(Part 1) Picking up the Pieces After Burnout: A Conversation with Edina Leković

In this two-part episode, I'm joined by Edina Leković, a prominent spokesperson for Muslims in the post-9/11 United States. We explore her journey from defending Muslim rights to experiencing burnout and rediscovering herself.

With over two decades of expertise in storytelling and community-building, Edina shares her personal and professional evolution. This episode is a must-listen if you've ever felt overwhelmed while dedicating yourself to others' well-being, whether you're an activist, a professional supporter, or a community helper. Edina opens up about her toughest days and the healing journey that followed.

Edina is a community scholar at UCLA, narrating LA's Muslim history, and serves as the executive director of the Robert Ellis Simon Foundation, focusing on mental wellness services for underserved LA County residents.

Tune in for a candid conversation that delves deep into Edina's remarkable life story. Find her on Instagram: @lamuslimhistory & @EdLek.

Chapters

• 0:20 Healing Journey of a Professional Muslim
• 11:22 Exploring Spiritual Journey and Muslim Women
• 16:07 Former Muslim Activist's Spiritual Journey
• 24:13 Retiring the Hijab
• 31:02 Healing Journey and Finding Authenticity
• 36:56 The Journey Towards Compassion and Self-Discovery

Transcript

Rose Aslan: 0:20

I'm Dr Rose Aslan and I'm a transformational life coach, breathwork teacher and scholar of religion who supports helpers, rebels, misfits, marginalized and spiritual and spiritually curious folks. Welcome to with Rose , where I create a bold space of warmth, understanding and pluralism in a world that often feels chaotic, polarized and judgmental. You are not alone, and the stories I share here will reinforce this. Each episode will delve into inspiring stories, practical tips and thought-provoking and heartfelt conversations with thought leaders, healers, coaches, mental health professionals and other individuals who are part of the quiet revolution of women healing around the world. So join me on this podcast exploration, as we explore what happens when we allow compassion into our lives, one story at a time.

Rose Aslan: 1:47

I'm joined by a dear friend from Los Angeles, Ed Lechovich, to hear her story of being a professional Muslim for many years acting as a spokesperson for Muslims both within the United States and around the world as a result of the increased Islamophobia after 9-11. Edina worked to condemn terrorism and defend Muslims and their right to live and exist within the United States. She has over two decades of expertise in storytelling, leadership, development and community building. Today, we not only hear her professional life story as a representative for US Muslims, but we also hear how she reached absolute burnout and the feeling of complete brokenness, and how she was forced to slow down, reconnect with herself and start walking the healing path. This is a story that many of you will benefit from listening to. If you feel like you've reached a point of burnout from serving others to the point of neglecting your own well-being and inner world, if you're an activist, if you support others professionally or personally, if you're a helper in the community, then you'll need to listen and you'll benefit from this conversation between myself and Edina. Edina gets vulnerable as she narrates some of the hardest days of her life and shares what worked as she tried many different modalities and ways of adjusting her life.

Rose Aslan: 3:23

Edina is also a community scholar at UCLA, telling a story of LA Muslim history. She is also the executive director of the Robert Ellis Simon Foundation, which supports mental wellness services for LA County's most underserved residents. While at the Muslim Public Affairs Council, she co-founded Newground, a Muslim Jewish Partnership for Change, and she has made many appearances on TV and radio news shows over the past years. Okay, Edina, it's absolutely wonderful to have you here on Rahmah Wath Rose and I'm extremely excited to be able to talk to you about your healing journey. Welcome.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 4:07

Thank you, I'm so excited to be here and to reconnect with you.

Rose Aslan: 4:10

Likewise. So I want to share, before we start the conversation, how I know you and the amazing ways you've inspired me and why I wanted to invite you to Rahmah Wath Rose. I used to live in Los Angeles where Edina lives, or Pasadena. Sorry, but I was in Los Angeles and we connected in various different circles. The LA Muslim community of people who are on the progressive side is pretty small, and so we interact in various circles, but specifically the ones where you inspired me the most was in the Women's Mosque of America.

Rose Aslan: 4:39

I'll never forget when it was the first gathering of the Women's Mosque of America in 2015. I can't remember which month Maybe you do January and you gave the first. Oh, in January you gave the first Khutbah, the first sermon, and I remember going into it was a synagogue, going to the synagogue, into this room, where I could go into the room and sit at the front of the room. That was just like mind blowing. I couldn't conceive of sitting at the front of the room.

Rose Aslan: 5:07

You probably remember that as well and you and the leader was at the top on the stage. I remember that giving this sermon, and I first remember a woman I don't remember her name giving the azan, the call to prayer, and that sent shivers down my spine, hearing a woman stand at the front of the mosque converted mosque from a synagogue calling the call to prayer the first time ever I've heard it called on that way. And then you gave a sermon, and it was a sermon of inspired leadership, really of why we need to step up and to do the things that need to be done.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 5:41

And.

Rose Aslan: 5:42

I was so blown away by your sermon because you're already a very inspiring leader in the LA Muslim community and I had already learned a lot from you. But that moment was just life changing. And I listened very carefully and I listened so much and I remember you said we need to step up and just do the thing we need to do, just take the action. And because of what you said, I decided to volunteer to give the second sermon. I don't even remember why or what led me. I had no intention, because I am not. I don't like public speaking, to be honest, and now I don't do a lot. I mainly speak in small, in groups, but I don't like standing in the front of a room and speaking. That's not my zone of genius, you can say so. I don't even know what led me to volunteer, except that you inspired me to do that, Edina, but it was really powerful because I felt that I had something I wanted to share and when I gave the sermon, it was supported by you and we grew the spiritual lineage of women giving the sermon at the Women's Mass, especially that first year, so powerful in 2015, of the women powerhouses who are giving sermon after sermon on really important topics that we've never heard in a mosque, because we know what they usually focus on in mosque and what we felt that year in the preceding years was just inspiring, and so I'll never forget that moment and how you inspired me. But Westmore is. I was also really big part of Newground, which is a Jewish Muslim cooperative organization to bring Jews and Muslims in different forms of dialogue, and I was also active in giving talks and attending events and I just absolutely adored that community to see the work that was happening, as very rare in US to have an organization like Newground. But then, ultimately, what led me to interview you and reach out for this conversation is we are both part of the American Muslim Civic Leadership Initiative. You had been one of the early members of it and it was organization out of University of Southern California to train American Muslims in Civic Leadership. I joined later on, but we had a reunion in oh God, was that 2017? Maybe in Long Beach around then and you led a workshop with Sada Jawaid, who hopefully will also be a guest soon on this podcast.

Rose Aslan: 7:59

It was a workshop on healing, on recovering from burnout. I recall that vividly because I was in the middle of contemplating my marriage and soon left after, actually amicably. It was one of the reasons why I ended up leaving an abusive marriage. It was very pivotal for me and your workshop with Sada was very deep for me because I was in this process of recognizing that I felt broken. I wasn't broken, but I felt broken and I didn't have people around me who are on this similar healing path.

Rose Aslan: 8:25

So when I went to your workshop and you just talked about some mentality, you talked about the body keeps a score, the very famous book that everyone knows. Now I bought it for the first time and it took a long time to read that book because it's a dense book and it was. A lot of tears were involved with reading that book, so it was a very slow read. How are you two talking about that book? And, just like the basics of healing, it was, but it was something that most of the community didn't talk about at that time in 2017, the academics weren't talking about. So all of that was very powerful.

Rose Aslan: 8:53

And then we reconnected later after I moved to Istanbul and you told me a little bit about your healing journey and I was like I need to invite Edina on this podcast because your story needs to be heard. You're a very accomplished woman in terms of your professional life and leaving behind a really beautiful legacy, but I also wanted people to hear the story of how, what it's like to go from being, as we were talking about earlier, a professional Muslim being a spokesperson for Islam in post-911 America, to being someone who just is herself on this healing path. So long story short. That's why I invited you here and I'm looking forward to this conversation.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 9:30

Me too, Rose. You've just brought me back on such a deep memory journey, and I'm remembering that reunion took place in 2019. Oh, 2019, yeah.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 9:39

No, that's OK, because I thought that was right. And then again, I'm remembering all the things that took place, and it was right before COVID. It was one of those last things that took place and it was following. The depth of the physical manifestation of my burnout was why I remember it. That was at late 2018. And then the following year, when I was coming into the fullness of my healing journey, I did that workshop with our friends Sarah Joaid, yeah, so four years ago, subhanallah, yeah glory be to my manager.

Rose Aslan: 10:10

This, all that intensity in my life. I can all the years blend together actually, and I think it's a form of PTSD, so I literally have no idea when anything happened Me too.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 10:18

I'm piecing it together. The slowing down is the only way that I've been able to begin remembering.

Rose Aslan: 10:25

Yeah yeah, exactly slowing down to begin to remember. Wow, that's a beautiful quote, dita Great. So let's start, if we may. Can you remember when in your life did you first get start gain, interested in spirituality in general?

Fawiza al-Rawi: 10:40

I do believe that it started when I was a child. I was born into a Muslim family. Parents are from the former Yugoslavia, where the country is now called Montenegro, and right next to Croatia, or right below Croatia, if you will, and my parents, my family's been Muslim for generations, actually yeah, through the Ottoman Empire. My grandfather spent 10 years in Turkey, and so my parents had the faith spark, the spiritual spark, in them. They were the ones in their families who held it tight, but they didn't know much about their face because of the way it was practiced and taught culturally, and who held the knowledge, as we all know. And so for me, growing up, when my parents moved here, I grew up in San Diego, and I was always aware of God, my parents. I wrote my earliest memories as my mom would read the Fatiha, the first chapter of the Quran, to us in Arabic Before we would go to bed, and so my first spiritual memory out of that is that I would lay in bed at night and talk to God in my head, and because my parents prayers were in Montenegro, or server creation, whatever language you want to call it, I thought that God would only understand if I spoke in Montenegro, and so I was probably I don't know between six and eight, and I remember being in bed and carefully trying to remember the words to use, because, while Montenegro is my first language, already by that point my sister and I were speaking English at home, and so that's my first like spiritual memory, this, the intention of trying to connect. That's what I place in it now, and and then and most of that faded away for most of my childhood I've come to realize that I was Islamophobic as a young person because I fell into the media images and I didn't have Muslim friends. I didn't really know other Muslims. There weren't youth groups back then. I came up in the eighties, late eighties, early nineties, and yeah, and so it was really alienating. And so that only changed when I went to college, ucla my sister and I went together and she had the faith spark by that point in our family and yeah, and we were walking on Bruin Walk and saw a table that said Muslim Student Association and my sweet sister Manira said let's go check that out, or she said something like that.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 12:53

Maybe I was the one that said that's weird, but, and so we went up to the table and we're in, like our cut off shorts and a bunch of nager and modesty had a different standard than others. One piece bathing suits was how it worked, but so, yeah, but this person who was at the table didn't judge us, didn't? I'm sorry that I'm starting with how they didn't treat us. After all this time, thinking about it was the welcome right. It was the openness of the person on the other side of the table who said, oh, you should like come check it out. And yeah, we're like this is the things that we do, that my wall like just came down so that at least we could see over the wall.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 13:27

And that is what started my renewed spiritual journey, because I actually met Muslims, especially women, who were kind, who were smart, who were focused, who had a vision for the future and who were grounded.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 13:43

Like it was a package that I didn't expect, and so it was Muslim women, including my sister and my current sister-in-law, who was one of my first roommates after my sister, because I fell in love with Muslim women is why I fell in love with Islam and why I gave the Quran another chance, which I had never really read before, and that is what started my spiritual journey and it's also what inspired me to start wearing hijab the beginning of my second year in college, and why I continued to wear it for 25 years, until January of last year, is out of an deep inspiration of the women that I met and the spiritual connection that I could, the new or the light I could see in their faces because of the spiritual connection they were nurturing, and so those were the seeds of my spirituality, and hijab, for me, was a choice around not wanting to pass.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 14:30

I was so shy and I think you and I can relate on this, as at the time again, for I passed as a European Muslim, and so wearing hijab was a way of forcing myself not to pass and to honor Muslim women who I respected, and also to force myself to talk about Islam, force myself to be a public Muslim. And boy, did it work. Yeah, so that's a longer answer than just yeah, where it all started. But there were these. Yeah, there were definitely these stages. It started in my childhood, but it really took off when I was at college and, again to your point, like Muslim women were what started it all.

Rose Aslan: 15:07

I love hearing that how Muslim women were the ones who inspired you on that journey, and I've had a few women tell me about their experiences in college being pivotal for them and leading them on a path towards spirituality. So it's interesting to see this pattern of when we have this a little bit more freedom away from our family, we can explore spirituality on our own terms with other college students.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 15:25

Yeah, and my sister ended up marrying the guy on the other side of the table two years later and my parents ended up becoming more religious and Islam became the center of their lives. We were in a different space before then and it's the domino effect of things and my mother's voice reading me, fatiha in childhood. It's full circle. She just passed away a few months ago. God rest her soul and a beautiful eternity. And yeah, and that's what we were doing with her and her final moments. And so, yeah, it's all Muslim women.

Rose Aslan: 16:00

My condolences on the passing of your mother. I'm really sorry to hear about that.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 16:03

Thank you so much.

Rose Aslan: 16:05

Thank you for being on after in your period of grief. So how would you describe the spiritual path you're on now, either as a trajectory or your current state? What does that look like?

Fawiza al-Rawi: 16:15

Yeah, I'm definitely in a new stage. As you described, I was a professional Muslim. I was one of the national voices for the Muslim community post 9-11, especially from 2004, when I joined the Muslim Public Affairs Council as the communications director until 2014, when I had my second child and decided that I could not continue to go through the burnout cycle. That, yeah, that I stepped away and, quite sorry, I just fell right back into the memory. Ask me the question again. You can sit with us for a moment if we just need to sit with this.

Rose Aslan: 16:48

This is a show about embodiment too, so if you need to sit with us, maybe just sit with us for a moment if you need to and see how it's like sitting with you. So the question was how would you describe the spiritual path you're on, either as a trajectory or now, and let's just sit with it if you need to.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 17:01

Yeah, no, let me describe the feeling. What washes over me when I think about those early days is this wave of heat that starts here and it works its way down my body and it's yeah, it overcomes to me. I said earlier about the starting to remember these years Again, so many things happen, like each day of that period of my life, and yeah, so it's coming back together. So I plunged myself into this. This is after I graduated from UCLA. I wanted to go into journalism, and broadcast journalism specifically, since I was a child.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 17:35

I love storytelling. I love, yeah, the hearing people stories and everybody's got a story and I was the editor of the Daily Brew and the campus newspaper at UCLA and we were the top newspaper in the country. But then I graduated and was trying to get journalism jobs wearing hijab in 1999. Lo and behold, there was nothing for me. I wasn't confident enough in myself to be the break barriers girl. So that was my spiritual journey. God took me into a different direction that brought my talents and my desires together, because from wanting to be a broadcast journalist, I ended up serving the Muslim American community as a spokesperson on the other side of the microphone than I expected, which was terrifying to me, and that became part of my spiritual journey. It became a core part of my spiritual journey because, as you described, I also, at that time especially, I wanted to be able to talk to people and I could do it in small groups. But talking to big groups and talking on a microphone and on camera, all of those things were impossible. It was only because of the mentorship and the support and the pushing of my mentor, dr Mahir Hattu. May God rest his soul with eternal beauty. He was one of the leaders of the Islamic Center of Southern California for decades and it was him who recruited me.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 18:51

After college, I went to work at a Muslim and Islamic school because I was not sure what else to do, and I taught English and History for a year and then they heard about me and I got recruited to work for the Muslim magazine, the Minaret, and I thought, ok, here it is, here's my spiritual journey coming alive. I wanted to have a public Muslim contribution and I was asking God to put me in a place of service, and this was even before 2000, before 9-11, open another door, another window for me. And Allah kept opening the door to Muslim activism and it was a huge honor, and so stepping into the role of being a communications director felt like a spiritual journey. It felt immensely important, I felt immensely honored and I also felt terrified every day because I didn't have the words and I was counting on the people around me to give me the words in these awful situations. So I was in the public, on microphones, let's say inside and outside of the community, from 2004 until 2017, really, and maybe that's why 2017 was that Trump year that really started to break me down from the inside out. It was a spiritual journey to show up for Allah in public in a way that would be documented and continue to live on the internet, if no other place, and to know that I was one of few Muslim voices that were out there. And also to know that so often the opportunities that I was getting were, at least to feel to suspect, that so often the opportunities I was getting was because I was a white European Muslim without an accent and blue eyes, and then I'm relatable and all of these things, and so just that the positioning was both a blessing and also an immense responsibility, and I felt the need to be an extra professional Muslim inside of my community to prove myself.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 20:37

Because I was in my late 20s, so from 2004, I was 26 or something I threw my whole self in it and every day before I walked into the office, I remember I would, as I would, put my hand on the doorknob, I would say Yallah, please help me to be useful. Yallah, please help me to be useful today. Let me to be useful in your cause. And that's what kept me together. But what fell apart during that time was my salah, my five daily prayers, not all at once. Whenever does the wearing hijab and serving Islam in public became my salah in some way, and I don't know that I was okay with it, but that's what I'm looking back now.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 21:14

So that part of my spiritual journey, my work, became my offering to Allah and every get like putting on a job and going to work every day. It wasn't the hijab that was the work, but it was all of it, like my. Every part of my being was to serve Allah every day and that was such a gift and such an immense responsibility, because there were so few of us and so little infrastructure and all of those organizations you described that we helped create. We created because they weren't there and we needed them and we were so ill equipped and I felt so alone.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 21:46

And I knew that other Muslims around the country who were doing their best just like me and were in a younger generation probably felt the same and that, dear God, we shouldn't be alone. And that sense of aloneness is what I went to aloh with and my spiritual journey was a lot about asking Allah during those times where is my safe space, where is my community and where can I truly be myself? Because I felt that I had a public responsibility and my spiritual, my professional Muslim terminology. It was not a fake one, it was that I would be not the best Muslim, but be a representative, and that is an immense amount of pressure. And so where am I now spiritually? I want to say one thing.

Rose Aslan: 22:26

When you mentioned the prayer you said every day and the very work you're doing as your practice Islam, I was like, oh, I wasn't the only one. I said the exact same prayer every day as a professor of Islam. It felt like activism to teach young minds that Muslims are not terrorists, that they're humans and we're regular humans who live everyday lives. That was our jihad for so many years. I just like when you said that my whole body had these shivers going down because, oh, I thought it was just me, but oh, there's others who also, like it felt like it was my actual practice of Islam was representing Muslims. Which how did we think we could represent? 1.8 billion, 2 billion people?

Fawiza al-Rawi: 23:01

Oh, my god, rose, we did it. We did it. There's the thing. Looking back now, I mean the overwhelm of those days was waking up and not knowing what the day was going to bring For me and my role as communications, especially in those years 2004, really to 2014, when I left from the full-time position.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 23:21

It was a crisis a week, if not more than that.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 23:25

We were dealing with international terrorism, and then we were also dealing with domestic terror plots, and we were dealing with all of this stuff within the community, and so while we were talking about Islam, we also had to deal with what some Muslims were doing this internal, internal, external and also then showing up in front of audiences like you, as students, and not knowing oh look, what is the question going to be today, what is the thing that's going to come out of somebody's mouth and that I had to teach myself.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 23:51

I would often talk about how the hardest place to be Muslim for me was in the grocery store. This is my classic story, because when I'm at work or when I'm in an event, I know that I'm on, I'm ready, I have made my, I am or at least I'm more prepared because I'm in that professional mode, but when I'm at the grocery store and when I would wear a jab and somebody would say excuse me was my trigger in public spaces. I learned to in the beginning. It would just be my body would freeze. I'm a freeze person in the flight freeze and over the years I taught myself, when I would hear excuse me, that my reaction would be a deep breath and then as I was turning around or as I was focusing in on the person, because I was acknowledging here we go again and then releasing that so that it would be a fresh encounter every time.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 24:38

But I had to teach myself that because who knows what the question would be if somebody would ask and why do you weigh that on your head? Or going into multi-faith audiences and like why aren't Muslims marching in the streets against terrorism? Why haven't you guys condemned terrorism? Where are the moderate Muslims? Like?

Fawiza al-Rawi: 24:53

The absurdity was so high and the lack of belief in our truth like that.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 24:59

We had to prove that we were even telling the truth, that we were adequate representatives, and that was part of what I really internal not internalized, but I took really seriously was I'm a young European woman and when, especially, I'm in public places, why will these people believe me over somebody who's in a soap and has an accent in his face, for example?

Fawiza al-Rawi: 25:20

It's this yeah, oh, it's nice what you're saying, but you're the exception.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 25:24

And so over the years really working to say yeah, to really own my spiritual truth, own my I used to say that we didn't own our authority, credibility or truth, that anywhere we went, we had to prove our authority, our credibility, and that what we were saying was even true.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 25:43

Like even you, as an academic and an expert, even me, when I went into media spaces, I realized that I was invited as an advocate, not as an analyst, not as an expert, and that these are different frameworks, and so all of that was part of my daily spiritual battle and I really became close to Allah at that time, even though I was further away from my rituals, and I became closer to my Muslim sisters, my non-work Muslim sisters, where I could be my authentic self and where I could really vent and really talk about the things that were hurting me, and not be the professional Muslim that's again always trying to work against the stereotype, but to acknowledge all the complexity and the the bullshit that was happening behind the scene inside of our community and outside of it, and the absurdity of the kinds of questions that we would get asked in public and have to maintain our composure.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 26:34

I was prized for my composure and that came out of trauma, but that was part of what I realized during that in my healing journey. To jump ahead a little bit is that the very things that I was prized for and that allowed me to do my job, and hopefully do it well, were the direct product of my complex post-traumatic stress disorder. And so now, today, it took me, I think during COVID and after my body fell apart around 2018, and I had to really go on this journey. I really had to ask myself what's authentic to me, what's public and what's private, and part of the main reason I decided to retire my hijab was because it was supposed to be a tool for the prayer rug. It's supposed to be a tool for the rug. It's supposed to be for me. It's supposed to be a tool again to bring me closer to Allah, and I have lost the rituals right. Wearing hijab became my sallah for me and I no longer felt authentic with it and I like men, like, oh, I think all women who wear hijab. I had gone through so many burnout, so many chapters of wearing hijab, and I had stepped away from my public muslim life, and so it was the first time that I really even allowed myself the self-permission to decide if it was something that continued to serve me, and I decided that I wanted to focus on returning to my prayer rug with the scarf and, and that it had served its job, which was it has made me talk about Islam and talk about being muslim every day for 25 years, and I'm trained now, and so I still talk about Islam and muslims every day now, and I've just moved my symbols to my jewelry and yeah, and that Allah is on my tongue, and then I'm still working on getting back to the prayer rug on a regular basis, and so that's where I am today. I'm so deeply connected to Allah, and I've retired my public symbol of Islam, and that was really it took me about a year and a half.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 28:27

I decided probably year 22 and a half, around, yeah, around 20, 2020, I think deep into code. That's when I decided that I would retire it at 25 years and, subhanallah again, in divine timing, the very month the September 2021 which was my 25th anniversary was also the beginning of residency that I was offered at UCLA, which is my alma mater, right residency with the UCLA Islamic Studies program and scholar museum to a community scholar in residence to look at issues that I wanted to, and that was again the timing of. I felt, okay, like God was putting my decision to the test as will you go through with this or not, because I felt like I was coming back into a public ish place. But I delayed the retirement for six months to process these new feelings and this reconciliation between all the adenas that have been and all the adenas that are still waiting to become.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 29:24

And so it was back at the UCLA campus, subhanallah, that I retired my hijab, and so it's been about a year and a half now and I feel content spiritually and I feel a deeper sense of ownership, and it's also been really interesting to detangle my spiritual relationship from my work, like from the day to day of my work. I'm still doing Muslim work and I'm looking at the history of Muslims in Los Angeles now and I see again still big storytelling and getting like it's full circle, but it's not again. I'm not in the public eye in the way that I used to be, and that's so comfortable and it's so gratifying because there are so many voices now. I felt like you. I felt so much pressure I'm assuming like you had so much pressure to stay put and have staying power because so much had to been invested in me and there were so few of us because, we couldn't afford to step away.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 30:16

That felt like spiritual betrayal. And so, 25 years, 26, I don't know what it's been. Now I'm, I am finding a new spiritual chapter, especially as a mother, and, yeah, thinking about this next stage of my life.

Rose Aslan: 30:32

I feel just honored to hear that story and I love how you talk about retiring your head job. It reminds you of, like, how athletes retire their numbers that's like the close analogy I can think of and it feels that, like you decide to give up that professionalism, identity and just be you authentically, which is so hard Because, like you said, those of us who were active in fighting against Islamophobia or Muslim rights and awareness about Islam in the United States, post-saharan America, our identity was so personal and professional identity were so intertwined. It was like, where does it start and begin? That was my challenge, right. That was like one of the reasons why I enjoy living outside the US is because I just don't get those questions in the grocery store anymore. No one asks me about my clothing or about any of that. I don't have to have those conversations about Islam anymore, cause everyone is at least somewhat nominally Muslim or exposed to Islam and I just don't have those conversations. I can go much deeper now, right, and the US is so hard to go deeper. It's a little bit easier now, but it's still very primitive level of like knowledge about Islam and who Muslims are.

Rose Aslan: 31:31

So it's just lovely to hear how you're like in this new chapter, of coming into your own and this is exactly what we're focusing on this podcast is women coming to their own, finding who they actually are, apart from all the other things you've been involved with and it's so beautiful to see you finding yourself and on your healing journey. You mentioned a little bit of what helped you. You mentioned when your body fell apart and this journey would you be willing to share, like how and when did you start walking this healing journey? Specifically, there's spirituality and there's the healing path which many of us entered much later on in our lives, unfortunately, unfortunately, yeah.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 32:05

So I only started my healing path when my body fell apart and I made it through the good 13, 14, no, actually from 2000 until 2018, I will give myself credit.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 32:18

I made it through 18 years of professional activism in one form or another and public Muslim life and service. That included at least three or four burnouts that I can think of, and that was part of what I documented and shared during that workshop at the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute or Initiative. I had no Institute and that was one of the hardest things I've ever done was to admit to my peers how many times I had broken and had to put myself back together and what had come as a result. The burnouts at work were exhaustion. It was just going and yeah, and then points where I just couldn't go anymore, and then I fall apart and take a week off or do exactly. It was like temporary healing and until I got pregnant with my second child in 2014, and I knew deep inside of me that this was the time to make a different choice, that I had been able to keep going with my first child.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 33:16

I just strapped him on and kept going, and it was a blessing that was part of my service was to thinking about my sister's, like I wasn't sure that I was even going to be a mom. I wasn't sure that was something I wanted. And when my husband and I chose to have children, I was like, all right, we're going to do this differently, I'm not going to slink into the background, I'm not going to separate myself. So I just kept going. But I knew inside of myself that with another child couldn't do the same, and so I used that as my opportunity during maternity leave to really think about whether I could go back or not. And those intense feelings of guilt, guilt, guilt really overwhelmed me. And even though I knew what I needed to do, how could I tell the people that I worked with, including my mentor, who was deeply ill at the time, that I was choosing myself, that I was choosing my family? I know I'm not alone in that, but it almost felt like a contradiction to my activist life and the vision I had for myself. And so, yeah. So I thought that by making the choice to slow down and just not just focus on being a mother, but slow down and do something else and redesign my professional life so that it would be on my terms and I could be like a consultant and help work with different Muslim organizations, because that's what I wanted.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 34:32

At that point I thought that would be enough to initiate my healing. Oh boy, it didn't. So I was pushing along and feeling pain in my back, feeling some pain in my neck. There was just aches and pains, and the first sign was my thyroid. After I had my first child, I became hypothyroid, and I'm pointing this because I developed a goiter on my thyroid, which later, as I started to do exploration all of this stuff in your throat, as we know right, what is my tool? What is my tool? Vin has all been about voice and also about what we're talking.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 35:06

Exactly. Yeah, what you're holding back, holding my tongue, biting my tongue. We have my family motto. My sister and I joke because our family motto was shtisnyzube, which means great your teeth. This is the national identity of people from the former Yugoslavia it's great your teeth. It's like it's doubled down, it's suck it up, it's all of that. And when you hold your tongue right, where does it go?

Fawiza al-Rawi: 35:28

And so my thyroid fell apart first, and so my energy level, the fog, just the slowness, the fatigue it was, yeah, that was intense. And then I got eczema, dryness and all this, like my, it was showing up on my face and in this again, in the spiritual interpretation that I'm deeply in, is subhanAllah, like it was in my body. That's why I described these other sensations I was having. But I could ignore all of that. I had become so used to ignoring my body because I had to use my brain and get the words out and serve the people and to fill my role that I could just be, as my, my friend and I say is like a brain on a stick. Right, this part of me is not. Don't worry about this part, right, this is all you need.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 36:13

And so I could keep pushing and so that this dryness showed up on my face right that I couldn't ignore it and I would lost part of my eyebrow. I was getting all this. Yeah, it was like a deep eczema. I couldn't figure out what was going on. Then went to the doctor, got tested, realized that it was connected to my thyroid, started medication that only did so much. I was hoping the medication was going to bring back my energy levels. I couldn't get my energy levels back and, having two children, at that point I just felt increasingly fatigued. And then depression and then uncertainty. And then Trump got elected and we all remember that.

Fawiza al-Rawi: 36:45

My God, it was really the biggest somatic response like this every and now I can look back on it and feel like I think that what happened is that I had been holding it all right, it's all worth it, it's all going to pay off. It's like the arc of the universe, right. What they say is the arc of moral justice is long right, but it bends towards justice, and I didn't see it coming and I didn't even realize that it was like that it broke. I thought that it broke me, but I felt the brokenness like something inside of me. The promise that I had, like the spiritual promise I had lived with, somehow broke, and that's when I really I realized I was in trouble.

Rose Aslan: 37:36

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