 It is so nice to see all of you. I like you and still experiencing all the emotions of this recent week or two or three. I can't keep track subhanAllah and it's just an honor to be back at MCC. This is actually my childhood musket so I'm seeing some familiar faces here. It's so lovely to see all of you, all the old and new faces. So as Dr. Rania mentioned, I am a psychologist. I work with Maristan. I also work with Children's Health Council. So I do work with children, teens, and young adults as well as their parents. So I am pretty familiar with having difficult conversations when it comes to stress, trauma, dealing with difficult life transitions and thinking about what's going on really the only words I have are inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajoon, verily to Allah we belong and to Him is our return. I wanted to start with that because in the face of tragedies we often don't know what to do, what to say, and this expression from our faith, from our iman, it's that expression of we're just going to trust in Allah's panodalah and to say that truly it is to Him that we belong and to Him is our return. And it's okay as Dr. Rania mentioned to acknowledge all of our emotions first and to take care of our emotions before we get in the caretaker role of our family as we say or as we hear when we get on the airplane put on your own oxygen mask before you put someone else's on. And I know today Sister Wajma is also going to get into self-care and strategies but I just also wanted to emphasize that so you're hearing that from all three of us. So I speak to you today as a sister in faith fellow human being and as a family member who is grieving these terrible tragedies right now. And I say tragedies because there are multiple complex tragedies happening all at once and I think that's what also adds to the pain and suffering across communities and what also makes the response with our children, with ourselves, with our coworkers, with our schools really nuanced and sometimes it may be very difficult to know what to say when someone else is also hurting and suffering at the same time. So whether we're talking about Palestine and Gaza directly, whether we're talking about people killed in Israel, we're talking about human rights, we're talking about people's dignity to live, especially the children, we're talking about children. We've talked about these topics a lot in our community unfortunately and a lot of us may be feeling that deja vu right now for those who have gone through those years after 9-11 or who have as Dr. Rania was saying seen and heard about other tragedies affecting our community. So I guess I just want to start with that there are so many different layers of grief right now across communities and we're familiar with a lot of those things so it's important to start there when we talk about identity. Right now as Muslims we are seeing our brothers and sisters in Palestine going through the most atrocious of tragedies, I mean no words, I mean genocide plain and clear so that it hurts our Muslim faith, our identity there, it hurts our humanity as human beings. For those of us here who are out of or from Arab backgrounds or who are from Palestine, there's that extra layer of like shared you know community and as we know for Muslims whether or not we're from Palestine, Al-Qudsat holds a very special place in our hearts so there's that multiple layers of connection of identity here and it's okay to feel all of the emotions that come with the longing to those multiple identities, there could be fear, sadness, anger, rage, confusion, all of those emotions just not even knowing how we feel and that's also okay but just to validate that all of those identities that we belong to they are coming up not only as we grieve but also in our day-to-day spaces when we go to school, when we go to work, if we take public transportation even as you drive down the street you know you're like sometimes maybe aware of how you look if you're a visible Muslim, I see you know many of you, Mashal wearing hijab right now, some of you may also wear hijab outside so there's that visible aspect too. So just starting with that I want to say that in the current climate it's important to think about those identities but also think about this word called backlash. When someone who looks like us is told like they committed a crime right? We know what happens in our society like the whole group gets the blame unfortunately. We've seen it across communities, we've seen in the Muslim community and subhan Allah as we also discussed Monday with that circle. Dr. Rania and everyone we are all grieving, many of you may have heard about what happened with Wadiah of Fayyumi, may Allah rest his soul in peace. I think that for many of us was our worst fear, I mean we're thinking about how is our community going to experience? How is our community going to be affected by what's happening far away but then coming over here? So I just want to name those things I know they're obvious but I also think it's important to name where some of those emotions may be coming from with our identities with someone then who is from our community who was targeted and may Allah rest his soul in peace. I mean so again I want to acknowledge it's heavy it's the collective trauma. We all are affected in some way by trauma. We all have different experiences of course when we experience a stressor or know somebody who experiences that it may not be touching us all in the same way but it somehow does affect us. We may know family in Raza or we may have a friend who has family there or simply watching the news and just remembering our brothers and sisters. The thing I've heard from a lot of teachers this week a lot of therapists and just humans is that sometimes you wonder why why are these emotions in me like why am I feeling all this and and or how and how do I cope with it just as a reminder if you feel these emotions it means you are alive your heart is alive your heart is a vessel from Allah and if it's hurting it means you care you're seeing the humanity of your brothers and sisters so it's about how do we use our heart that is hurting right now and how do we talk to our children and our families when we are hurting and they might be hurting as well. And of course not to assume as Dr. Rania mentioned because they may have different levels of knowledge about what's happening. So some of the tools that I want to share with you today they've been taken from National Child Traumatic Stress Network and there are also a lot of great resources online for parents so I encourage all of you to look at that website and also many other websites out there for parents that just have a lot of great coping tools like dealing with tragedy this article Dr. Rania shared is actually almost like half of my outline was actually exactly your article so I guess I should have just referenced your article. So how can parents support their kids especially at this time first as Dr. Rania said acknowledging your own emotions acknowledge them and get that support I think all of you coming here right now it's a great just show of community and also you're holding space for yourself by allowing yourself to be taken care of by somebody. I think in many of our roles as mothers family members if you're teachers even therapists in here you're taking care of somebody else it's a lot of work it's actually just laboring a lot of times right so just allow yourself to be taken care of by other people whether it is a friend a family member a spouse a therapist allow yourself to be taken care of this week and regularly inshallah so all of you coming here I see that as you are allowing yourself to get that support inshallah from sisterhood. The other thing to keep in mind is when we are flooded or overwhelmed we're seeing a lot of things and the media right we may not be in a place where we can respond in a wise way okay I've seen a lot of this this week where we are in a motion mind something where you know we're responding through emotion so if your child who comes and talks to you or if something is happening just monitor where am I at right now am I in a sort of calm state of mind right now or am I have I just read a really disturbing article seen some really horrific things happening right just kind of assess the state of your mind and I see some young people in your mashallahs and and I'm guessing the very young people may not have kids yet so let's say if someone comes to talk to you about what's happening in Gaza or in the world and you're all riled up do you think it's going to be effective to relay your message right now I see a not a head shake right exactly so whoever you're giving the message to or talking to first just notice your own state of being right now and if you're not in a place where you can engage there's a really helpful framework that I did see on national child traumatic stress network and it's called pause rest and nourish and it's a helpful framework that first just says hey if you're overwhelmed right now take a pause actually want all of us right now to take a pause including me and just notice your emotions at this moment do a quick scan of your body and notice where is this emotion right now in your body sometimes we have mixed emotions and that's also okay especially in a very very conflicting and extremely difficult time like this the next thing once we notice our emotional state is to reset our emotional state and there could be a small thing we could do such as the good which we were doing doing some deep breaths just taking a quick walk or like getting out for fresh air for a minute if you're in an office or you're in your house throughout the day okay or if you've been scrolling and scrolling on your newsfeed right you can tell yourself you know I'm gonna get up right now off my phone and go drink some water and you know I'll come back to my desk later but it's just taking that quick reset the next is nourishing and that's basically filling your cup and this is something not only for all of us but also for our children our families is to create routines in our daily life where we can actually reset all of our emotional energy so that could mean at the end of the day having a family dinner together it could be having for on time or circles it could even be something simple like the drive into school checking in maybe you you sing a favorite song together recite some favorite to us together or just have a little ritual that you do for me personally this last week I realized I was not exercising as much as I like to and that was taking a toll on my body and I finally had him to look out to my gym class and you know there was some of the like you know thank you we all need that positive reinforcement right but I think a part of it was also finding some safety again and going out in public spaces and I said I have to go I mean I need to go to my gym class and so I did and that was me helping myself find routine again we know with kids with trauma exposure getting back into routines is really really crucial so as Dr. Rania already beautifully said it's about when you're talking to kids asking in them what they already know and you know I want to also link this to the school setting when your kids are going to school and I think I'm going to focus more on the older than six because as we said with younger than six we're going to really limit the exposure that they have unless they bring it up or unless we're noticing some kind of clinical symptoms or regression so with the older kids simply ask them what do you know already if they bring it up and then deeply listen rather than trying to fix it rather than trying to problem solve and then ask them what questions do you have because if you just fill in all of the blanks they may just think hey you gave me way more information than I even needed or asked for right or that may be happening so just asking them what would you like to know and one perspective I think that's really important as a Muslim but also just as a human being in this really confusing time stay humble because you may not know everything we don't know everything we know there's so much misinformation out there with propaganda different news sources kind of telling your child and your teen in this world there's a lot of different opinions how can we work together to find answers let's you know do some research together and that can be a way that they also can you know as if they're a teen for example help support you and the family to share their research skills a little bit if they like that budding journalist maybe um no but actually it's just keeping the conversation open it's more about the process than actually what answer you give them some of you may be asking give me like the best thing I can do and unfortunately we don't have the one perfect answer for you today it's more of the process and it's your relationship with your child it's really about creating that secure attachment maintaining that attachment that hey you're safe to ask anything I'm here to listen I may not know all the answers but that's okay we're we're in it together so you're modeling as a family that you're there to keep your child safe and that adults in their life are supposed to keep them safe inshallah we we really want to exude that message and model that to our kids so dr rania also talked about warning signs with younger kids with elementary school kids i'm gonna mention also just excessive fear worry and sadness they may be bringing up that kids are commenting about you know israel and palestine or bringing up certain news in their classroom and just even asking them how did that make you feel or like okay what was that discussion like and just notice if you're seeing some strong emotional reactions from your child and see do you want to talk about that more with me they may just be noticing it but not having an emotional reaction so we also don't want to put it on them like oh why did your teacher say that or why did that kid say that to see what they kind of bring up first inshallah i also want to be mindful of time how much time do i have left okay um also when hearing about what's going on there's a lot of misinformation and one-sidedness right now right i think that's where a lot of muslims and palestine supporters of course like are feeling like why is the palestinian voice silenced and your kids may be feeling that too in their schools so that's where i think reminding them there are so many opinions out there and a lot of times the media is distorted and you know we're gonna kind of work together on sharing resources with your teacher or finding comfortable ways to share that with their classroom i want to say that very carefully though because as we know there is hate out there and you want to be very careful in the environment your child is in so i think if we were sitting in a different state than california maybe there are other things we need to consider in our social and political context like alhamdulillah we're here in california in the bay area and still we know there there is racism out there there is islamophobia out there even here but i guess i just want to say i can't give one answer but you knowing about your child's classroom the classroom culture the school culture having contacts at the school such as a personal connection with the school counselor principal you know administration i think that is a big strength in this time so that you know who to reach out to if needed so kind of on that note safety planning is something we do a lot as therapists and i also like to think of in these times what is a plan of safety if your child is going into school and there's a climate like this i think a just knowing who the safe adults are to talk to at their school so it could be a teacher it could be not even the principal but like their Spanish teacher or something because they just have a good relationship with them and having that one-on-one conversation that like hey just so you know my kid is struggling a bit right now here's what we need right now to support them and if you are a teen in this group it's amazing to see you and i hope you can also reach out and just find some safe person to talk to at your school or outside of school inshallah i would also say with school culture a lot of people a lot of moms have been reaching out with statements or you know that this response is one-sided keep up that work as long as you feel you can do it and don't feel like you have the burden to keep doing that there are also other parents right so stay connected with other parents who share those views and who you can get community with um finally you know california law is very clear about anti-bullying and about you know this no discrimination policy and so if you ever feel that that is happening bullying harassment discrimination please reach out to care council on american islamic relations a lot of you may have heard of them they're very accessible i mean you give them a call and you just report hey something happened i don't know what that was but i'm not comfortable they can guide you in terms of what should you do what are your rights um what are the options that you have to get help and sometimes even connecting with them and them reaching out to the person who did that like that just adds a very clear boundary that this is not okay um there are a lot more other things but i would just say channeling all of those emotions inshallah into you know practical things you can do that's one of the things in our control inshallah like educating ourselves and others advocacy and help donate write letters protest praying and doing vicar i also want to share with you kind of a nuanced idea that's very important your kids are gonna be surrounded by very diverse views out there and so are you you're gonna have neighbors who have maybe very different views about lesa and israel and palestine um you're gonna have people on your facebook and social media and and they have very different views modeling to your kids listen this is our code of conduct as muslims and you know we don't respond to hate with being worse or you know we have a prophetic model for how to use our tongue and to use our character right and you know if you're having a hard time with that reach out to people like dr rania and listen to all of the great talks right now by the shiyu and just remember that you know your kids are gonna be faced with a lot of different views and reminding them all those different views those are from families that may have their own histories and cultures and may be hurting in their own ways and you know we have some different ways of looking at and educate yourselves as a family so many books online about how to talk to your kids about palestine i don't want to go into all of them but you can even google this or children's books about palestine that if your kids are bringing it up then you can shoulder read these with them so with that said may Allah make it easy for each and every one of us because we are shepherds of our families and it's an honor and it can also be a lot of yeah a lot of energy that goes into it so sakhilo khair for being here and i'll reward all of you