stillness

I haven’t written anything in months. I have been staring out my bedroom window, wondering when things will get calmer. The older and older I get, the more I value stillness and silence in my life. The more I value bigger experiences, seeing new places, and working on being a better person, not for anyone but myself. I realized how much I care about things and the people in my life. But I started to care about the wrong things. My heart started getting consumed with things that were only bad for me. I lived every day in constant anxiety, my heart racing, and my head spinning and I often wondered what peace feels and looks like. Stuck between what is and what was.

The thought that you could be anything but yourself has always walked across my mind. But even more so, the thought that you have to be more than what you are, more than what God created you to be, is something I think about constantly. We are taught as humans that your ability to perform well, how well you can fit into other people’s boxes, and playing up to everyone’s imagination of you is one of the only things that will determine how truly worthy you really are. People have always applauded me for doing this so well, of molding myself into anything anyone wanted me to be while masking who I really am inside. In many ways, I am scared of being myself because I have spent so much of my life caring too much about what people think of me. But I am learning every day that there's bravery in being authentic. There came a time in my life when being called fake was the worst thing in the world. I cared so much about being authentic that I kept forgetting that my whole life I was living behind a wall and there never came a time when it felt comfortable for those walls to come down.

The thing that I always think about is how much stillness, solitude, and silence have helped me sow together the fabrics of my life that have always felt too torn. It brought me the answers that I needed in order for me to feel any type of stability in my life. There’s a sense of grounding you feel when you start to break away from the boxes, the cornerstones, and the walls that have always surrounded you.

I have lived with the notion that in order for me to be accepted, maybe I need to be more. But existence has always required us to be more than what we are without realizing that we are just enough. Accepting that was a battle, but it was a battle that I had to fight for, for so many years. But for the first time in my life, I am winning.

Writing in a lot of ways has helped me realize that authenticity doesn’t just exist within the confines of these pages but in the world around me.

Yes, I cared a lot about a lot of things in my life but when I started to focus on what’s really important, I realized that caring about the wrong things can drive you down a long and dark path.  That oftentimes keeping a brave heart, wide open can become your salvation, and in a lot of ways it has. But without bravery there is fear and I have let fear rule my life for far too long and it has suffocated me.

I couldn’t breathe most of the time but I was also incredibly tired because I was using all my energy on things that never truly mattered. It was easier just to exist. But I didn’t want to be more than what I already am. I didn’t want my mere existence to be something where I am working towards an image that was really never me. As I got older, getting to know my own heart has helped me realize that the people who could never truly see you for you are the same people who will never feel your heart because oftentimes they never care to. The opposite can also be said about others, there will also be people who see a glimpse into your heart, and all of a sudden your hearts are connected.  If there’s anything I learned in the process is that my heart and my presence is like the moon and the sun, one of this world. There’s no one else I can be better than myself and yes it may take a brave and open heart to be authentic and real, but it is that bravery that exists in a world full of performers and imposters, that will show you how truly one of a kind you really are.

Somalis and the desire for social mobility

When I was 21, I started my career in politics. I believed that if I worked on progressive issues and candidates that things will change. But the more and more I went on with it, I started to see things that have bothered my soul in more ways than one. Those years have allowed me to start to view my relationship with politics and the US political structure differently. I worked on 3 campaigns in those 3 years and it has taught me a lot about what I now know will work and what won't. The thing is we all believe that our search for power comes from those who have always had it, the people who have always benefited from our power structures. We believe that if we receive power from these people then maybe we can get some type of social, economic, and political mobility at the end of the day. In reality, that’s what being in capitalist politics means, the search for some upward mobility and we believe we can only achieve this by the top %1 giving it to us. This requires us to play the same game that they have built. The same game that was made by and for them. When it comes to the political games, all we are is pawns in their agenda, figureheads that they can use, and nothing else. Having political power however is no joke, you have control over thousands of people’s lives. You can decide what happens to a regular person who you are serving. But in our imperialistic, capitalistic, society, any type of political power means it’s being exploited by the very people who have built the system, to begin with. The same game that so many people play because they are under the false illusion that it’ll give them some type of social mobility. But what they don’t often realize is that it is all a lie.

This last year, was the year that a record number of Somali-Americans ran for office and won. After Ilhan Omar’s 2018 historic congressional run, it inspired probably hundreds of Somalis to follow in her footsteps and win their respective seats. Somalis who are searching for that same social mobility that Omar received when she won her seat. Politics doesn’t just come with an individual title but it also comes with respect, acknowledgment, and fame. Though I have never agreed with politicians playing their part in celebrity culture. A lot of politicians do play a part in it, including Ilhan Omar. Both Democrats and Republicans alike, are coming out and campaigning on the same principles that I believe have ruined our communities and our people back home. They are participating within the same system that has murdered millions of people and colonized many countries in the global south. But what can you expect to receive from your oppressors? What can you imagine would happen when you work by their rules? Do you believe you’ll receive your freedom from them? Or do you believe that you’ll just be a bit ahead of people like you? Assata Shakur once said in her autobiography, “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.”

Every system in this country whether economic, political, or social was built on the praxis of exploitation and domination. It has never been about the well-being and the health of our communities. They make millions off of us by keeping us sick, poor, and in need. When we do well, they lose millions. What makes you think that they want what’s best for you? They’ll use you until they accomplish what’s on their agenda and until you cave so much, you’ll start changing into them, complacent and docile creatures working to do anything to keep the title but without the power, because you’ll take any bit of freedom from your oppressors. You’ll do anything for that upward mobility. It was because of US influence in the Ogaden war in the 1980s that became a catalyst for the government to slowly crumble. It was the attempted coup carried out by the US and many Somali counterrevolutionaries to assassinate the honorable President Siad Barre that inflicted fear on the Somali people. There has been a large interest to keep Somalia destabilized, keep it broken, and unwaning for so many years because the US and many other western countries know how valuable Somalia is. Their ultimate goal is to keep it broken long enough so that they can take advantage of Somalia’s resources because they know if they do, they’ll make millions. But for Somalia to be thriving and free was never in their best interest.

This has caused the US to establish, Africom, anti-terrorism missions led by the CIA, US bombs being dropped onto innocent civilians in Somalia, and the constant negative depiction made by US western media; google images of Somalia being ravaged by war, and media outlets calling Somalia, “the most dangerous country in the world.”

All to destabilize a country that used to be the crowning jewel of the Horn of Africa. This is the same country that these Somali politicians want to participate in. They are fighting for crumbs in a country that won’t even give them a full 5-course meal. They are diligent in playing the same game that they have created. All so that they can receive the tiniest bit of freedom from a country that only sees them as dollar signs.

Now, what does this mean? How do we move past this? How do we build systems by us and for us? What does that mean for the Somali diaspora all over the country? The reality is, we will never find freedom from our oppressors, from the same people that every system and institution in our country has benefited from because all that does is us fighting to be something in their eyes. Being Black, Muslim, and Somali in the US means we become the most criminalized, economically disadvantaged, and surveilled community here in America. It puts us at the intersection where we are fighting to survive every day. We are fighting to receive any type of social mobility, any type of economic freedom even if it’s a little bit. However, this requires us to play the same game; the same game that was never created for us in the first place.

There are always two types of people in this country, the exploited and the exploiter. The exploited is the embodiment of an 80-year-old man who works 40 hours a week just so he can pay his bills, at just 25$/hour. He has worked his whole life, working his ass off, barely making enough to survive. The exploiter is the person who has learned the rules of the game, the capitalistic and political game, and played the game to their benefit. Not realizing that they have been pawns in this game all long because to play this game means that they are forced to sacrifice their morals and values for the game. But really, who are we without our morals? Who are we without our values? When we wake up to our material reality, that’s when we find out which one we are, we begin to see that the freedom that we are always seeking has always been within us. We have always held the answers to the world’s best-kept secrets because there is a reason, a big reason, why these people don’t want us to know these secrets, why they don’t teach it in schools, because they know if we do have access to it, we will be free. To be free means that they can no longer exploit us. It means that we don’t have to play by their rules anymore. It means we have the autonomy to create the material conditions that are made by and for us. We can start fighting to free our communities, our loved ones, and our lives. We start learning from our ancestors, from our history, we start to become enlightened, and finally, we become radicalized. In that, we are born anew. But this starts with us. It takes us looking within our own communities. It takes a close look at the people who are the most impacted by our imperialistic, capitalistic society. It takes us looking at the houseless folks who aren’t able to find housing, the working class mother who barely makes enough to feed her kids, and the people who learned the rules of the game and ended up changing. It takes us to watch with our hearts, our minds, and our consciousness to show us that capitalism and imperialism is very much alive; a raging beast that just consumes everything it comes across violently. When we wake up, the whole world starts to look different. The same upward mobility that you are seeking, the same game you were told you had to play to win, will seem like a scam. You will soon realize all of it, even the American dream that you have been sold on a golden platter—— has been a lie. That’s when you are called to act, organize, and learn the ways of our powerful ancestors who have saved us from the violence of western hegemonic imperialistic, capitalism.

That’s when you will become a revolutionary. Are you with us?

surviving the storm

The truth is my parents were survivors of war. My mom witnessed her family members being killed and raped during Somalia’s civil war. My dad was held at gunpoint. It wasn’t safe for either of them. So they fled. They fled and migrated all the way to the US. My parents lost everything. Their homes were demolished. Their families are scattered all over the world. Their Somali identity has no meaning. The country that they were once proud of is now in shambles. The realities of losing everything you once knew and the unbelievable grief and pain that comes from never seeing your country thriving and seeing your people living freely are so unbelievably traumatic.

Me being a child of survivors of war and that pain and grief being passed on to me. That trauma being passed on to me. I can feel that pain in my bones. I can feel the grief within me. My mom has nightmares of those times. My dad similarly. Not being able to live comfortably in a foreign land, unable to come back to the place you once called home, is agonizing. It’s a feeling I would never wish on anyone.

The reality behind all of it is that through colonialization and capitalism, our traumas have lived like a block for us to become our best selves and make it so that we pass on that trauma for future generations. My parents have accumulated so much trauma from that war that it has become s a living part of who they are. It shows in everything they do and in how they interact with us. I know somehow my mom wants nothing more than to raise us in Somalia. However, we all know that she was forced to migrate to a whole new country where she doesn’t know anything. The reality is forced migration is violence. It is a violence that was inflicted by western powers coming into a country and doing whatever it can to destabilize a country so much more than the people of the said country have no other choice than to flee and migrate somewhere else where they can get the same resources and education that the West stole from them.

The reality is my parents never thought that the civil war was going to happen. That it was going to ruin their lives and that they were going to be forced to live with that trauma for the rest of their lives. When you experience a trauma such as war, watching your loved ones get killed right in front of you, knowing that some soldier had sexually assaulted your sister, that trauma lives within you. It can be stored in your body in many ways and cause your parasympathetic nervous system to go into overdrive. For many people, it causes an intense fear that something’s going to happen to them. They have flashbacks of what they have seen, or they have nightmares of those nights of watching their loved one die right in front of them. It puts their body into flight or fight mode, where the body is in an intense state of survival as if it has something that it needs to run away from or fight. The mind can shut off to protect itself. The body can stand stagnant and work as if you are just a mere living corpse. In other cases, what happened during that time can be depressing and can cause an overwhelming feeling of guilt because you were one of the lucky ones. You were able to escape while so many didn’t. You have family members who have been murdered, but you managed to escape, and that guilt will never give you a chance to breathe. Not even for a second. As a result, it can cause an immense wave of depression where getting out of bed can be a difficult task. But you have to be brave. Brave enough for your family. So you carry on. As if nothing is wrong. In reality, you are hurting in silence, and no one even knows. They can’t know. You were able to escape. You are free. You are in America. Make us proud and work every day to achieve the American dream. But are you free? If those nights make you weep yourself to sleep every night, are you really free? Besides all the trauma you experienced back home, feeling the racial trauma of being a black person, or better yet, a black African person is adding a nice little layer to the already traumatic cake. Living in a black neighborhood, you hear gunshots outside your window, only to be brought back to the nights you watched your loved one getting murdered. You start bawling as the vivid memories come back in a rush. You feel your body tense up, only to have a panic attack seconds after. The thing is, there is a grief you experience as well. Of knowing you're not going to be seeing your family anytime soon. Of feeling like you have to leave a huge part of who you are to a world that has never accepted you. The fact that you are grieving not seeing your family anymore, or the family you lost, or even your culture behind it is unbelievably painful. They say anxiety and depression go hand in hand. It is very much true. A lot of us deal with both waves of these mental illnesses off and on every day. Some of us can’t have one without the other, and some of us are dealing with both even if we didn’t know it. A video about trauma on a child’s development talks about how many of us as kids are in homeostasis where our bodies are functioning. But when we experience trauma, it rewires our brain, and it either puts us into flight or fight mode or an in a depressive episode. It can cause our bodies to defend themselves or want to hide from society and get out. Kids aren’t taught to regulate their bodies and work on healthy coping mechanisms or even know how to deal with it, which causes them to deal with it even more. When it comes to the trauma of forced migration, escaping from war, and coming to a new country having to be able to relearn a whole new language, get accustomed to the culture, etc. while also feeling the implications of being racially different, those two mental illnesses can occur and has occurred for so many refugees and migrants who had to deal with forced migration. A lot of us cope with what we had to experience by forced assimilation, by feeling like, to succeed in any capacity here in this country, you have to adopt the American ways and leave your identity back where you came from. In some cases, this even means having a colonized mentality where you are nicer to the white people in your community than anyone else who seems far lesser than you. It means distancing yourself farther and farther away from the black struggle.

“Im not black, I am Somali”

Sound familiar? Another way we also cope with all that we experienced is by hanging so tight to the bounds of religion because religion is the only thing I believe that gives us, in some ways, the peace that we are looking for. The peace that our brains and this world refuse to give us. But in many ways, this can give us the perception that we are okay while so many are suffering as a result. The thing is, religion can give you so much. But you will still feel those panic attacks. You will still have those thoughts of hopelessness and despair. It is not an end be-all solution without understanding how those nights you spent weeping of the unbelievable grief you experience losing your loved ones can impact your brain chemistry and the homeostasis of your parasympathetic nervous system. It won’t do anything without understanding how those traumatic moments live and breathe within you.

The thing is, forced migration is violence and trauma that so many survivors of war have been dealing with for years. I remember my mom finding ways to distract herself from the anxiety-inducing thoughts whenever she remembers her mom, who she hasn’t seen for 30 years. I remember my dad not wanting to hear the word Galkacyo because that one word brings him a whole world of pain. The trauma my parents experienced watching firsthand lose everything they ever cared about, only to migrate to a country that never truly welcomed them in, is something that so many migrants who faced forced migration have to go through.

There is a war going on in my country. In all the years I have
lived in this body, there has been no peace. My mother still
has hope in her heart, she keeps a suitcase packed just in
case. This whole life we have been waiting for our flight to be
called. In the recurring dream I board a plane to Mogadishu.
Every passenger on the plane is my mother, my mother in
the seat beside me reading a crime novel, my mother in an
ill-fitting uniform serving drinks, my mother as the pilot,
winking, tipping his cap. When the plane starts to fall out
the sky I wake up.

— Warsan Shire

The reality is that even in those moments, our parents never knew how to ask for help. They never knew how to. They developed coping strategies like what I said before to get through what they are going through without understanding that it will only cause further harm to them and those around them in so many ways. Your body holds trauma in many ways, and trauma ends up changing your DNA as well. When it comes to the violence of forced migration and war, it has a way of changing your brain chemistry and the homeostasis of your parasympathetic nervous system that, if not given ways to regulate, heal, and move on from it, can end up killing you as a result. Furthermore, when all you have ever known is war, you re-create that environment for those around you. So in a way, for many children of these survivors, it means that they end up experiencing a war in their own home. It means the sexual assault that those in their families have been through, the violence that they have gone through will continue happening for their children.

It means those same habits still keep happening. It means that the harmful coping mechanisms, the restless nights, the moments where the unbalancing of your brain chemistry and the disruption of your parasympathetic nervous system will continue because it is passed on from your own parents. When you haven’t taken the time to heal from that trauma, that trauma will live inside you until you decide otherwise. You will re-create those violent moments in your own home and with those around you. The cycle will continue.

Until someone in your family decides to break that cycle and so happens that it is always the children of these survivors of war, for some families, it is always the eldest daughter of the family. I was that person for my family. I was the one who decided that I was tired of carrying a trauma that I never asked to carry. I migrated along with my family when I was 6 years old to a whole new country that has never welcomed me in. Where my blackness and my faith were always at security, where it pushed me into boxes I never wanted to be in. Where I felt silenced, alone, lost, inhibited in being everything that I ever wanted to be, and I felt scared. As a result, causing me into a deep bout of depression that had a huge grey cloud over my head, unable to budge, only to have debilitating anxiety a couple of years later. I was a people pleaser, unable to say no, have adequate boundaries, so incredibly hypervigilant, and I ended developing empathetic traits. These traits were trauma responses to the violence I experienced due to forced migration, my parent’s divorce, moving every two years, and living under the white gaze for so much of my childhood. My anxiety and depression were by-products of everything that my parents went through and more. My mental illness felt like a prison that I was trying everything that I could do to break out of, and my trauma acted like a corrections officer, holding me down every chance it got. It got so bad to the point where I knew if I didn’t get help, it would kill me. People always talk about how your mental health plays a huge part in how healthy you are. My mental health affected me so badly to the point where I was having stomach issues. I knew I needed help, which is what I did. I started therapy then got diagnosed with moderate to severe anxiety shortly a while after. I was the first in my family to start therapy. To seek help when my parents never did. I am the first one in my family to break that cycle. Our parents have given up everything they ever knew due to the immeasurable pain that comes with knowing that the place they have called home for so many years will no longer exist; the trauma they experienced is a trauma they never knew how to hold. But for so many of these children of these survivors and me, we knew that the first step to getting better and moving forward is admitting that you need help. Taking that first step will require bravery and courage because you are doing something that your parent’s never learned how to do. The thing is, so many folks fall into this cycle of feeling like no one understands them. That no one gets it. If you are dealing with a mental illness and carrying a pain that you never wanted to carry, I want you to know you are never alone. Taking that first step is scary, but I promise once you do, you’ll never want to look back. No one should ever struggle alone, and no one deserves to suffer in silence. So much of our parents did. But the reality is, we don’t have to. We can break that cycle. I know we can.

When you are healing and are learning how to regulate your own emotions, your nervous system, and more, that feeling becomes addicting. In a real way, I was tired of merely surviving because I knew staying in survival mode would kill me but moving towards my own healing, I knew it would save me.

You are breaking the same cycle that has lived in your family for years. The same cycle that has caused that trauma to breathe inside of you. Your ancestors and your whole bloodline will thank you for it. We don’t have to perpetuate the same things our parents did, and we don’t have to continue the same cycle of harm and trauma. We can heal that pain that has lived inside of us and ultimately break a cycle that has kept us down for many years. We can create new coping strategies, new forms of healing, and reimagining a family where we are thriving, not merely surviving. Where we are living healthy, happy, and safe.

Whenever I think about it, I remember how much it caused me so much pride because I realize who I am doing it for. I know my ancestors would be so proud of me. But the bravery it took me to admit that I needed help and all the stuff that I learned in the process is what inspires me to write about it because if it weren’t for all the trauma that my parents went through—I wouldn't have.

w/ all love

N.A

Reimagining your own colonial trauma

In thinking of my own relationship to colonization and my own colonial history. I realize that I am a by-product of the many colonial influences and control Somalia has had. I am somewhat you call, a colonial subject, even if I am not still living within colonial walls. I am still being colonized even if I don’t seem like I am. As a colonized individual, colonial trauma still lives within me even if I feel like it isn’t. 

From the moment I was young, my sense of safety was gone which left me afraid every day. I experienced so much migration trauma as a little black girl migrating from Uganda because I never knew what “home” looked like for me. Coming here I felt scared every day because I never felt safe enough to be myself or to live freely. I remember the days going into my first-grade class, with every eye on me, my teacher calling me that little, “refugee girl”. Growing up I would hear the N-word thrown around me every day. Even if I didn’t know what it meant, I was afraid. I grew up with no identity, with no sense of self. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know where I came from or who my people were. 

I grew up poor so I believed that my salvation to gaining any economic mobility was getting a college degree. My parents never went to college. So I was the first in my family to have received an education from a Western institution. I went to school to be able to learn, gain the skills I needed, and essentially play their “game” so I could be better off financially and economically. I ended up finding my “safety” within a colonial institution by believing that I will be so much better off with a colonial education when I wasn’t. But all that did was leave me with more questions. 

I have been put into boxes my whole life. I always felt like my story was being told for me. I was told you are this, you are that for as long as I can remember without any recollection of any knowledge as to who I was for myself. Without giving me the opportunity to learn more about my own history. Even in college, when I went to go seek those answers for myself, it just left me more confused

I didn’t know it then. But that was a form of colonization. I was being colonized since I was young. My sense of self was stolen by my colonizer putting me into boxes I never wanted to be in. My history was stolen when I never felt like I had access to the knowledge of my community, of my history, and my people, and I had to go to the confines of colonial walls of a western institution in order to have that access. Then they gave me a new story, a new imagination but all it was is a colonial imagination. By keeping me within the lowest amount of social consciousness all my life, erasing the truth behind my history, I was left with this idea that I was nothing. That I am nothing without my colonizer. So I had to play the same game as them. I had to believe the same thing as them without understanding they are the reason that I am in this situation that I am in because they created it. They end up giving me colonial answers to a problem they created. With the understanding that my very existence was because of some white man’s imagination of who I am and I NEVER had that opportunity to shape my identity for myself.

All of this means, 

Somalia is a colonized country. 

Colonialization means dehumanization. Somalis are seen as savages, terrorists, and violent people because of the western depictions of Somalis. It was seen like that for hundreds of years. Using our effort to resist colonial forces against us and comparing us to animals is dehumanizing. They took away our humanity which left us vulnerable to more colonialization which resulted in the colonializing of the mind. By subjecting and dehumanizing us, it left us unable to have a strong sense of worth and belonging in our own land. They went into our land, stole all of our resources, colonized our minds by making us feel less than, and this resulted in very much colonized people unable to fend for themselves and restore their own land without feeling like they need help of the colonizer.  

The colonizing of our minds means the trauma we experience feeling like we are less than our colonizer, of feeling so desperate that we seek the validation of our oppressor. That trauma breathes within us. It is a trauma resulting from the colonizer continuing on beating our psyche until we break and we give in. For so many colonized individuals, this is the reality. 

As a result of my growing up with no sense of self, I made sure to take every opportunity that I had to learn more about my own history because I could never learn it from them. I read books, listened to podcasts, to music, consumed art, and etc of my motherland, of Somalia created by Somali folks who told the story of Somalia through a very much anti-colonial lens. I felt restored. But I also felt angered because I realized that everything that I learned, everything that I was fed was a lie from the moment I was a child. 

My sense of self was tied to my feeling of security as a child. When I lost that, I lost my security. It took me years to finally safe and free to be who I am. When I always felt limited by the confines of colonial walls, of the boxes that I never wanted to be in the first place. 

I realized there was so much that I had to unpack for myself. Everything that I am, the way I thought, my confidence, the way I see myself, and the way I show up in the world were all a direct result of the colonial trauma that lives within me, within my lineage. When I started to consume all things Somalia, learning more and more about my own relationship to my motherland and in everything in between, I started to see a dramatic way in how I viewed myself. I could feel my sense of self coming back. I could feel that security I craved as a child. I never did things as a way to perform for the white man. I did everything because I wanted to, all because I finally felt free to be who I am unapologetically. 

One of the most important things as a colonized woman is learning to be confident in who I am, in everything that I embody, and in learning and unpacking so much of what I was fed as a child. At the end of the day, the essence of de-colonialization is taking back the story that was taken from you and finally telling that story for yourself. By breaking from the boxes that have suffocated you and becoming into the person you have always wanted to be. Now that is liberation because, in some way, we are all mentally enslaved but learning to free yourself from the shackles of colonization of the mind is hard. However, it is doable. I did it and I am still in the process of it. It is a lifelong journey to heal my own colonial trauma, of breaking my own generational curses. For every colonized individual, all it takes is a dive into learning the reality of your own relationship with colonialization and that everything that you are and have become is a deliberate attempt to erase your existence from this world. That everything you are is curated by colonial walls and beliefs. All it takes is one look to make you question your whole existence. However, it is worth it because you’ll finally know the truth. The reality and at the end of the day, it is worth it knowing who you are and everything you embody. You owe it to yourself and your ancestors.

Always & forever

salaams