Women. Life. Freedom.
These last few weeks have been grueling for Iranians across the diaspora. Every day we are cloaked in feelings of grief, guilt, rage, and paranoia. Frankly, these emotions are a blessing compared to the horrific brutality our people in Iran are facing at the hands of the regime. A brutality, it seems, hardly any person or institution will pay attention to. To be screaming for the world to bear witness, to be a voice for our people, and to be met with silence is a unique form of hell.
In this heaviness, I have been taking refuge in my work—in helping others cultivate balance and vitality. It is a gift to be in business with and for myself because I no longer have to hang up parts of my identity in order to fit in with white corporate culture. I don't have to pretend that measured and muted "statements of support" are somehow equal to real action in these moments of great social injustice. I don't have to dissociate from my pain, my grief, my joy, my self—a great harm I will no longer accept.
As a student of Ayurveda, I ground myself in the principle that we are all expressions of one interconnected, highly complex natural system. That selfcare does not exist without collective care. That a fight for the safety, freedom, and prosperity of the Iranian people is a fight for the safety, freedom, and prosperity of all people.
One of our great Persian poets said it best:
بنیآدم اعضای یک پیکرند
که در آفرينش ز یک گوهرند
چو عضوى بهدرد آورَد روزگار
دگر عضوها را نمانَد قرار
تو کز محنت دیگران بیغمی
نشاید که نامت نهند آدمی
Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.
— Saadi (rhyming translation by M. Aryanpoor)