SuperHumanizer Podcast

Anatomy Of An Activist: Stories, Science, Skills

• Dr. Hani Chaabo, Katie Bogen M.A • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Join Dr. Hani Chaabo and Katie Bogen, the new co-host of the Superhumanizer podcast, as they explore the anatomy of an activist through storytelling, science, and practical skills. In this special episode, they discuss the show's success in promoting empathy globally, the role of epigenetic trauma, the importance of effective activism, and the power of community and joy amidst grief. Featuring moving narratives from Katie’s Jewish and Hani’s Lebanese-Palestinian family history, and skills shared for managing trauma, this episode delves deep into humanity, resilience, and the fight for social justice.

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Hani: Welcome to Superhumanizer podcast, where we promote empathy and understanding in polarizing viewpoints through stories told by people living them. Hello, everyone. Welcome to this very special episode of Superhumanizer. Where I get to welcome the most beautiful and the most profound Katie Bogen.

Hani: As your new co host on the show, my goodness, I feel so lucky. Welcome Katie. 

Katie: Thank you so much. I am so delighted to join Superhumanizer. I feel like the conversations that have come out of this pod out of the videos that you make have been deep and nuanced and really grounded in our humanity. I mean it lives up to its name being a part of this project makes me feel so cozy and so special and I just adore you and I'm excited to see what can happen next.

Hani: Thank you, honey. I totally echo you Your episode in particular has been really one of the groundbreaking episodes for us on the podcast So many people asked me specifically to get back on an episode with you and have another conversation i'm really glad we're doing that I feel even more elated that it's not going to be just another one time thing.

Hani: It's going to be a continuous magical process that we do together. So thank you so much.

Katie: Oh my gosh. I'm so honored delighted. And I hope those people are very happy because we are making it happen we listened to you. We heard you. 

Hani: I feel like one of the biggest gifts that have come out of this podcast is interacting with the people that are interacting with us and hearing how they're responding to it.

Hani: It's been such a joy to see the podcast well received around the world. We made it to the top charts in the US and the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Germany. We even made it to number five in Israel out of all places, which I know that might land differently on different people listening to us, but you know talking about superhumanizing people that's one of the most places where superhumanizing needs to happen so it's just been a joy to see the response and to listen to our audience and what they've wanted 

Katie: Absolutely, and I think it really contradicts this idea of israelis as a monolith too we have so many folks who are zionist critical who are currently living in israel who need the validation and the affirmation of other anti zionist and zionist critical perspectives so that they don't feel so alone so that their resistance is also grounded and in community.

Katie: So I was really excited to hear that. It made me very optimistic about the future of not only this pod, but this movement. 

Hani: Yes, me too. So well said. Yes, good people are everywhere. A challenging belief we have to face is that good people are not everywhere good people are for sure everywhere, especially in israel there's so many people working towards peace.

Hani: So thank you so much for saying that. 

Katie: Absolutely, I keep thinking about the fact too that I got to have this conversation with Maoz Inon the peace activist from israel because of your pod now oh my gosh our pod. Just a few weeks later Maoz and his 

brother were meeting with the pope and the reach of this podcast in the community that it Has been able to build is incredible.

I'm stunned by it every day. To be a part of this is remarkable. I'm really grateful to you for building the community and eager to see what comes of it. 

Hani: Oh, I'm so glad to hear that. Thank you. Yeah, Maoz's episode I'm so excited to release that and share it with the world.

Hani: That was absolute magic compassion Thank you for announcing people don't know that's gonna happen he is such a wonderful human being talking about super humanizers the way that you guys held that space together was so beautiful to watch that energy happen between you two Especially when you challenged him you asked him some 

Katie: Smart questions, yup, smart hitting questions and he handled them with grace, and I adore him, do I think that we're gonna align on every perspective? No, and the episode will make it clear to folks that we do not, but part of this project of superhumanizing is finding where we do align, finding where our common ground is, and staying there, not running to the conflict immediately, staying there long enough that the other person is truly a person to us, and letting that build the tendrils of challenge out.

Katie: If you meet someone at a shared foundation of values, what change can you make as you move outward across the spheres of disagreement? That I think was very loud in the Maoz episode. 

Hani: Beautiful. I love how you worded that. You found the foundations of agreement, and that allowed you also to hold where the disagreement was happening, but the agreement almost took precedence over the disagreement, and that is essentially superhumanizing.

Hani: Thank you so much for saying that. The next segment of this, which was your idea and I absolutely loved it you wanted us to share a story that connects us to the cause. So would you mind sharing the story you have prepared for us today? 

Katie: Yeah, absolutely.

Katie: I want to share some of my family history. For those of y'all who don't know me, my name is Katie Bogen. My pronouns are she, her, hers. I am a Jewish American. I was raised in a Zionist household and I'm the granddaughter and great niece of Holocaust survivors. My family is from Otwock, Poland. They were part of the Polish underground movement in the Warsaw Ghetto and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Katie: My grandfather went to a labor camp and my great aunt Helen went to Ravensbruck concentration camp and then Buchenwald. where she was one of the victims of Dr. Josef Mengele, the death angel, she emerged from the war in 1945 after being liberated on a death march from her camp with such intense gynecological trauma, that she could no longer bear children or have children.

Katie: And I keep thinking about these generations of Jewish women in, the 1930s through 1940s and the end of World War II and the Holocaust, who had their ability to bear children stolen from them, theft of reproduction, this, this genocidal effort to stop procreation of an other or hated group.

Katie: And I keep thinking about the parallels for Palestinians as well. My aunt Helen was not able to have children. She did wind up adopting my aunt and uncle.

Katie: I have extended family and wonderful cousins who are such beautiful people and who care very deeply about the safety and sanctity of Jewish life. Every time I think about my aunt Helen's story and her experience of this reproductive violation, I think about all of the stories of Palestinian women who are being killed while they are pregnant, who are miscarrying.

Katie: You know that miscarriage rates are up by over 300 percent in Gaza and we have these parallels in human history of the way that oppressive regimes, that colonizers, that these violent forces target women's bodies and reproduction writ large. In order to continue a genocide generations down the line, and if Jewish people cannot see the parallels between our people suffering and the gynecological trauma that was done to Jewish women in the context of the Holocaust and Palestinian people suffering right now and the generations of their families that are being brutalized, the violence that's being inflicted upon pregnant women and pregnant people, then there's something broken in our imagination.

Katie: and in our capacity for this broader empathy. So something that's been bringing me back to the labor of this movement over and over again this week is thinking about how I would have wanted people to advocate for my aunt Helen and her bodily autonomy and her, access to reproduction as something that she really wanted.

Katie: She wanted to have children and the Palestinian women who are being denied that right now, I would have wanted people to advocate for my aunt Helen and my family. It is my role now. It is my job and my calling to do the same for Palestinian women who are being targeted. 

Hani: That is so beautiful, Katie dear.

Hani: It's almost like you feel the drive from within your ancestral being within your activism you're thinking of your aunt and what she went through and your compassion is allowing you to see those parallels in Palestinians and what they're going through right now. And it's just really beautiful to see what you're doing with that. so important 

Katie: Thank you so much. We have this stereotype or understanding of epigenetic trauma as always this. horrible, vile, toxic, brutal, evil thing, as opposed to this foundation for compassion, empathy, sympathy, the growth of community, mutual understanding, enlightenment, as much as my epigenetic trauma as a Jewish person does follow me around, and it certainly does, I think it also grants me a latitude for compassion that folks might not otherwise have.

Hani: Yeah, I love how you tied that to epigenetic trauma because my share is actually also related to that. I'm learning now as a 36 year old about my heritage as a Palestinian, because I grew up as a Lebanese person. I learned snippets about my Palestinian heritage when I was growing up but my grandmother died when I was really young.

 All I knew before all of this happened actually, was that she is Palestinian. She was a refugee that my dad grew up in the refugee camp but his dad was Lebanese. So the identity we grew up with was always more Lebanese, not very much Palestinian. On some level, there was an underlying almost shame of being Palestinian, especially in Lebanon, because it's such a judgmental environment towards Palestinians for many reasons that are valid and invalid.

Hani: Many reasons that are related to Palestine and not related to Palestine at all. Of course, we can dissect that in so many ways. But Because of that underlying shame my parents kept the identity of being Lebanese at the forefront.

Hani: My curiosity wasn't very, mature about my Palestinian heritage until I wanted to understand what happened. I wanted to challenge all the obstacles in my family that weren't allowing me to understand for example, when I asked my dad about what happened, he very quickly would not want to talk about it.

Hani: I honored that as part of his trauma, as not wanting to, stir the pot. I'm sure growing up in a refugee camp was full of different traumas that he maybe isn't ready to talk about or never wants to talk about. I'm not sure what kind of stories he heard from his mother, from his grandparents.

Hani: I think he was trying to protect us for a long period of time. So it was almost like thing that we just didn't go, we didn't go there. When October 7 happened , especially now moving to the US and being an Arab in the US and now also noticing how all the ideals of freedom and equality and life for all, all these wonderful things that make us American on some level aren't applying to me as an Arab right now, especially from what I'm seeing around me, whether it's in the health care circles I'm in or the social circles I'm in, and it's just been really striking to see.

Hani: Okay. Now this Palestinian identity within me it's even more important to embrace it and understand it and fight for it because epigenetic trauma is getting activated again. I learned that My grandmother, for example, was from Yaffa and that her mother took her on foot when she was very young.

Hani: Basically running away from the horrors that were happening, the militias that were attacking the towns. I learned that they crossed through orchards and terrain that wasn't always hospitable, that they had to hide. Many times along the journey until they made it to the border with Lebanon and the refugee camp that they settled. These were all stories that my mom told me that my mom heard as she was married to my dad and time went by.

Hani: My mom learned more about these stories, but even my mom doesn't know so much because within that family there wasn't much that was shared . As I'm also thinking about my epigenetic trauma I also went through Israeli airstrikes myself multiple times in Lebanon. I was about 17 18 years old.

Hani: I remember one airstrike in particular hit so close to us. It was like 2, 3, houses down it was so loud it just shook the whole building and they actually struck the electricity factory that was in that area. So for several days, we didn't have electricity. We didn't have ability to move around.

Hani: We just had to settle with the food the water we had in the house. With those memories and then my epigenetic trauma, whenever things happen in Palestine, whenever Palestinians are attacked, all of that gets reactivated. I feel it so deeply in my body. That's not just been an experience that I've had since October 7th, like my epigenetic trauma and all this anguish that I feel in my body and the grief that drives me to be an activist for the cause.

Hani: That's something I felt. Multiple times in my life, especially moving here. It was just so much easier to be an activist in Lebanon everybody has the same view as you everybody's angry with you, right? Everybody's grieving with you for the most part, but then here when I was trying to be an activist before october 7 I had people that I valued and loved and cared for very much that said, the way that you're wording yourself is anti semitic or that you don't understand zionism.

Hani: You don't understand What that means to Jewish people on some level I had to do my learning and understand that and I'm really glad I did. But on another level, I was also being repressed. For a long period of time, I thought that I should be repressed there's something wrong with what I'm saying.

Hani: When October 7 happened. Especially meeting people like you, Katie Dearest, I noticed that the time is now to do something with this epigenetic trauma, this personal trauma that I have, with everything that I'm seeing happen being the worst we've ever seen it, even when I witnessed it from Lebanon, I've never seen it this bad.

Hani: It's the second Nakba that we're seeing, it's another genocide. That is the story that connects me to the cause 

Katie: I keep thinking about this pop culture statement of beauty is pain and mentally reversing it of no, no pain.

Katie: Pain can be beauty. Pain can be beauty. We underwent these horrible things. Our families survived these terrible things. We internalize them in our bodies in a way that really impacts us over the course of our lives that should be devastating. It is frightening and horrible bonds us to justice causes in a way that maintains itself.

Katie: People who stay in movements for social justice, who refuse to burn out, even when burning out would be potentially a relief and escape that is really wanted. Ignorance is bliss, right? Burning out would be an outlet potentially or a way to run from the labor that we have to do.

Katie: And instead the folks who have really experienced the pain, not only in their own lives, but in the lives of their family members and generations back down the line. Those are the people who figure out how to stay. I'm hearing this, beautiful and heartbreaking story of you and your family and what your ancestors have gone through and how that keeps you here.

Katie: This rootedness of indigeneity when you know you're supposed to be somewhere, you just stay no political movement has felt like that to me, the way that the Palestinian liberation movement feels like there's a rootedness that comes from more than a certain ethnic or racial or cultural identity.

Katie: There's a rootedness that comes from an understanding of social justice because of the way that injustice has been done to us and our people. That I think makes us global citizens and committed to ideals in a way that other people sometimes fail to be. I don't want to blame them necessarily for their failure because every system of power on our earth is conspiring and collaborating to keep people not only oppressed but oppressive. The tangible benefits of being an oppressor are so compelling. And the cognitive and emotional Benefits of ignorance that bliss that they get to experience is so compelling. There's a moral fortitude that accompanies the decision to stay in a fight like this that can only be born In some way from suffering.

Katie: And in this pain can really be beautiful. 

Hani: Everybody that changed the world came from a place of suffering. Whether that's Dr. Viktor Frankl, which I'm sure you're, you know very well. Yes, Dr. Viktor Frankl, a wonderful, profound Holocaust survivor and psychologist who allowed us to understand what positive psychology is.

Hani: He's the father of positive psychology and he gave us the manual for resilience, which he came up with during his time in a concentration camp.

Katie: I have it on my bookshelf. Man's search for meaning is like right next to me. Yep, 

Hani: profound book. Yeah. And whether that's the palestinians that we're seeing today fighting for their existence for their rights for their freedom for liberation, and there's nothing more powerful than taking what we're feeling all that grief and trauma and trying to be helpful with it, trying to do something with it.

Hani: So how are you navigating all this grief and trauma? 

Katie: I am a trainee trauma therapist. I'm a fourth year doctoral student in a clinical psychology PhD program. I really love my work and my work is very trauma focused. So I work mostly with survivors of sexual violence who experienced some type of intimate dysfunction, sexual dysfunction, or they want to improve their intimate lives, have like joyful, consensual embodied lives.

Katie: I take a very, cognitive behavioral and embodiment approach to healing of when you've experienced something horrible. How do you move forward? A skill that I keep coming back to is the basic use of the cognitive behavioral triangle. And I'm not sure if our listeners are going to be familiar with this.

Katie: So I'll give a brief outline, which is basically when something happens in your life, you have some prompting event, a triggering event. The first thing your brain has to do is interpret that event. The first thing you experience after whatever prompt is a thought. It's what you tell yourself about that event.

Katie: From that interpretation, from your thoughts, your emotions are born, your sensations are born. The body can sometimes follow the mind. And there are people who will argue that this happens simultaneously, and maybe it does. But part of this triangle is just you go through an event, you tell yourself something, you interpret it in a certain way, and then you feel certain things, whether they're emotions or sensations.

Katie: And those emotions and sensations dictate what you will then do. One tangible example of this, for me, has been recently seeing the news. And I'll see, these videos coming out of Gaza, out of the West Bank, the violence of settlers, this horrible brutality happening to Palestine. One of the temptations of my brain is to think, oh, this is hopeless.

Katie: You see something horrible on the television and you tell yourself, this situation is hopeless. And when I experience the thought, this situation is hopeless, I feel deeply sad. I feel numb in my body. I feel unmotivated. I am less likely to engage. I won't engage in protest or actions or donations. That in and of itself engenders shame. Which is another freeze factor, which also keeps me from being effective. If you notice this cognitive behavioral triangle of, Oh, I have this prompting event of seeing this news. I tell myself this really unsettling thing.

Katie: It makes me feel miserable. And then I am ineffective as an activist. One of the beautiful things about this triangle is you can actually intervene at any one of these places. I find intervening at the level of my thoughts to be the most helpful. So I'll ask myself, is this statement that the situation is hopeless?

Katie: Either realistic or helpful to me. Is it true that the situation is hopeless? How can I challenge that? What contrary evidence do I have? And that's when you look for the helpers. That's when you look at all of these non profit organizations and these folks who are raising funds on GoFundMe and the people who are, going to provide aid in person and you think this situation actually isn't hopeless.

Katie: Look at all of these beautiful people coming together to support one another. Look at the Israelis and Palestinians both engaging in a peace process. This situation is not actually hopeless. XYZ thing gives me hope, these aid workers give me hope, this statement I just saw from a journalist gives me hope.

Katie: The way that the headlines have changed over the last eight weeks gives me hope. 

Hani: My 

Katie: God. Like true. Yes. It is like watching the news finally, after months of hovering and I know that it is too late, but still like something is changing here in our collective psyche about how we interpret this.

Katie: That gives me hope. And then when I allow myself to focus my thoughts. On the things that are hopeful. I feel optimistic. I feel motivated. I feel enlivened. It engenders a joy in my body, and then I'm more effective. I'm more likely to donate. I'm more likely to interface with other people, to go to protest events, to plan events, to engage in conversations like this one.

Katie: Any point in the cognitive behavioral triangle is an intervention point. A skill I've come back to again and again is noticing when my thoughts are causing me distress and providing an alternative thought that shifts my emotional state. Once I do that, the cascade of more pro social positive behaviors just follows.

Hani: Beautiful. So powerful. It's such a simple paradigm, but it really is the building block of resilience and navigating some of the toughest experiences that a human can go through. I love how you focus on your thoughts and then you, change the emotion and from there your behavior changes because you're choosing an emotion that makes you more effective I love how many times you said effective for us as activists that is the most important word is how effective are we being right now?

Hani: Because at the end of the day the activism is going to happen the voice you're putting into the cause is going to happen the work That you're putting to change something all that is happening But then the effectiveness piece gets sabotaged by how we are thinking about what we're trying to do the hopelessness piece is definitely something that I feel almost every single day with this It's something that keeps coming back It comes and goes in waves Especially as things are developing like the headlines being positive one of my favorite headlines over the last week Has been the fact that germany will arrest Netanyahu if he goes to germany that for me was like yay! high five, but then right after that it's like the picture of the fetus that was ripped out of their mother's womb because of a blast seeing that and witnessing that and the yo ness of all these emotions that we're going through that in itself that elastic band on the nervous system of ups and downs that in itself eats away at our resilience and at the end of the day We have to understand if we're being effective or not.

Hani: Yesterday, I had a headache all day because of seeing that picture. And Also I work with Children Not Numbers an organization that rescues children from Gaza for treatment seeing what's happening to those children and those images all day.

Hani: It just eats away at your resilience and something that I always ask myself like yesterday at the end of my day, I asked myself how effective was I just sitting there scrolling, scrolling, scrolling because my fight or flight nervous system saw that picture and wanted to see what else is happening. Who else are they killing?

Hani: What else are they doing? It's the hopelessness. It's also the anger that gets in the way of our effectiveness. At the end of the day, I had to reckon with myself and say, okay I went into my stats. I spent seven hours on Instagram today. Did that make me effective? Did that help in any way for the cause at all?

Hani: What did I do there? By doing that, also something that I talk about with the volunteers at Children Not Numbers who are amazing, profound human beings from all over the world that have come together to help save these Children. The question is always about effectiveness at the end of the day, like, Okay, we're seeing these pictures all day.

Hani: We're thinking about them in a certain way. How can we think differently as we're receiving those pictures? And then once we're out of this challenging mode of looking at these at the news and everything that's happening, what are we doing outside of that? To help us counter and be more resilient. So yes the, this triangle is just so profound.

Hani: Thank you for sharing that. 

Katie: Thank you so much for sharing your work. the way that we shame ourselves for any kind of pleasure or enjoyment that we experience in real time as this is happening is so ineffective. Like we do need to step away. We need to recharge.

Katie: And that doesn't mean abandoning ship. That doesn't mean that we are abandoning the fight. And I think there's this really competitive kind of activistic perfectionism that we see crop up in all kinds of social justice movements. As long as the people you are fighting for are suffering, you must also suffer.

Katie: You don't get to experience any kind of joy or pleasure. But we see Palestinians on the ground who say, that's not true. Like, please go live your lives and experience pleasure and joy and do what you can for us. We can't afford to burn out. It does violence . It does harm to the movement.

Katie: If we wind up so burnt out and exhausted that we do abandon ship. And that is what people risk by maintaining a standard of activistic perfection and internalizing shame every time they get to experience joy or pleasure. You can absolutely interrogate I am experiencing pleasure right now and I feel guilty about it because there are people who right now are under siege and that is devastating.

Katie: And you can look at that truth in your hands and hold and examine it And then release it. i've attended to this. I acknowledge that the universe is unfair. And that this horrible thing is happening to people who do not deserve it. And also, if I don't go, take a nap. If I allow myself to scroll for seven hours of the day to try to get that information hit.

Katie: If I don't go eat breakfast. a meal or take a walk around the lake or do something that's going to connect to the fact that I'm a human with a body who deserves reward. I cannot be effective. And really our job here is to try to be as effective as possible. 

Hani: Yes. Yes. Said. Beautiful. Why should we be activists?

Hani: What is the reason? How does that make us better human beings? And then what gets in the way of our activism? We talked about the effectiveness. We talked about needing to do self care, but what else gets in the way of us being effective activists? 

Katie: I come back to acceptance commitment therapy all the time. I have no idea how to take this therapist hat off. Like it just lives here. So I'll be coming back. I'm glad 

Hani: it does. 

Katie: It really does. And one of the ways of experiencing joy and alignment as human beings is to move the way that our values make us move.

Katie: to live in alignment with our values. If you are someone who internalizes justice as a value and then you don't act for social justice, you don't act for the social good, You experience dissonance, a cognitive and emotional dissonance between, Okay, my values are over here. I know myself to be a justice oriented person.

Katie: I would like to be a justice oriented person. And yet I'm not doing anything. And that creates a tension within the self that is really challenging to resolve. And then people will move through the world experiencing this tension. And it makes them angrier , less grounded , less communicative people.

Katie: It's an alienation not only from the self, but from others. I think the purpose of being an activist can be self serving, of I need to align with my values. If I am not aligning with my values, I am experiencing this kind of castration of the soul, and this alienation from the self. And also I cannot be in community with other people the way that I want to be because I'm not being authentic.

Katie: It makes people feel like a fraud, or a fake, or a failure. the purpose of being an activist is yes, this collective good is yes, a world that is safer, softer and sweeter for everyone around me. And also, it stops me from moving through the world as this ghost who never actually gets to exist as herself.

Katie: I don't want to carry around this, like, poltergeist of self loathing all the time because I'm not doing what my values tell me to do. If you're someone who knows that they're a justice oriented person and injustice and you do nothing, it should create a sense of confusion and tension and disgust that serves a purpose that's meant to motivate you to live in a life with those values.

Katie: And I'm not saying that shame here is helpful. I don't think that shame is a motivating factor. I think the shame is a freeze factor, but noticing that tension between where your values live and what you are actually doing, I think is what brings people to social justice movements over and over again, even when they're tired, even when it feels like its

Katie: too much or overwhelming. That's what always keeps me here, which might sound incredibly selfish and myopic. And if selfishness and myopia keep me in a movement for other people, fine. 

Hani: Please be selfish if you're being selfish about your values. I wish everybody was selfish about values. That, That is one of the most important things we can do in this world is to further these beautiful values, which are at the end of the day, universal human rights.

Hani: Of freedom for all equality for all dignity and life for all we don't want to see any more people dying We want to see people living the life they deserve to live. We want to see children live a childhood there's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to motivate yourself even from a place of maybe anger not aggression, but strong emotion, one of my favorite sayings by Dr. Kristin Neff is fierce compassion . Being an activist is one of the only places where feelings like fierce compassion come up. When you're protecting your child, that's fierce compassion, like mama bear ness, and there's something beautiful about that.

Hani: Humanity expanding, motherhood expanding. Being an activist allows you also to tap into that fierce compassion. That's one of the beauties of being an activist. I also want to say I love, you are the queen of words, castration of the soul where do these words come from?

Hani: You must be connected to something divine, my dear. I totally agree with you. That emotional labor, is a castration of the soul when you don't respond to fighting for these beautiful values that make us human. I absolutely echo everything that you're saying, to add to that, what I learned about challenge and the brain is that our brain is most neuroplastic when we are challenged. means that our brains are most malleable, most adaptable, and most open to growth and change when we're challenged, a really good example is scientists that are in the Antarctic, for example, or the North and South Poles. And they're doing research there. And of course, it's just big expanses of nothing but white.

Hani: Your brain isn't stimulated as much as when you're in a city and things are coming at you from all over. Your brain is not as challenged when you're at the poles. The brain starts to shrink. So these scientists that are at the Poles are researching and stimulating their brain with science, their brains start to shrink because they're not stimulated by their environments. So when we are challenged, our brain is primed to grow and learn. After every challenge, there can be a learning. That's when we absorb the learning the most.

Hani: What bigger challenge is there than being an activist, than putting ourselves in that front row seat of the hardest conversations across the world, and the environments that we're in and that continued challenge and then anchoring to our values, like you said, those two things coming together expands our humanity in ways that no other experience can provide. I'm, not just an activist because of my epigenetic and personal trauma and because I have these values that I stand up for It's also because on some level it's growing my humanity and that's something that I want in my life That's a value for me is growing my humanity. 

Katie: That is so beautiful and it makes me think of all these student movements and all these young people .Talking about neuroplasticity in the brain. People always ask Why are young people always at the forefront of these movements? Talk about neuroplasticity. These are folks whose frontal lobes are still developing, who are most apt to shift and change their perspectives when they are challenged.

Katie: And it's not because of vulnerability. It's not because of naivete. It's because of this plasticity that allows them to perspective take more easily, that branches out their understanding of violence and other people's experience. The reason we see over and over again, students at the front lines of these activistic movements is because their neuroplasticity is broader than adults who have a fully developed frontal lobe and who are not allowing themselves to be challenged, particularly students on a college campus who not only have these, gray matter, squishy brains that get to still change and develop, but are in contexts of learning all the time and are primed to take on new perspectives.

Katie: I'm 30 now, And I see these 20 year olds using language that I don't know yet, pushing my boundaries of understanding. There's a defensive mechanism that happens of I'm older and I'm more experienced. I know more than these kids. And I have to turn and say, Katie, absolutely not.

Katie: These folks have the most plastic brains. More plastic than yours right now. Their frontal lobes are developing. They are equipped and primed to process things that you are not. You're in a context of not stagnation, I'm obviously still learning and I'm in a doctoral program, but I'm in a context that's not going to challenge me the same way as these adolescents who are learning to become ethical people.

Katie: Always I will listen to the college students who are leading these movements. All of the science that we have on social justice would align with trusting the kids. Yes. Like absolutely just trusting the kids. 

Hani: The youth know the truth. Yes. They do. They always have, and they always will. 

Katie: My nightmare is becoming the kind of person who's like, you're too young, you don't know anything.

Katie: I'm like oh, it won't happen. 

Hani: I'm so grateful that they know and that they're moving. This like critical mass that first , came from all the activism that happened before the student movements of course over decades. Unrelated to the palestinian cause Vietnam, Apartheid, Slavery all those things poured into the activism that happened with the students, then also the movement over decades towards palestinian freedom, all of those pouring into each other so the critical mass formed that led to the student protests.

Hani: That's a really beautiful reason to be an activist because plugging into that critical mass allows us to expand our humanity through mirroring each other. Also. There's something we have called mirror neurons. If I'm sitting, and I have all these values that I really want to fight for, but I'm on my own somewhere, I'm not as likely to want to speak out for those values as I am if I was doing that in community, with people.

Hani: Because of those mirror neurons, your strength is my strength. Your voice becomes my voice. Even your words, like you said, you heard words from these students that you had never really grappled as language for yourself as an activist now you're using those words because of those mirror neurons.

Hani: Plugging into these communities mirroring and learning from each other and bringing our values to align with each other, not just within our own lives, but within all of our lives together, which is so beautiful. And on that note, I wanted to share a quote from Chiquitita, who is a trans Person that went viral recently because at the GLAAD awards, she actually got up in the middle of the ceremony and basically said that the GLAAD awards supports genocide.

Hani: That we should be divesting and, all the things that we should be saying in these public forums. She actually inspired favorite drag queen of mine, Sasha Velour, to actually also take a stand. I don't know if you saw her comment

Katie: yeah, I love Sasha Velour. 

Hani: I love her. She's a Jewish drag queen, right?

Hani: And she's the winner of one of the most iconic endings of RuPaul's Drag Race. She's been to lebanon. She's an activist herself but she didn't really say anything until Chiquitita made that statement in the glad awards that was a beautiful indicator of how one's activism can inspire another person's activism. I know a lot of people prefer to take a neutral stance on things. Let's be switzerland I don't want to be on either side of this that in itself is harmful for all the reasons you talked about Katie, especially the labor piece but I love this quote from Chiquitita It says, "I don't believe in neutrality and I don't think queer people are granted the privilege of neutrality ever in any situation In any country." That really spoke to me because that also says, take the queer people out of it.

Hani: Of course being queer is in itself being an activist But take that out of it that what that is saying is that anybody That fought for their own freedom or have ancestors that fought for their freedom Cannot be neutral because now we are entrusted to do that for others, especially those that are oppressed. What do you think of neutrality Katie?

Katie: Oh my gosh. Neutrality is such a trap it's a lie. There is no such thing as neutrality. Everyone always says neutrality only helps the oppressor it is not designed to facilitate the liberation of the oppressed I think it's Absolutely dishonest. And as a queer Jewish person, I grew up in a conservative hometown. My identity has been political for my entire life before I even came out, my identity is political. The first time someone called me a dyke, my identity was political.

Katie: The first time someone threw coins at me because I was Jewish, my identity was political. Growing up in a small conservative hometown is not ideal. I think for most people, including people who believe that they're conservative because it stifles your entire self and access to, for example, the full range of human emotions.

Katie: But I think this idea that any person can be neutral when we live in these systems of privilege, hegemony, and hierarchy is just so brutally dishonest. And there is an empowerment and an agency that comes with embracing the fact that neutrality is a lie, that neutrality doesn't exist. It all of a sudden opens up all of these paths, as we were saying before, to effectiveness of, if I can see that neutrality is dishonest and now I have to make a choice, let me choose what aligns with my values.

Katie: Let me choose what makes sense to me, based on my own system of beliefs, that's a way of honoring not only all of the activists that came before that made this decision clear to you, but honoring your own value system and sense of self and your role as an agent, your role as someone who has Social power and social dignity.

Katie: It's, I, neutrality is just such a bullshit fox trap and I will not exist there. 

Hani: It's challenging beliefs, right? It's one of those beliefs that neutrality is actually going to lead to the value that you're trying to stand up for by being neutral. And that's just not going to happen.

Katie: Yeah. 

Hani: So yeah. 

Katie: I fundamentally don't understand about other people and I won't say, obviously there are many activists, billions of activists around the world, but the people who claim genuine neutrality for the sake of logic, science, objectivity, whatever. You really believe your own bullshit.

Katie: It's shocking to me. What happens to you to destroy your not only sense of compassion, but your imagination. And this idea of pure science and pure objectivity has been debunked In science, over and over again, we have these IATs, we have implicit bias. Tests that demonstrate that true neutral doesn't exist, even among people who believe that they are neutral.

Katie: And in fact, there's been a lot of research recently about the political moderate in the United States. People who identify as moderate hold the same policy positions as people who identify as conservative. So you can claim neutrality in your verbiage, but neutrality I think is just another word for conservatism.

Katie: Anyway,

Hani: interesting. 

Katie: That's my little rant. 

Hani: Beautiful. I love that. I never even saw those two equated in that way. I totally agree with you. Nothing says superhumanizer to me like an activist. That's why we interview humanitarians and peace activists on superhumanizer. And this is why we made that the focus of our conversation today, dear Katie. Many things get in the way of our activism, especially the way that we are navigating this vicarious trauma and also our personal trauma for those of us that have direct connections to what's happening there.

Hani: And then because of that trauma, we're also grieving. Those two things in themselves have brain changes that can get in the way of our activism. What I know about the traumatized brain is that it registers As a scar in the brain, where if you look at an fMRI scanner, so a scanner that looks at the function of the brain, you can see that the electrical and the chemical activity within the brain gets almost severed by trauma, where it stops the communication that's happening between the lower brain, which is the fight or flight system.

Hani: And then the higher brain, which is my wisdom, my intuition, my calm, my creativity, my compassion. When that scar happens, it causes a dysregulation between how those two parts of the brain interact with each other. Couple that with grieving in itself is a also freeze response, grieving registers to us as if some part of us has disappeared.

Hani: Like when you think about a ghost limb, for example, so people that lose their limbs, talking about. All the people that are losing limbs right now over there. Some people develop a phantom pain where they still feel that limb is there. They can even feel pain in that limb.

Hani: But that limb isn't there anymore. So our brain attaches to the people that we're grieving as if they are another limb, as if they are a part of us. When we are grieving to the brain, a part of us has been lost. So we're going through the trauma and we're feeling a part of us has been lost and that can kick up all kinds of thoughts that lead to emotions that lead to behaviors.

Hani: That gets in the way of our thinking. What do you know about that, my dear? 

Katie: I think about this sort of top down versus bottom up approach to healing, particularly for the traumatized brain. And there are these really useful cognitive approaches that basically say, I'm going to examine my thoughts.

Katie: But there are also these behavioral approaches that just say, I know that I feel like garbage right now. I'm like, something is wrong. I am miserable. You don't really have to do the thought thing. You can just do something active. That changes your body chemistry, so that you can work from the bottom up.

Katie: Whether it's taking a nice long shower, or brushing your hair, or going on a walk, or doing something that sort of gets you into the body. I think that is a way to heal from the ground up. And the traumatized brain makes us ineffective often and how the parts of our brain communicate and so when something cognitive is happening That is smacking against a wall that is hitting this boundary over and over again We have this other resource that is our bodies I think all the time about Adrienne Marie Brown's work on pleasure Activism and just the fact that the body was created so that we could enjoy pleasure in order to make us more Effective human beings we have a mammalian system Mammals have pleasure receptors and pleasure response for a reason.

Katie: If I am feeling so deeply unhappy and I'm caught in this cognitive void, I need to go on a walk around my favorite lake. I need to go eat something that sparks a hedonic response. Chocolate, great. Like a hedonic response is ground up healing. And so that's something that I think about all the time.

Hani: Beautiful. 

Katie: When we're existing in the cognitive space, sometimes we can bottom up it. 

Hani: Beautiful. Initially you talked about, you could change your thoughts and then now you're talking about, okay step two is I could also focus on the body and what I'm feeling in the body and how I can move myself from this feeling in the body.

Hani: So recognizing what's happening and then moving from there towards. Another response, especially something hedonistic that to the nervous system balances out the fight or flight that's happening in the nervous system. What we focus on expands and neurons that fire together, wire together.

Hani: So if I'm constantly focused on my grief and my trauma and all the triggers that are happening, that starts to wire me into remaining in fight or flight. My threshold of activation in my nervous system becomes lower. Smaller things start to trigger me more, especially In my everyday life, I'm more irritable.

Hani: There's that emotional labor that's being carried. Hedonism and reconnecting to joy in all of the ways and from wherever that is, in any setting, reconnecting to joy balances out that stressed fight or flight response that we could be living in as we're navigating our trauma and grief.

Hani: How do you maintain balance? between your activism, your grief, and your trauma, and then normalcy in your life. 

Katie: I try to really save space for the pain and the pleasure. I have to, like, I will do the hard, activistic labor, which in and of itself has become more and more rewarding as I realize what I can withstand.

Katie: The ache of it is turning down, and the reward of it is turning up, and that's spectacular. But also I write books That are spicy and fun. When my brain is just so overwhelmed with the hurt of the world, I pivot and I experience some more of my creative endeavor and I spend time with these characters that I deeply love, and I take myself on picnics and on my little hot single girl Lake Walks, and it re inscribes a sense of deservingness of pleasure and joy and it fills my cup and then I can move back to fundraising and going to activist events and speaking online and making content that will hopefully change the minds of some Zionists.

Katie: And interrogate Zionism as an ethno nationalist political project. And I do that work because I have the energy, because I have allowed myself to experience pleasure. And it really does countervene this sense of guilt. It countervenes this activistic perfection that tells me, Oh, but Katie, you're supposed to be miserable all the time.

Katie: There's no science that says that being miserable all the time is going to help us do anything. So that's what works for me.

Hani: Beautiful. The guilt piece. And shame, and I want to add one more piece to this, which is blame. Shame, guilt, and blame are known as the emotional whips.

Hani: Our bodies don't differentiate between shame, guilt, blame, and a lion running after me. My nervous system responds to that in the same way. If I'm sitting there and I'm simmering in my survivor's guilt, why am I here?

Hani: Why do I deserve this? All of this is happening over there. I shouldn't be living this life, etc. That's a challenging belief that we have to face because that's an emotional whip that we're going into. We're literally whipping ourselves every time we're in our survivor's guilt. It's so important for me to recognize when I'm in my survivor's guilt.

Hani: And to move myself towards the things that disconnect me. Recently, for example, I took up skiing as a sport, which I've never really done before and I've been I've been obese most of my life, which most people don't know that. If you scroll down really far in my Instagram, you'll see that I was obese. Skiing was never something that I thought I'd pick up. I just never thought of the culture of skiing as something that I would gravitate towards. But then my partner is a very avid skier. And during this time he was going and disconnecting and being with his snow and the mountains and the trees.

Hani: And he would come back and be so rejuvenated while I'm just sitting there at same energy scrolling and trying to, do something and one day I was like, Okay, I need to go and see I need to disconnect. You can't use your phone on the ski lift. While you're skiing.

Hani: You definitely don't want to I mean you really want to just soak up all the views of the mountains and hovering over trees and looking down and dangling your feet on top of a tree is so beautiful that was one way that I balanced myself out but obviously I can't go skiing all the time. One other way that I've started experimenting with now, which I'm going to be in a full disclosure. It's not perfect, but I've downloaded an app called the freedom app. which basically blocks me from using social media at certain times of the day. It's forced me to compartmentalize my activism so that I can also compartmentalize my life and my joy and my sense of normalcy that will help me in my activism.

Hani: And that's really been helpful to me, is to maintain those boundaries. Do you have those boundaries at all? 

Katie: That's something I'm still working on. Speaking of activistic perfection, the doom scrolling, it catches me from like 10 p. m. till two o'clock in the morning. And then I'm not well rested enough and I'm not as effective.

Katie: I am constantly asking myself that question that you brought up earlier. Is this working for me? Does this make me more effective? Did this scrolling time make me more effective? And I do think having this beautiful hobby of writing these. And being able to engage in a literary creative space that has made me a much better activist.

Katie: I think if I did not have these books to pivot to, I might have burnt out months ago. I would love to think that I'm not the kind of person who would burn out and then not figure out a way to come back. But I do think these books have kept me in this struggle and a fight for social justice and for the liberation of Palestine, a free sovereign Palestine for now almost eight months.

Hani: I want to celebrate just for a moment you're on book two that you're writing that is absolutely incredible and you are in the process of book one hopefully getting published soon. So congratulations you've burned out multiple times before I know it and that's what made you such a profound person to speak to about Psychology in general and burnout and I know that because of your burnout and your activism You've become an even more profound activist I am in awe watching your videos, one after the other and I think wow she's always so strong and eloquent You're the queen of words and I've often wondered how do you keep yourself sane?

Hani: And now I know. You hide yourself in your and your other worlds and in your books and in your creativity and creativity is a higher brain function. That allows us to be more to also remain resilient to pour into our resilience cup. So I'm really happy to know that's how you maintain your strength.

Hani: Thank you so 

Katie: much. I'm so excited about these books. I'm so excited for folks to meet the characters when they are out and available. And I'm optimistic that that will be like my next summer. So it's nice to have something percolating that brings me joy while I am holding the grief of other people.

Katie: And I think we need that balance. 

Hani: Inshallah, Ya Rabb, that we are going to meet all these characters very soon. I've been really enjoying meeting snippets of them in your stories. And I'd encourage our listeners to go to Katie's stories and read those beautiful shares. Such a tantalizing read and so well written.

Katie: Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank 

Hani: you. Katie, my dear, time flies with you every time. I thought we would wrap up our time together with maybe teaching each other a skill. What skill do you find useful to you these days as you're navigating everything? 

Katie: Absolutely. So one of the modalities that I am learning is dialectical behavioral therapy, which is really focused on emotion regulation, particularly in crisis moments.

Katie: And I know folks have seen a lot of material recently. That's been incredibly triggering, whether it's people dying. I know there's been a broader conversation about suicide and self immolation in the movement, and that can bring up really frightening thoughts. for people. It can bring up really frightening urges for people.

Katie: One of the skills that I teach my clients that I talk about all the time is the skill of using extreme temperature and dive response to manage a crisis moment. If someone is really feeling overwhelmed by thoughts of risk or pain, we can simulate a dive response by using water.

Katie: Think about the last time you dove into a cold pool. It's like all of your senses dull. Your body is very aware that it is submerged in water, that it is submerged in cold water and that it has to allow you to survive. Blood goes to all of your necessary organs. You have blood that gets closer to your heart, your lungs And it decreases brain function because your brain is going, okay survive.

Katie: Like all you have to do right now is hold your breath so that you can then get out of this water. And we can simulate that dive response and the nervous system really prioritizing sort of heart and lungs by putting our faces in a bowl of ice cold water. and holding our breath. And if you put your face in a bowl of ice cold water and hold your breath for 30 seconds, your nervous system basically does a force reset.

Katie: So you can't stay in that cognitive rumination space of, I'm feeling at risk. I'm feeling really miserable. Like this is really scary, et cetera. You put your face in ice water and your body goes, Oh my God, your face is in ice water. And that's it. Like, that's all I can think about. And you can simulate a similar response by getting into a cold shower and holding your breath under the spray of cold water.

Katie: And that is a really effective, immediate nervous system regulation skill that we teach people who are at risk for self harm or dying by suicide. This is an intervention method that can help people calm down in a crisis moment. If I'm ever feeling my rumination spiral is just taking me, All the way to hell.

Katie: And I really need to hop off of this train right now. It's the ice water for me. 

Hani: Beautiful. Do you have bowl that you fill with water and ice or how do you do that? Yeah. So 

Katie: you can get any sort of large, even like a large salad bowl or mixing bowl and just crack some ice cubes in it, fill it with cold water, give it a minute to get quite cold and then hold your breath, hold your face under the water for 30 seconds.

Katie: It's important to wait for as long as you really can hold your breath. You will notice an immediate difference. 

Hani: Beautiful. That brings you to the present moment. It just forces you to come right back. It short circuits the fight or flight loop that's happening in the nervous system and it just forces you to become present.

Hani: I absolutely love that. I've never heard of the, you called it the dive response. I've never heard of it. Thank you for teaching me that. 

Katie: I'm so excited to learn from you. 

Hani: You know what? Our hearts are always aligned. My share actually expands on that cold water thing. So I recently started cold plunging, which I never, I actually hate the cold.

Hani: So between skiing and cold plunging, those are two things I never thought I'd be doing. I was born and raised in Saudi Arabia. I'm Lebanese. I live in the desert right now. I am definitely not a cold person. The trick to cold plunge to keep yourself in the cold water is to breathe a certain way that moves your nervous system from fight or flight to rest and recover.

Hani: So it's from lower brain to higher brain, which helps us regulate that stress response. And the breathing technique that I use is called the physiologic sigh. It's the most well known breathing technique to switch the nervous system from fight or flight to rest and recover. It's pretty instant.

Hani: It can happen within milliseconds, the more we train ourselves to do it. And when I go into the cold plunge, I automatically start breathing in this way. And I can stay in the cold plunge for a few minutes at 60 degrees, which, you would think the body would just want to go, ah, and take you out of there.

Hani: Within seconds, but when you breathe this way it tells the body you're safe, even if you're in a freezing environment. Watching the news navigating my grief and trauma Going through the doxing and the threats that come my way I have people trying to get me fired every single day here when those threats come my way. This is the breathing exercise that I use to help calm me down.

Hani: I also use it when I'm speaking. I used it right before we came on together because I was a little bit nervous. And Nobody will ever know that I'm doing it. I've really used it in the middle of interviews. I wanted to teach the skill because I find it to be one of the most important skills we can learn to handle our stress.

Hani: And it's definitely the tool I teach the most in my clinic when we teach stress management. It's really simple. It's actually two inhales. And then you exhale as long as you can. Because in our nervous system, breathing is a push and pull between actually fight or flight and rest and recover. The inhale comes from fight or flight.

Hani: The exhale comes from rest and recover. So when we're doing breathing exercises, whether we're doing this one, which is double inhale sigh, or we're doing four in four out, or we're doing four, seven, eight breathing. So different people have different tools, but all of them focus on that exhale because when we prolong the time in the exhale, we're prolonging the time and rest and recover.

Hani: This exercise is very simple. I'm hoping we can do a few rounds together. Would that be okay? So we're going to sit in a meditative posture, which means we're going to put our feet on the ground, back straight. You're going to close your eyes if you feel comfortable and if not, just maintain a soft gaze in front of you.

Hani: And it's really simple. I'm going to cue it, but you're going to go at your own pace. So whenever you're ready inhale, inhale again, and exhale as long as you can to wherever is comfortable. And whenever , you're ready inhale, inhale again, and

Hani: we're going to do four more rounds of that. So whenever you're ready inhale, inhale again, and on the exhale, relax the eyebrows, relax the shoulders. On your next inhale, inhale again, and on the exhale, relax the jaw, relax the tummy,

Hani: inhale again, on the exhale, relax the groin, relax the toes,

Hani: and last one again, and exhale, let it all go. Before you open your eyes, just take a moment, notice any changes. And whenever you're ready, open your eyes. Hello. Hello. How was that? 

Katie: I feel so much calmer. That was me too. 

Hani: Wonderful. Have you done that before? 

Katie: Yeah. So, um, In prolonged exposure therapy, we teach a certain style of breathing, which is just taking a normal breath in and breathing out as long as you can, because When you're taking in more oxygen, as you said, it's the fight or flight response.

Katie: You're cuing your body of, Oh, you might have to run from a lion. You might fight a lion. You need more oxygen. You need your muscles to be primed for whatever's gonna happen to you next. And when you breathe out and have like this elongated As you say, physiologic sigh, it tells your body you don't actually need all that much oxygen.

Katie: You're not in a position of risk. You don't have to fight. You don't have to flee. It cues the body that risk is not present. But I've never done the double inhale before, and that was really lovely. I will use that again. 

Hani: Yay. Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing a skill with me and for doing that with me.

Hani: I really enjoyed that. To wrap up our time together, I thought we would both share something that we found heartful. Over the last few weeks. I found this post from writer. Her name is Noor Hwaidi. You can find her on Instagram at light L dot Y. So light L dot Y she has a lot of beautiful poems on there.

Hani: Very eloquent. This post says in Palestinian childhood milestones are reversed. The boy loses his leg. Before he learns to walk, his voice is strained by the time he says his first word.

Hani: He never learns to smile. At the age of weaning, his mouth tastes bitter hunger. He kicks the rubble of his home before he kicks a ball. He attends a friend's funeral before a birthday party. And he dies before his mother. 

Katie: What a way to, to grieve and to hold the experiences of these children. 

Hani: Creativity as an outlet for that grief.

Hani: Absolutely. What about you, my dear? 

Katie: I have something similar to share. My beautiful friend Dima Al Alami sent me this. This stunning book, 48 Stories of Exiles from Palestine and 98 percent of sales from the book are going directly to PCRF, the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund this fund supports child orphans and amputees who have been brutalized by the genocide and the occupation.

Katie: And I have found these stories to be so stunning. I just want to show you like the inside of this book. In this book, 

Hani: Oh Yaffa! 

Katie: Gosh, it's just spectacularly beautiful. So it's my new coffee table book. Along with this this book, I literally have on how to make Palestinian and Arabic coffee. it's bringing me such hope because there are these incredible stories, not only of pain, but of resilience.

Katie: I just opened to a random. Page and this is the story of Naim and the last paragraph starts with my parents never stopped remembering Yaffa Comparing it often with different cities. We later lived in I'm married. I have three daughters and five grandchildren I've authored two books in pediatric surgery and have a successful life But my ultimate success would be visiting a free Palestine with my children and grandchildren Walking in cities as I did with my father and this idea of just Palestine existing in perpetuity in this collective memory in the diaspora and for folks who are still living in occupied Palestine.

Katie: And Dima is so lovely. Sent me this beautiful handwritten card with this book and I just, I can't stop looking at it. It is gorgeous. 98 percent of the sales go to PCRF and the website you can go to, to buy the book is www. 48stories com. So the numbers 48, 48stories. com. And it's just been a way to hold space for and really bear witness to the ongoing suffering of the Nakba and the experiences of Palestinian 

Hani: families.

Hani: Beautiful. There's books and publications coming out now that are really highlighting these stories of exile and the diaspora and then also the stories of Nakba survivors. It's such a beautiful book. The illustrations are gorgeous. My goodness. Wow. And I echo that story. I hope one day I will also get to visit Yaffa and walk through Yaffa, where my ancestors lived.

Katie: Yeah, 

Hani: I will order mine right now. Thank you for that share, my dear. To wrap up I thought we can invite our listeners to ask us a question of some sort on social media. What do you want to hear about next? What would you like us to explore in another episode of superhumanizer? An open engagement question, but we hope you will interact with us, whether it's on Katie's or my profile or the superhumanizer podcast profile or on spotify Q&A , please find us. We'd love to hear from you and we would love to expand this conversation with your participation. 

Katie: Absolutely. And if there's anyone too, that you think we should be interviewing next, a perspective you want us to highlight next. I know there's been a lot of conversation in this movement about centering, who we are centering, whose voices are taking up space.

Katie: Learning more from you all about what to center, I think is really important here. 

Hani: Beautiful. Thank you so much. Okay. So that brings us to our Time together ending my dear Katie, but it's only the beginning of many more. And I just want to say thank you again for agreeing to be my partner on this project and for bringing all the awesomeness that you are to this cause.

Hani: Thank you so much. 

Katie: Thank you. It is my honor. It is my joy. I'm so glad we get to do this together. We have like our little baby now. 

Hani: I'm 

Katie: just so excited. 

Hani: Such a blessing and gift. On that note, I thought we might end on a prayer. Absolutely. Okay. May all beings everywhere thrive in peace and dignity. 

Katie: And may we see true peace in the Middle East for all in our lifetime.

Katie: Amen.