A global pandemic challenges the mental health of many communities at large with unwavering uncertainty. Amidst COVID-19, our community has faced unprecedented challenges throughout this pandemic as mental health services are not readily accessible for many marginalized and minority individuals. Arab American Family Services has allowed mental health counselors and professionals such as myself to find community and practice holding the space in uplifting and centering our community’s mental health. Often, I have witnessed that success stories centralize resiliency without honoring the grief that an individual faces which take away from the holistic process of vulnerability and how far an individual has truly come on the path to healing.
Our department’s success story begins with a client who faced tremendous grief with the recent loss of her parent while trying to manage her mental health diagnosis daily. Psychosocial research honors an individual’s lived experience, and we see firsthand how certain traumas and hardships change the outlook of our brain and our daily fight or flight responses. This client has faced childhood trauma and a recent loss of a parent while navigating COVID-19. She has continually made the effort to show up for her weekly therapy sessions on Zoom and has noted how the support from our agency and community through therapeutic intervention has deeply helped her get through these compounded challenges in life. After months of feeling like she had no one to lean on in times of hardship and loss, she sought out counseling services at our agency and has made tremendous progress.
This client recently got admitted to university on a full scholarship to continue her undergraduate studies as a literature major. She has expressed how helpful counseling has been and how powerful picking up a pen can be. Journaling has got her through many challenging days and has become a part of her daily routine and her story. Helping a client through grief and loss to get back in touch with their full potential is something that I value. Our client’s sustainability matters to me, and I always ask how I can contribute to supporting and nurturing each client throughout their journey with our agency.
Our agency has a commitment to our community to support them unconditionally, and make mental health services accessible to them by any means necessary because we have realized early on that our community’s mental health is as important as their physical health. Understanding certain life challenges and injustices that our clients have faced is where the quality of our social justice work is integrated. Every day, we continue to center the vulnerable and the marginalized as they should not be left out or left behind. Working with clients who face grief and trauma teaches us that grief is often an opportunity for us to touch into feelings that are calling to be explored in a way that is tender and courageous.
To all our clients who put in this quality of courageous work by showing up every week for sessions – you are the medicine, cure, antidote, and answer. Healing does not come in isolation, healing comes in community, and we are grateful for these client’s stories that bring light to our community’s mental health and how important curating safe spaces is that allow healing to take place. It is especially important now more than ever that we uphold and practice compassion, empathy, and quality care with one another.
