A Page From the Journal of a Liberated Mind and Spirit

INSPIRE. PRESERVE. RESIST.

Inadequate. A feeling that has plagued me for as long as I could remember. A feeling that finally has a name. But what is the source of the feeling of inadequacy despite the professional achievements? Despite the academic achievements? Despite raising three beautiful children? Inadequacy enveloped me and wrapped its hands around my throat, always stifling me, making it hard to breathe…

I understand why the caged bird sings…

I understand why the caged bird sings…

As I sit down to write this piece, my emotions are like a tidal wave crashing over me. There’s nowhere to run.. nowhere to hide. And the only way out is to look within.

Somehow I’ve managed to be a silent partner to my own life. In the last few years, I have come to the sobering realization that I was suppressing so many parts of myself because I was being actively oppressed. I come from a deeply rooted culture that historically oppressed women but from a religion that continues to liberate them, a feeling like clenching a key within a handcuffed balled wrist.

I approach this blank page as if the words were rushing to meet me here. “Where have you been? We’ve been waiting for you.” My words stain the blank sheet as I write with hesitation. I begin wondering how my reality can be weaponized against Arab and Muslim people? Am I giving the world more angst to fuel the animosity used against Arab and Muslim women? Am I giving more reasons to see my daughters as stereotypes? Yet, I want to sing my truth, even through the narrow bars that lie in my peripheral. This reality has become my cage. In order for me to begin healing from these traumas, I must break free from the inadequacy that has hijacked so much. I must break from the socialized norms that have defined my existence for too long.

My experiences have become tethered within my soul, woven into the very essence of my being. After all, we are all products of our lived experiences; therefore, I must utilize my words as a means of protecting my daughters- a parachute on their backs to ensure that they soar before they ever hit the ground. So that when they land, they walk the road less traveled and never have to walk a mile in their mother’s chained shoes. It’s important to sing my truth; the woes of my melody may be a tune that rings familiar upon the ears of another. Singing is healing. Writing is healing. Naming the truth is healing. Feeling adequate is healing.

I know I have a deep rooted responsibility to not only break the taboo but to reiterate that this is MY story and my story does not represent every Arab or Muslim woman. So here is the story of how today, I fight.

…….

I understand why the caged bird sings. As she sits in her cage with her wings clipped and her feet tied, she realizes that what she has been subjected to is not natural. However, her reality has become distorted, preventing her from actualizing what she knows she can do. She doesn’t give up. “The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still.” She sings for her freedom. Her freedom to be released from the shackles placed upon her by her culture and by those who see her as a victim of it. She knows that her only way to freedom is not out, but through her own beautiful struggle. Overcoming intentionally placed obstacles became her norm. She was trying to navigate the minefield that became her life. As she stood on her “grave of dreams” the caged bird began to reimagine others. Like the caged bird, I continue to sing and with every tune, I know I deserve better.

Religiously married at the tender age of fourteen, a mom at sixteen, a college graduate and teacher at nineteen — my life has always felt like it was a marathon. I realize now that my auto pilot had succumbed to running on fumes and fear. If I did not run, I would never cross the finish line. I was married to a cultural man who hid behind his faith, a man who weaponized culture and decontextualized faith to muffle me, to murder my spirit, and to put an anchor on my dreams. At fourteen, jolted into adulthood, I was not given any other opportunity to self explore, to grow, to simply be. I did not have the luxury of figuring out who I wanted to be like most other adolescents my age. I knew what I aspired to pursue as a career — an English teacher. I always found myself in the life experiences of the books that consumed me. My physical voice being silenced only made the words on paper even louder. In the free reign of my mind, I was always plotting my rebellion. Yet, in the reality of my life, I was the compliant wife, the amenable daughter in law, a young mother, a great teacher; always serving.

I wonder today how I made it through the longest leg of my journey with my sanity intact. I realize I was born and bred to be a “good wife” and a “good mother.” A woman made her husband happy. My value was based on my ability to please my man. What if my husband could not be pleased? My grandmother told me, “Ya sitty, every man has a key. Find the key.” Inadequate. So I began to chip away at pieces of myself so I can fit the mold of what he envisioned his wife to be. The more I chipped and sculpted away at this tragic project, the more he demanded. Inadequate. His vision evolved to one that gave him complete and total control. My main job was to please him by cooking for him, by serving him, by meeting his sexual desires. What I wanted for myself, my own goals, my own pleasures, my interests… fell into the realm of things that simply didn’t matter. It was shameful for me to even bring them up, so I folded them away and placed them into a large box, the holding box, a symbol of what could be, a place where dreams that die are put to rest. My shame enveloped me every time I felt like my role as his wife and their mom was not enough to fuel me. Inadequate. I felt failure for my inability to achieve happiness in my role. I subconsciously began to suppress those thoughts. But like the caged bird, I felt in my core that this was not natural. I continued to hum the tune of my own song, the song of my life, in silence. No one heard me.

Inadequate. The feelings of inadequacy did not end in my personal realm, but rather accompanied me as I searched for a home in my journey as a learner. In all the aspects of my being, I represented the Arab stereotype that most people conflated with being Muslim. My experiences have taught me that most people conflate both identities and use the labels interchangeably. I cannot count the number of times I was told to go back to my country even though I was born and raised here! Still, in the eyes of many, including teachers tasked with the responsibility of creating a safe space for me and others who looked like me, I was a perpetual foreigner. My hijab solidified the idea that there was no way I could be an American.

The intersections of my identity posed a problem in every way. Caught at a cultural crossroad, my Arab American Muslim female identity was becoming more and more difficult to navigate as I grew more cognizant of the societal reactions to those intersections of who I was. Inadequate.

How do you figure yourself out when society has already defined you in so many ways? How do you self identify when your culture has already planned the trajectory of your future to the finest detail and signed your agency over to another?

Education and educational spaces were always a struggle. A sense of duality between who I was becoming and who I wanted to be seemed to grow exponentially. Educators and non-Arab adults did not understand me. I did not have the words to articulate or understand the why, but even through my college years, I attributed the lack of understanding to limited exposure to others who looked like me. I now realize that many of them did not care to understand me. What systems of education lack is care. They lack empathy. Schools lack the very heart of what would make them powerful, recognizing and realizing that educators are tasked with crafting humans. Educators are crafting humans! Humans make up societies, so we are essentially crafting societies. Yet, my school experiences left me feeling lost and alienated in so many ways. As I walked around campus at seventeen with my daughter, Bayan, in her stroller, a strategy my in-laws constructed with the hopes I would be so overwhelmed; I would eventually drop out. I was the Arab female stereotype in the eyes of so many of my professors. Yet, my presence at the university was the epitome and essence of resistance. I was there; twenty plus credits a semester, three years later, and pregnant again, I graduated. At nineteen, to my ex husband’s dismay, I was the first university graduate in my family. I did it despite the potholes and the minefield intentionally placed in my way, but somehow it was still not enough. Inadequate. I had no agency over my own life or the decisions that determined my trajectory. That was the end of the road for me as far as my ex husband was concerned with regards to my education.

So I began teaching. The identity based macoraggressions in the professional workspace were intense from day one. I was a “terrorist,” “ISIS were my people,” and my “Palestinian identity was offensive.” These were all things I was told by colleagues in the workspace. More concessions. More reasons to grow the double consciousness. More reasons to feel lost in my own body. More reasons to amplify the feeling that I was inadequate. For many people like me, feelings of inadequacy have become the shadow in our perpetual presence.

Because of 9/11, in the eyes of many, I deserved all the mistreatment I was subjected to. I deserved to feel inadequate. But I learned early on that either I let them get the best of me or I channel all of the emotions and experiences and build a scaffold from which I am able to grow. This is why I am the teacher I am today. My activism is alongside my students as we continue our individual journeys to betterment, to change, to strength collectively. They teach me every day. Through them, I learn what it looks like to harness boldness and embody bravery. Among them, I have found belonging. I see them, the beauty in the diversity and lived experiences they bring with them, and as a result, they see me and appreciate me. The community we have built together helps me to kill the shadow of imposter syndrome, the inadequacy that has enveloped me for so much of my life.

I am learning to love myself and see the strength in my continued struggle, to find my voice in the world. I am a firm believer that every experience has sculpted me into the fierce and fearless advocate I am today. I am no longer chipping away at me, but rather investing in me. This is not the end of my story, but one that needs to be continued as I explore what God and the world have in store for me.

Verses from Maya Angelou’s poem I Know Why a Caged Bird Sings inspired this entry.

This blog post is part of the #30DaysArabVoices Blog Series, a month-long movement to feature the voices of Arabs as writers and scholars.

Sawsan identifies as a Palestinian Muslim American and is a daughter of refugees from Deir Yasin, Palestine.