Helina Blogs

We often underestimate the depth of childhood trauma in individuals we choose for a partner; if we treat them with love, grant them safety, and court them right, we can somehow live happily ever after. We forget that their childhood, with its complex and deep-rooted traumas, is the biggest roadblock to having a healthy relationship. Just hear me out here. Suppose you grant your partner, who grew up in a chaotic household, love and stability. In that case, they will reject it and subconsciously sabotage your love and stable relationship for the chaotic familiarity from their childhood. Love and stability are foreign concepts to their subconscious mind. If their caregivers treated them with hostility, criticism, and cruelty, that is what "feels right" to them when they seek a potential partner. They would want a partner that embodies the same behavior towards them in their adult relationship. In other words, a red flag does not feel like a red flag when it feels like home. ...

  In her monthly blog, Elif Shafak explained how there are emotions in the languages we speak. Kurdish is my mother tongue. It's the language of my great-grandparents and poetry, and it represents a dream of one day returning to my roots, to a place that I once called my motherland—a land that I only remember vividly. Farsi is the language I was exposed to as a little girl due to my mother's heritage, but then I completely lost it. It slipped through my fingers because I couldn't hold on to it. I still hear it like beautiful pebbles somewhere in the distance, out of my reach. Arabic is the language I used during my childhood years in Iraq. It shaped me into the woman I am today. It turned me into a nomadic writer who profoundly appreciates creativity in everything. It made me understand the melody, cadence, olive trees, historic alleyways, neighborhood, and bazaar with skillful goldsmiths, carpenters, artists, and religious and historical sites of Iraq and all the melanchol...