Rachel Negar Partiali, Ph.D.

Happy International Women’s Day! May we honor all women around the world, especially those who are still held in captivity and those who are suffering in any way.

Everyone is somehow being impacted by the violence and terror in the world right now. Sometimes the current trauma can trigger wounds of the past that are wanting to be seen and healed. I encourage all of us to feel whatever pain is coming up and to channel it in a way that can bring light for the whole world. This is a piece I wrote called, “Memories.” Praying for peace in our world.

Memories

Sitting in this room, the silence of the neighborhood feels deafening like the screams of all those innocent people.
Hollow, unheard, but forever stamped in the records of time.
The world has stopped and it’s simultaneously rapidly moving.
The fan, swirling the thick air filled with the aroma of Persian food, fear, and fluttering memories of a past that has not been forgotten, but is being re-lived.
Walking through that airport in Iran at the age of four and a half, escaping a war-torn country
Getting ready to be teleported into another dimension and leaving behind the only home I’ve known
Like a bird setting flight as the nest is torn away by the violent winds crashing and destroying anything in its place.
Walking through the tunnel of fluorescent lights and men in uniform, my wobbly legs, the ones that had not fully learned to ground herself in her native dwelling, were about to take a leap into the foreign land of the West.
The swirling fan, both dizzying and dazzling as I stare into its monotonous dance…
Similar to that of a swirling Dervish, drunken on the oneness of all, being lost in creation, while also participating in the formation of life.

Happy Intetnational Women’s Day to all women around the world, and a special shout out to the fierce, bold, courageous women of Iran! 💖