worthwhile: daring to indulge those glimmers of freedom beyond our daydreams, when we've been taught to place the world's comfort over our own.

“Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape. These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling..." - Khalil Gibran, On Freedom

August 4th, 2021

This morning feels eerily quiet, from where I am. The sunlit stillness and greenery and faint city soundtrack and gentle chirpings outside my intact glass windows - are at once lulling and foreboding, like I’ve landed in this illusively pristine post-apocalyptic bubble away from it all. Like waking up from a hazy dream sequence and fighting to recall the unsettling details, that linger indefinitely.

The physical distance is at once arbitrary, ‘lucky,’ and vividly, remorsefully imposed - I was never meant to grow up here. So many of us weren’t.

Today is a warped day of mourning - the numbers, the individual lives turned mass-groupings, the ‘tragic’ that transcends any tangible grasp on tragedy, the sensational surrealism of nightmarish lows somehow prescribed to millions as acceptable ‘real life,’ the insomnia amidst the rubble of family heirlooms turned crystalline weapons of war, the casually heinous state-sanctioned escape from even the tiniest morsel of accountability or bare-minimum humanity, the infuriating descent into deeper hellscapes ever since…the preventability of it all.

They knew.

Here in the diaspora, we carry the ill-defined, numbing, yet gut-punching ache of each massive blow. The privileged guilt and crushing obligation of ‘leaving home’ is in our bloodlines, but the unconditional attachment we feel for all things Lebanon is unspoken, and ever-present, for a reason.

Today I’m thinking of the immeasurable collective grief and rage and exhaustion and perpetual heartbreak and integrity of those taking to the streets of Beirut and beyond…and those tending to each and every layer of loss, in its personal and external vastness, from wherever they are. I know I am.

Lebanon deserves our attention, and thank you for hearing our stories.

- Leila