Fariha and Nkem went in during this Community Chat. Zionism and the death throes of empire. Breakups as portals. Hope as practice. What it means to keep becoming—even when everything’s on fire. This one was layered, personal, political, spiritual… all of it.
Here’s just a handful of the moments that resonated:
“I want to be the person I say that I am.”
One of the moments that really stuck with us was when she talked about where her hope comes from—not from institutions or “the discourse” or anything outside herself. It’s from doing the work.
“So much of my own hope comes from myself. It comes from my own wherewithal to do the work. It comes from my own dedication… I get off on being better. And that is what I want to be. I want to be the person I say that I am.”
Letting things die so something new can grow
Fariha shared a really beautiful and honest take on moving through a breakup. It wasn’t about “getting over it” or pretending it didn’t hurt. It was about letting it become something else.
“Something as significant as a breakup can actually be composted into the earth and become something… It can be a beautiful death. And that death can be a rebirth of something I can’t even comprehend.”
“Palestine is the litmus test.”
Fariha talked about Palestine not just as a political cause but as something deeply connected to all global struggles against colonization. She said:
“This is not the beginning of this violence. It’s just a continuation of the same violence that happened here and everywhere that’s been colonized… To me, Palestine—that’s why it is the litmus test, as Angela Davis says so eloquently. Because it unites all of it.”
Built for these times
There’s a lot of heaviness in the world right now—and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. But Fariha’s take on resilience wasn’t about being superhuman. It was about practice.
“For the last nine months, my resilience has been so high because I’ve just been teaching myself over many years how to survive through these times… my own life is also really treacherous. So I feel really prepared. And that feels like an energy and an energetic practice as well as a spiritual one.”
It’s not about being strong all the time. It’s about building a resilience that can hold you when things fall apart.
You are your own construction
This part hit hard. Because we’re all figuring out how to be ourselves, how to become who we want to be—even when the world (or our own minds) keeps trying to pull us in different directions.
“You are building yourself. Like, I am my own construction. I didn’t come from anything, and I came here… Sometimes it just is bonkers to me. Again, bonkers. Because it’s just sheer will.”
Want more conversations like this? Join the Lumos Community—it’s free for the first month, and these chats are the kind of thing you’ll want to carry with you long after they’re over.
