To heal myself, I have to get it out of my system—I have to put it out into the world. I have to speak it aloud, tell a friend, tell my mom, tell my nonexistent therapist.To heal myself, I have to walk. I have to meditate. I have to breathe. I have to look into the distance, silence the voices in my head, and do something I enjoy. Gabor Maté in The Myth of Normal writes, “Healing is not about ‘fixing’ the past but about being fully present with what is happening in the now—attuning to your pain, acknowledging it, and allowing yourself to move through it.”
Healing the inner child—walking alone in the playground. Give them friends to play with so they no longer feel alone. Give them the toys they longed for, the fun spaces they wished to be hosted in. Let them be uncertain, play in the mud, build sandcastles, draw on the walls, get dirty and messy. It’s just that now, the playground is the studio and the toy is the laptop. So let them play. Let your inner child out for a walk. Let them jump in puddles, cut paper, smear their face with ash and dirt.
To heal you, I should listen to you. Make you feel seen. Make you feel heard. Be your voice when you have none. Reflect your pain and your concerns back at you so you know you are not alone. To heal us, I have to hold up a mirror—so we can see ourselves in each other. I have to share the unshared stories. Hold hands. Introduce people to one another. Create spaces where people can meet, share, and feel seen. In This Is Not a Dance Theatre maker Nastaran Razawi Khorasani presents a dance performance that deals with censorship. What can be shown, what must remain hidden?
Nastaran brings the voices of choreographers and dancers living in Iran to the stage. How are they dealing with the ban on dance? How do they practice their profession? What dangers do they face? What freedoms are they fighting for? In what in my opinion can fit into documentary theatre where the the voices and testimonies of Iranian choreographers and dancers, interviewed are there physically on screen and in the air their bodies are metaphorically conjured on stage with a dance of light and shadow. Here they are free to dance and the stage is theirs.
The piece for me is a powerful reminder that healing often requires both individual acts of resistance and collective solidarity. The act of creating—whether in the form of dance, art, or storytelling—becomes an essential step in healing. Gabor Maté in The Myth of Normal articulates something similar: “When you’re trying to survive, you turn malady into a coping strategy, and loss into culture”. It’s in the body’s resistance, in its refusal to remain silent or still, that healing begins. Sometimes, the act of simply being seen and heard—through whatever form that takes—is a radical act of healing.
The topics I usually dive into are always connected to dealing with things that happened or I noticed in childhood and adolescence—not necessarily impactful in a traumatic way. But having lived in a war-torn country with a war that started when I was 14 is just now coming to or at least seems to be coming to an end (theoretically).
Having my value system tested over and over again. Seeing communities being torn apart. People are losing hope. Families being separated. Losing multiple friend groups, not due to growing up, but due to separation, immigration, and just the reality of a tired country where its youth and youthful, energetic population are drained slowly. Leaving whoever got left behind in the country in a constant state of nostalgia, longing, loneliness, and just waiting for life to start.
So, trying to let that out, explain it, deal with it in the most healthy way, is to create, collaborate, connect with people, listen to their side of these stories, and the way they experienced these events. Listen to their memories of these spaces and these days you miss. For me to move on, and for my child and teenage self inside me to tell their story, say it out loud, and feel seen and a part of a community that went through it with them.
Healing is both personal and social. It is for the artist, and it is for the spectator, who participates in that healing. It begins with sharing—knowing that you are not alone in your experience. Loneliness, doubt, fear, anxiety, love—what makes a difference is knowing that others feel the same. Gabor Maté in The Myth of Normal emphasizes the collective nature of healing, stating, “We heal not in isolation, but in community. Trauma is not what happens to you; it is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.”
We don’t go to the cinema just to watch a movie. We go with a desire to connect, to feel seen. To feel less alone in our feelings. To open our hearts and souls to strangers sitting beside us in the dark. Hearing the muffled sound of someone crying three rows behind, suddenly, you’re not embarrassed about crying your eyes out. This is healing. I saw something on the screen that made me feel seen, then I felt more affirmation that my feelings are valid, my emotions are valid. Someone shared them with me, and we both had the space to let that out. And in return, acknowledge that the artist—the filmmaker, the writer, the creator—is doing the same. They are baring their souls in front of us. And we, the audience, are witnesses and mirrors.
To heal socially, you have to remind everyone of what they share: their humanity, their shared histories, stories, spaces they occupied together, and events they went through together—even if they were on opposite sides of a conflict. It is important for me to highlight the universality of human emotion and human experience—love, sadness, happiness, loneliness, longing, and all that makes us human. It is my belief that at our core, we’re all the same. On a basic level, we’re all human—same fears, same desires, same emotions. We’re equal in our experience of sadness, of death, of love, we’re equal in our hopes and dreams, love for our children, and in our pursuit of happiness. No matter what people argue about, how different people and nations start the race from different positions—and while I can’t deny that on any level, you can’t tell me that human suffering, human loss, stress, anxiety, pain, love, inspiration, what we perceive to be truly beautiful, or what truly makes us happy or fulfilled, is not shared.
There’s equality on that level at least, and that may hold the answer to seeing each other as human beings—as full human beings with full lives—not as NPCs with no history, no emotions, no right to feel or live just because we look, dress, or speak differently.
In healing socially, you also have to acknowledge one glaring fact: you can’t fix large political and social problems. This involves massive policy implementation, governmental willingness, changes in laws—and sometimes it’s simply so deeply rooted and wide branching that it feels impossible to fix with individual efforts. What you can do is open people’s eyes, make them question, help them look at things from a different perspective. You can invite them to stay with the trouble.
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