Having to leave our country of origin, has been our plight since a century ago, and continues to remain a destiny for ourselves and our children. Over 14 million of us live in the gherbe. 

We might not live on the land of our grandparents or parents, but being Lebanese is something that lives within us, that remains a complex and rich identity for us to explore and nurture.

To do that, we must reckon with our collective history of wars and trauma, and how they affect us on a regular basis.  We must reconnect with our culture, medicine, arts, literature  and its richness that dates back to thousands of years back. We must examine our own relationship with what it is to be Lebanese, including the parts that bring us pain. 

My name is Jess Semaan and I am a Lebanese just like you, who lives on Ohlone Native Land in what is also known as Oakland, California, United States. My mother is from Zahle Lebanon, and my father from Ghazir, Lebanon. I grew up in Achrafieh, Beirut, but left after attending American University of Beirut, because there weren’t any job opportunities after college. I went first to Dubai, then found my way to San Francisco via a scholarship to attend Stanford Business School.

I went through a long phase of visiting Lebanon during the summers, having a wonderful time, but also realizing I cannot live there again. Living in the UAE and USA taught me that clean water and electricity are a basic need that is non negotiable. The longer I stayed on my visits back home, the more I saw Lebanon as a broken place. I saw the kessarat, and the mountains ravaged with constructions. Parks being replaced by tall high rises. Garbage lingering on the streets. My heart broke a little more each time. But on a random hot California night, lying in bed, I would cry tears of missing my homeland, my family, my food, my roots.
Then I went to therapy, and I saw that Lebanon’s brokenness lives in me. Its traumas. Its beauty. Its complexity. And over the years, I went to psychotherapy school, specializing in trauma and identity, and as I keep learning and growing I have come to see that our healing starts with ourselves, and we need one another to do the work together.

The explosion in Beirut, propelled me towards starting support groups…

..They were filling up. I was meeting Lebanese just like me. And we wanted more. And from there birthed the 6 week ongoing group. 

This group is the first of its kind, and combines psychology, anthropology, spirituality and history. The program is like an in person class, with live 1.5 hours on Wednesday of lecture and discussion, and will be a safe confidential intimate space of only 8 participants where we will dive deep into the questions of identity and belonging and exploring new learnings. Home-works will be weekly and will include a genogram (mapping out your family tree), journaling based on provided reflection questions, interviewing family members, listening to podcasts, and doing readings / watching films as curated by Jess and the expert speakers. 

curriculum overview

The psychology of being Lebanese 

What does being Lebanese mean? 
What feelings and beliefs are associated with your identity?
What about the current culture you relate to and what you do not?
What does it mean to be Lebanese who lives abroad?

History of Lebanon pre-french colonization and identity implications

[Guest Speaker]

Your immigration history 
Your family history and genealogy 

Trauma of the Lebanese identity 

Exploring the effects of the famine, civil war, and chronic unrest on our personal psychology and culture.
How does intergenerational trauma work?
How does unresolved trauma show up in your life?
How do we heal the collective trauma in us?

Feminism, queerness, and racism  in Lebanese culture 

[Guest speaker]

What are beliefs, prejudices you carry from Lebanese culture around minority groups?
How do these beliefs impact you today?
What is the history of queerness / feminism / and Kafala?

Herbs and healing from our region the East Mediterrenean

[Guest Speaker]

Learning the wisdom of our ancestors through healing with herbs. 
What recipes, knowledge you have kept, or inherited from your ancestors?

The group now is full, apply to be on the waitlist.

1. you are a Lebanese immigrant or you are of Lebanese descent

2. you live outside of Lebanon, in North America timezone

3. you have a complicated relationship with your identity

4. you care about your culture and ancestry

5. you ask yourself one or more of these questions

• how can I reconcile the pain that comes from the Lebanese identity with the love I have for the country?

• What are the forgotten, lost parts of Lebanese history and culture that are beautiful and powerful that I do not know about (pre-colonization)?

• How do I heal our generational and current trauma?

• How do I preserve my culture and identity even when I am far away?

• How do I continue supporting my people back home who are unable or do not want to leave?

Course includes:

• 90 minute facilitation per week

• Curated readings, films and podcasts 

• Pairing with another participant for support and accountability 

• Three expert speakers 

• Building of deep connections with other 7 participants

  Cost [Learn, heal and donate]:

• Tuition is sliding scale $350-$600.

• Payment plan available for those unable to pay in full. Contact jessemaantherapy@gmail.com for more information.

Logistics:

• We meet on Zoom every Wednesday 5 PM PST - 630 PM PST

• We start on Wednesday September 9 and end on Wednesday October 21 2020

• You are allowed to miss up to 1 session

• After your application is approved, you must pay 50% of the tuition to jessica-semaan - venmo to confirm your spot. The second half is due a week after beginning of course.

• Money will be refunded in full for cancellation 10 days prior and in half for cancelling less than 10 days and no refund for cancellation 48 hours or less before the start of course.

  The group now is full, apply to be on the waitlist.

Bios

Jess Semaan - Trauma coach, Psychotherapist trainee and author

(she/ her, they/them)

Jess is an author and therapist trainee. she finds inspiration in her journey to heal from complex trauma. It took her 30 years to realize that growing up in Lebanon, the violence in her family, and the mere fact of being in a woman’s body carried a lot of trauma and pain she was numbing and running away from.

She started writing on platform medium after hitting rock bottom, following burnout and a major depression. Two years later, close to 53,000 people were following and engaging with her writing about despair, fear, trauma, and shame. Her first book Child of the Moon, an illustrated poetry collection was published by Andrews McMeel, in 2019.
Jess graduated from California Institute of Integral Studies with an MA in Counseling Psychology. She is trained in somatic therapy, dream work, psychedelic assisted therapy, group facilitation and more.

Born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, she currently resides on Ohlone NativeLand, also known as Oakland, CA, with her two cats Qays and Leila.
Prior to following her authentic path of artist and healer, she was on a more traditional one attending Stanford Business School , working at Airbnb as an early employee building and scaling the hospitality startup, and founding The Passion Co. an org. that helps people find and pursue their passions.

Franck Salameh - Professor at Boston College 

Franck Salameh’s fields of specialization are Minorities in the Middle East, Contemporary Middle Eastern History, History of Ideas and Political Thought, and the Literary, Linguistic, Cultural, and Intellectual Traditions of the States of the Levant. His interests include Linguistic Nationalism, Arabism, Zionism, Francophonie, and the history of French and French Missionaries in the Eastern Mediterranean. Salameh is also a memoirist, anthologist, biographer, and translator of poetry and prose from and into Arabic, French, English, Vernacular Lebanese, and Hebrew.

Jad Jaber - Ph. D., Published author, Queer behavior and Gender dynamic focusing on Migrant/ Minority Communities.

Jad Jaber, PhD, is a social-inclusion and gender expert whose work focused on some of the most vulnerable communities in the world and on local economic development projects all over Lebanon, including the Fisherman auction house in Tyre, the 13th century Khan El Askar in Tripoli, and the Syrian migrant community in Akkar and Bekaa, collaborating with government institutions (CDR, MOSA), international funding agencies (DFID- World Bank), and local implementing NGO’s and CSO’s (Save the Children, Palladium). He has also lectured at the Lebanese American University amongst other prestigious academic institutions in controversial and complex subjects such as “Gender and Migration” and “Queer Theory”. Jad Jaber’s book, “The Queer Arab Martyr”, will be published in July 2018 (Atropos Press).

Layla Feghali, Founder River Rose Remembrance https://www.riverroseremembrance.com/

Layla was born to a Lebanese immigrant family in Tongva-Tataviam territories (Los Angeles area, California). Her parents embody traditional values and village roots from both the northern coast and southern mountains of Lebanon (the historic lands of Canaan/Phoenicia) that they carried with them into her upbringing. This included fiercely collectivist, service oriented, and relationship centered ways of existing in the world.

Layla has a background in community organizing, community mental health (Masters in Social Work) with an emphasis on trauma and cultural + somatic interventions, folkloric dance, herbal medicine, and traditional and ancestral healing. She has been a student and practitioner of ancestral and indigenous paradigms of healing, understanding, and spiritual practice for over a decade and continues to learn thru study, mentorship, and direct/embodied practice.

The group now is full, apply to be on the waitlist, or stay in touch to hear about the next one.