Building Community with Mariam Issa

Mariam’s refugee journey from Somalia to Kenya, and ultimately to Australia, was filled with many challenges. As a child, Mariam Issa dreamt of travelling to faraway places. She did not dream she would need to flee Somalia’s civil war on a leaky over-crowded boat to Kenya – pregnant and holding her two young sons for dear life. Neither did she dream that 21 years later she would become the heartbeat of her Australian community by pulling down her back fence and creating a community garden built from love, hope and connection.

Music : Mylee Grace

Engineering and Production: Tiff Richmond

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Transcript

Louise:          

 Welcome to the first Lunch Lady Magazine podcast. I'm your host, Louise Bannister. If you're a regular reader of Lunch Lady, you'll already know we love having interesting conversations with extraordinary people. So this podcast is an extension of that. 

Today, I have the pleasure of speaking to Mariam Issa. Mariam's a mother of five, a speaker, an author, a storyteller, and a community builder. Mariam came to Australia as a refugee from Somalia 21 years ago. She moved to Brighton, one of the most affluent suburbs in Melbourne. And her and her family faced many challenges. But despite all her trials and tribulations, Mariam's belief in connection led her to pull down her back fence and start a community garden. It's an incredible story. 

Mariam, it is so lovely to finally sit down to chat to you. Yes, I'm really excited about this conversation. Thanks for joining me.

Mariam:          

Thank you, Lou. My absolute pleasure, yeah.

Louise:            

The first time ‑‑ just to give our listeners a bit of context, the first time I heard you speak was not that long ago, actually, in a little group that I'm part of about climate change and community gardens and things like that. Your name came up as someone that was very inspirational in this area.

We were lucky that you hopped on Zoom and talked about your life for an hour. I was absolutely blown away, and thought what an incredible story, what an incredibly compassionate and resilient person. I'm really grateful to have another chat to you. I feel very lucky, and I'm grateful that our listeners get to hear from you too.

I know that just from the little I've heard from you that you're such a great storyteller. I'd love to have you share your experience on how you made your way to Australia, that journey, before we delve into the more community-garden aspect and things like that.

Mariam:          

 Absolutely. My journey as a refugee was 21 years ago, actually, which is a long time ago. I came to Australia when I was 30-years old. I came with four children, and I was pregnant with my fifth child, so it was a really huge journey.

Prior to coming to Australia, we were displaced for eight years, so it was a journey of adversity. Coming to the West, having closed that chapter of eight years of displacement, of the civil war in Somalia, another phase started for me in the West. I had never interacted with a westerner before. I knew nothing about the western culture. 

Although I do think that my family and I were very lucky refugees in the context of the way refugees are dealt with now in Australia and in asylum-seeking I think, we came through the family-reunion visa. Which meant that we were processed offshore, and we did have family here. So our journey wasn't that difficult.

We were resettled straightaway into a beautiful suburb in Melbourne in Brighton. It was all good, but I knew nothing of Brighton. I knew nothing of its affluence. I knew nothing. To me, Australia, like I've come to a whole completely different world. 

Louise:            

Planet.

Mariam:           

Yeah, and I came at a time where I was really so tired. I was also pregnant. The first few months were really okay. I rested, and then we started the journey after my child was born. My husband did not have a word of English at the time, so he started school. The kids started school. I felt that at that time the transition between my family and the community was all on me.

That is where I started off. The sad part is that we were the only ‑‑ almost the first Africans to reside in Brighton. It was totally different ‑‑ for the community as well. I remember at that time our next-door neighbour installed cameras in his house.

Louise:            

Because you'd moved there?

Mariam:           

Yes, because we moved there. Then two years after that, September 11 happened. Then we were not only Black and in Brighton, but we were also Muslim in Brighton. That kind of a little bit shook us. Then we went into a journey of uncertainty.

We took the kids out of the normal schools and then took them to an Islamic school. As all that was happening, my child who was born in the heart of the community, reached the age of kinder. I remember taking her to a local kinder because I felt she's a four-year-old, you know, nothing bad is going to happen to her. There isn't much bullying with young children.

We went into the nearest kinder in our home. When we came out, she asked me a question that changed the trajectory of our whole family. She said, "Mum, do they not want me because I'm black?" 

Louise:            

Wow.

Mariam:          

Yeah. With that, it was like a bomb in a mother's heart. I do get emotional to this day when I remember that because I felt that my four-year-old had lost her innocence that day. What that did for me was awaken me from a deep sleep, awaken me from a place of uncertainty, a place of fear, a place of undecisive ‑‑ I wasn't making good decisions.

I felt that is this really what I've come for? I think that question really gave me the courage to really start something different and to connect with the community at a level where I felt like I'm not going to have my two ‑‑ sometimes with people who come from ‑‑ whether you come as a refugee or whether you come as an asylum seeker or as a migrant, you are always thinking that you will go back home one day.

We were in between worlds. We were always thinking oh, you know, one day, we are going to go back home. That day we made ‑‑ my husband and I, I think we really sat down and to make the decision that this is home, that we're not going to look back. With that comes certainty. With that comes rooting yourself in a place. That's where my journey really started from.

Louise:            

Tell me a bit ‑‑ I want to go into after your daughter told you that, and you saying you had an internal shift in how you were going to, I suppose, deal with the surroundings you'd been put in. Before that, I know you've got an incredible story in Africa, where I remember you telling about how you weren't meant to go to school, and you sort of almost tricked your mum into letting you go to school. That story is so wonderful. Can you share a bit about that?

Mariam:           

I think I was always a very resourceful child when I remember my childhood, because I grew up almost free range. My mother was from a nomadic background, and so was my father. So we didn't have any structure. We lived chaotically and just in a free kind of way.

My family ‑‑ my father was exiled from Somalia for political reasons. And then he came to a small town called Malindi in Kenya, which is a neighbouring country. So in Malindi we lived with ‑‑ it was kind of a village at the time. We lived among this beautiful tribe called the Giriama. They were the keepers of the land of that town.

They actually cultivated their land. I remember that when my mum came into the community the local chief came to her and said, "I want to offer you land to cultivate for your children." My mother did not speak the language at the time. I was actually always her translator. I could speak Swahili.

I love languages. I remember that I could speak Swahili that time. Mum was actually very suspicious of the new culture, and she didn't speak their language. She was fearful. So she just retreated and said, "No, I don't need the land." 

I remember my younger brother and I going to the ‑‑ talking to the chief and saying, "We'll take the land. We want to cultivate that land." I think we were about seven and six-years-old at the time. That was how we started in that setting.

I remember that my mum wanted to send my brother to school, and I come from a very patriarchal culture. My family was not for schooling girls. I know that my mum had ‑‑ her agenda and mine clashed because she felt that she needed to prepare me for my future husband, as was the Somali tradition. I wanted to go to school. 

I was sort of like a tomboy and a very curious child. At that time, I was even learning to read my older brother's books. I had to come up with a strategy because mum wasn't going to send me to school.

She loved us and my brother Soran because he was her youngest. And I came up with this bullying scenario, which if Soran went to school on his own, then he would be bullied by the local kids. And I would support him in that, so she should send me to school with him. And that's how I actually really got to go to school. 

Louise:            

You land in Australia with almost five children.

Mariam:           

Four children, and then my fifth one was born here, yes.

Louise:           

You have this experience of racism in Australia.

Mariam:           

Yes.

Louise:            

And fear.

Mariam:           

And fear, and there was a lot. I think when you're a mother, and your kids are going to school, I think you sort of are pushed into the community. Whether you like it or not, you have to be part of that community. You become part of the school, the school system and all those things.

And I knew nothing. I just almost was ‑‑ I had this kind of inner sense around me. Sometimes I think that's when they say ignorance is bliss. I was making a lot of mistakes. I might have been annoying a lot of people because I was just learning as I was living in the culture. 

I think what's really helped me was my love for being curious. I was curious about the culture. Also after what had happened with my daughter, I was just pushing in. There was a lot of resistance. 

I remember a time when I would be standing ‑‑ I would go and want to be part of the mothers after assembly. They would be talking, and I would want to just listen in. I remember them just everyone going "Oh, I have to go somewhere," and they would just leave me there by myself.

There were things like that. When I do remember now, I do feel like I felt that I wasn't wanted there. But at that time, for me, it was about my children. I was just really sort of pushing in.

I remember that the women who really accepted me after a while were more from England and having come to the country themselves as migrants, rather than the Australian women themselves.

Louise:            

When you think back to that time ‑‑ I think I remember you saying your early experience, when you were younger you used to read the Enid Blyton books; didn't you? Is that what you said?

Mariam:          

Yes, The Famous Five, I loved ‑‑ and the adventures. To me, these were just stories, imaginations of ‑‑ someone's imagination. I never thought that one day I would befriend a woman with green eyes or blue eyes with blonde hair. Those things were just unimaginable to me.

Having come in the adventure sort of like people walking with dogs, for instance, and having read those adventures were just kind of a new understanding to the world that I used to imagine, to the world that I used to go into in my young days.

I think that came from ‑‑ that helped a lot. It really helped me, and I really felt like I was in sort of an adventure somehow. I really was, anyway. I was in an adventure and exploring this adventure and looking at the differences.

Louise:            

Were there other African refugees in any similar situation, or you're pretty much alone at this time?

Mariam:           

I was alone, but I was also an interpreter. I don't know. I just had this big battery that would not die. I had so much in me that I was an interpreter. I was a mother of five. I was doing so many things. I was juggling so many balls that I was getting different experiences. I was loving it. I was really thriving in that.

What I remember is through these adventures I think I had phases. The first phase is where I was going into the community and getting to know them and all that. I felt like a victim. There was an utter powerlessness within me. I think it came from shame as well, having had a whole country disintegrate in front of my eyes, and then coming into an affluent space, when you had nothing. Even my dignity was ‑‑ I wasn't dignified in the space that I was in.

So in that space of powerlessness, I remember that I had the friends and the people around me were almost similar. Somehow, with the grace of God, I transitioned into a space of anger, which I think is so much better than being a victim. You get to breathe and blame other people for your problems.          

I became an activist in that space. I was really angry. I was angry with the world that had disintegrated in front of me. I was angry with my parents for having sheltered me from life. I was angry with my communal culture. I was angry with the racism that was going around me in the new community. I felt that in this space. I was also angry as a woman, because I felt that I wasn't living in my power. I wasn't owning my story in that space.

Louise:            

I remember this part, that once you got inside those homes, you realised that things were very similar. 

Mariam:           

Absolutely. Once I started to go into community work, I then started volunteering in the community. Then I started working in Brighton homes because I really truly wanted to see the western woman in her natural habitat. How does she parent, how does she ‑‑ how is she within her household?

I went into these really beautiful Brighton homes that sometimes I felt that nobody lived in. I didn't even sometimes realise what I was cleaning, because they seemed clean to me. I think my insights and understanding of the community really came from those homes. 

Then I happened to work in an aged-care centre. It was almost like I was being guided through the journey. I went into aged care, and then I interacted with the elders there. To me, it didn't really ‑‑ aged care did not make sense to me. I felt that this is the wisdom of the community. And they're kept away from the community.

Louise:            

That seems crazy.

Mariam:           

I could not understand how they could be put away and to be on their own. In our African culture, the thing that when you are an older person that you really look forward to is having moments with your grandchildren, being around them, and being around the community. All of a sudden, I see there was destruction here as well. 

As I became more part of the community, I then started to understand that there was mental health, there was suicide, there was domestic violence. And then I realised that amidst the glamour and the glory in Brighton there was a less apparent truth as well. 

Louise:            

Yeah. Then how did that propel you forward to that next stage, that realisation? What happened?

Mariam:           

What really happened is sometimes I do say that life has been a safari for me and a real extension of my lived experience, and plateau that engages and excited me to really mould, shape, and design my stories. At that time, I became a storyteller, and I was writing as well. So I was really looking at the stories. And this is ‑‑ it's my story, and I can sort of shape it in the way that I want it. I can mould it in the way that I want to.  

Having discovered that, I felt that it was also a compelling platform. It was a platform that was compelling me to ask brave and courageous questions. If I was going to live the kind of life that I want to create for myself, then what is it that I want?

In that space, I became introspective. I started to ask powerful questions. One of the questions I really asked was why am I here because I didn't know. Why was I in the heart of Brighton? Why was I brought here?

Having asked that question, what became apparent for me was I lived in communal culture all my life, which means that you are in dependency. You are dependent among each other. You don't get to learn about yourself that much. You live among others. You're living with other people, and that's how you know yourself.

But coming to the West, I realised it was a very individual culture. The individuality was really missing for me. That was why I became really intrigued by the western woman because I felt she was actually the woman ‑‑ she was the teacher of my children, the doctor that I visited, the community builder. She was everywhere that I saw progression happening.

I felt how is this possible, and there aren't many African women leaders where I came from. That became my big now, curiosity. I wanted to understand more of the journey of as a woman, how can I become the leader or the voice ‑‑ how can I have my own voice heard, and can I contribute to the community.

Louise:           

 What a beautiful pairing, this incredible communal way of knowing how to live, which we definitely lack, absolutely. 

Mariam:          

 But having lived in communal as well, I realised that on its own it doesn't work, hence, the destruction that happened in my community. Being an individual, an individual culture doesn't work on its own either. 

When you combine the two, that's when we self-actualize. That's when we reach our interdependence. When we know that, from this space, we understand that I've reached my individual potential. I can also now contribute to the greater good.

I think that's the space where, for me, I entered my third phase of life, of true empowerment. Feeling that I'm empowered enough now to voice the concerns in the community, to voice the concerns of women, to bring the stories of my ancestry, to give life to my culture. I feel that culture is a currency.

When I came, my currency was deflated. I couldn't buy anything with it. Now having ‑‑ I felt that I could strengthen my cultural currency. Now, I could teach other people. That's when I started my business Cook With Mariam.  I became an entrepreneur. I started teaching people about the wealth of other nations. I felt like I love food, and I used food as a catalyst for social change. 

Louise:            

Amazing. How did you start with that, a leaflet drop or a couple of friends?

Mariam:          

I went all the way. I was part of a networking group. I remember people telling me ‑‑ it was the Brighton network, the Bayside Business Network. And people were saying you can't go in there, it's exclusive. It's very affluent. You won't even understand the people there. The more you told me you can't do that, I would just go ahead in.

Louise:            

I love this image of you.

Mariam:           

I know that also in that space I was navigating, exploring, and making a lot of mistakes. But you know, my love for people ‑‑ I think my superpower is connection. I connect with people easily, so I connected in that platform. I got to know rotarians. I got to know men of business. I could talk to men and women. 

I did not differentiate. I just went in and just talked to anyone that would talk to me. I think I'm now sort of an icon in Brighton. I feel like I really stand out. I was standing out because I was wearing the scarf, and I was the only black African woman in that room. So no one could not see me. I was the elephant in the room. 

Connection's an incredible thing. One thing my mother used to tell us is if you can host someone in your heart, you can host them in your home. So what my mother meant with that is she asked us to always forgive people. So had I been caught up in all the hard bits that had happened in Brighton, and I felt the racism and all the assumptions made of me, all the labels that were put on me, I let go of all that.

I just started anew. I just wanted to be the change that I wanted to see in the world. I saw many things that were wrong in this community. I felt that I was part of this community, and that I could voice these wrong things that were happening. When I did, people embraced it. 

Louise:            

They were waiting for it. They didn't even know.

Mariam:           

And I think 2012 an explosion happened for me. I launched my book A Resilient Life. I wrote that book three years in a writing class. It took me another three years to contemplate if I really wanted to share it with the public. 

In that six years, I came up with a resilient life. My son at that time had finished uni. He was a graphic designer. And he came up with the label with the butterfly on it. I didn't even ask him to choose a butterfly. He chose the butterfly, and one of the wings of the butterfly was damaged.

And he said, "Mum, this is you now, the new wing." And one of the wings was complete. That gave me then ‑‑ it really humbled me. I realised that my children were following the journey; they were part of the journey. I knew that I wanted to give back to Brighton. It had given me so much.

Louise:           

 Tell us.  This is such an amazing part of your story is the building of this community garden.

Mariam:          

 When my last child went to secondary school, that first day I met Katrina who was a German migrant. Katrina and I just clicked and talked that night. It was a parent-teacher night. Afterwards, I had this idea of starting the RAW garden. I had done a permaculture course previous to that. 

Then I was almost in the process of making it a not-for-profit organisation. But as you know, we're always afraid when we are starting a new venture. It was a not-for-profit. I didn't know much about it. But I was adamant that I would start this organisation.

I worked with community centres. They were not supporting me. They said why don't you just work with us? Why do you need to start something on your own? And I felt like I wanted to do this in my backyard.

I felt it as a calling. I couldn't even answer them as well. My backyard was completely empty at that time, and I knew nothing about community gardens at that stage. I just wanted to gather women. I just wanted women to come together.

So I went to Katrina. One day as we were having a coffee, I told her about the project. I said, "This is the project I want to do. Do you think that you can support me in this?" At that time, she was in transition. Her youngest also was in secondary school at that time, and she had time. So she said, "What can I do?"

The beauty of it is that Katrina had come from a family of farmers. They owned a ranch back in Germany, s we started it together. We joke that our garden is where the African chaos meets German precision. She is a really hard worker, and she had that precision. I had this chaotic creative mind.    Creating is very chaotic actually. Until I became a gardener, I was not happy with my chaotic ways. The garden taught me that chaos is part of life and part of creation.

Louise:            

So you take down your fence at home. 

Mariam:          

Yeah, I was actually almost like guidance. I'm also a woman of faith, and I love the Qur'an. There is this verse in the Qur'an that says the olive tree is the tree of neither the East nor the West. So it's a bridging tree. 

We made our fence with olive trees and wanted to invite people in. So what we also did was invited, women. We went into the community and started talking. We started speaking to Rotarians, to community elders, to community women. We just took our work out there.

As we were talking to people, we realised we didn't actually ‑‑ the organisation just started, so we invited people to build the garden together. One my friends who I did the permaculture course with was a permaculture designer. So she agreed to come and design the whole place for us. 

Then we asked the community to adopt a tree. They could put in their tree with an intention. We had a tree-planting day, which the whole community came. Everybody came with their tree. We bought the trees, but they donated the money. Everybody had an intent for their tree. They wanted to choose the trees. We have almost 40 fruit trees now in our backyard and front yard. We have almost an orchard in our front yard. 

Louise:            

Talk me through how you explained this to your family. 

Mariam:           

My husband at the time, my ex-husband is a very cautious man, very introverted, could not understand what I'm doing. But neither could he understand back in the days when I would wake up in the middle of the night and feel that I am part of this community, but no one knows me. I was always thinking in terms of if anything happens to us as a family, if we're accused of anything, no one can actually stand up for us and say I know this family.

When I voiced that to my husband, he did not get it. He would not get that. He was like we're okay. Our family is on the other side, our community, so we'll be interacting with the cultural community. But I'm like we live here. We're part of this community. 

Eventually, I managed to convince him. He didn't think it was possible anyway, and he thought maybe I'll just do it for a few months and then get tired of it. There's a lot of work involved. I wasn't paid at all. I've been doing it now for eight years, and it's still the same. We work voluntarily.

Louise:            

How did it develop? You had this planting day and people came. That must have felt like a monumental moment for you.

Mariam:           

Oh my God, it actually was. The monumental moment for me was not only the garden, but I took my oath as an Australian in Brighton Town Hall. I launched my book in Brighton Town Hall. It was launched by the mayor of Brighton. It was a Tuesday morning, I remember, and we had more than 120 people attend ‑‑ mostly Brighteners. That was like whoa, I never thought ‑‑ if you had looked into a crystal ball when I came and thought this is what you're going to do, I would never have believed it. 

I think my story is very much connected to trust. And what I teach people now is to trust. I have an acronym for trust. The first T for trust for me is Truth, to know our truth. Sometimes it's not that we don't know our truth. We do, but we're scared of it. We don't want to look at it. I encourage women. I encourage my clients. I'm a life coach now, and I tell them look at your truth and connect with it.

In this truth, I know that we have two truths. We have our dynamic truth, which is the form, our living in this world, our material world. But we also have a spiritual world. The connection to our spiritual world and the material world makes up our truth. 

The second letter for trust is Resilience. Once you know your truth, then being resilient enough to remove the obstacles out of the way so that you can live your truth.

The U is for the union of the four bodies. I never knew that I had a physical ‑‑ almost always what we know of ourselves is just our physical body and the mind. The best is those two that we relate to. But we also have our emotions that guide us, that tell us when something is wrong, how we feel ‑‑ connecting to our feeling, to our emotional body. Then to also connect with our energetic body. I recognised that in the U you find the union between your heart and your mind and your physicality and your energy body.

The S for me stands for surrender, the acceptance and letting go of the stories, the programs that we have been given. We have been conditioned to separate each other, to separate ourselves. It took me really into a deep contemplation that when we surrender, we really tap into the true connection of our humanity. 

And the last T is to live in timelessness, the present moment now. That's what I call trust. I look at birds, and it's said that a bird will stand on the weakest of branches and won't be afraid for the branch to break, because it knows that it has its wings to fly. When we reach that level of trust, we become less afraid, less fearful. We know that we're not in this along but there's a bigger and deeper truth than what we see with the five senses.

Louise:            

We had a lovely chat the other day about the importance of women leaders in this time. Everyone finding their truth and using this time as momentum to catapult women leaders. What are your thoughts on that?

Mariam:           

I think it's crucial. I think that when it's role-modelled or when it's shown to us, we see the power it has. For instance, Michelle Obama has shown us so much in the sense that she opened the White House, almost like my community garden. When we see women leaders ‑‑ behind every man ‑‑ although Obama was the leader, and he was the president and all that, but the work Michelle did ‑‑ I don't know if you read her book. She took us into her inner journey and inner life. We see how important and how crucial and how liberating the energy of women can be and their leadership. And how their leadership can bring societies and communities to greater strength. 

Then I also saw that with Jacinda Ardern, what happened with the problem for the Muslim problem that arose. And how she just galvanised ‑‑ she brought the whole community. At the time, she had a little child.  She was a mother herself. She was not even going home. She was really connecting with the community and mourning with them, and showing them, and working with them in their time of adversity and their time of grievance.

Having seen that, I think as women, when we take back our reins ‑‑ because what has happened to the world is also the lack of our leadership and lack of our connecting to our power. Now we have to come back and say we can do this. 

I do believe that women are inclusive in their leadership. They bring men along. We are more compassionate. We have 99 names for God in the Islamic culture. One of it is Ibrahim. Ibrahim actually is the name Rahim, is the womb. It's about that womb, that compassion. And it's also compassion. I think we are the womb of creation. A new world has emerged. It's already here. I believe that the world is a world that is going to be led by women. 

There is this beautiful quote, and I'm loosely saying it, but it said a new world is emerging, and on a clear day, I can hear her ‑‑ I can hear her coming. 

I think that the world already is. I see it. I feel it. It's the transformation. I think people always talk about change, but change is constantly happening. We're not after change. I think what we're after is transformation. We need to transform ourselves and our world. I think we are. That's what COVID-19 has really brought in. It's shown us the level of interdependence, the level of connection and interdependence that we are.

Louise:            

Going back to the interdependence, when people realised the community garden was open and they were welcome, you must have seen some incredible transformations in these original women, of them learning from you and seeing how the essence of interdependency and community is so crucial for the new world.

Mariam:           

Yes. I think the RAW garden many aspects. One of the aspects is it brings academics. It brings storytellers. It brings communal people. I think it brings all people in this one gathering. 

In the garden we do a lot of ‑‑ people come to interview me. I have guest-lectured in almost all Melbourne universities. I call myself a storyteller, but being invited into academia, and people wanting to know how did you do this ‑‑ I remember the first time we started, we invited the dean of Melbourne Uni. She came and looked at us and thought oh, these women. She didn't think anything could come out of it and told us so as well. With academia, it's black and white, this is how it is. She said I don't see much happening.

Going into that, I'll share with you a beautiful story that I had. I think it will give meaning to where the dean and I were coming from. In a medieval town there were three bricklayers hard at work in one building. Then a passer-by came and asked each one of them, "What are you doing?" 

The first man said, "I'm laying bricks." The second man replied, "I am building a wall." The third man looked up and answered the guy, "I am building a cathedral." These three men were all doing the same work, but each one saw something different.

For me, at the time it was a vision. The RAW garden was a vision. I could feel it and see it, but it wasn't there. When the dean came, she saw something different. Eight years later, this place has not only transformed the community around me, but what it has done for us as a family is that it's taught us that family exists beyond blood relations.

It has transformed my family back home, because they see the work that I do here. I connected them to the project. It's incredible. One of the women that I met through this permaculture journey went back to Uganda and met my family. She was doing some projects there and connected with them. It's just amazing what can happen from a simple vision, a simple seed that you sow.

I think that's who we are. We are just like seeds. Whatever seed we plant is what we are going to harvest. That's why in our community garden, this time we say we're seeding our community with love. We are weeding out fear. That's our mantra when we are gardening.

Louise:            

I'd love to sort of talk to you about motherhood. Obviously, listening to this podcast are lots of mothers, carers, and grandparents. Your learnings, you've traversed many cultures, languages. You've done so much more than the average person in their lifetime and achieved so much more. You throw motherhood into this, dealing with your own issues. You've had to deal with many things, and not so nice things. Tell me about that.  What are your learnings in all this? How are your kids? 

Mariam:          

I think motherhood is one of the most important ‑‑ I think I feel truly, truly privileged to be a mother. It absolutely humbles me that I'm a mother of five. Sometimes if you see my children with me, people don't know they're my kids because they're older now. 

Motherhood, my mother used to always tell us you're a mother, even when you're not a mother. Even as children, she would say as long as you have the womb, you're a mother. Whether you have children or not, you're a woman; you've become a mother.

Having your own children though is so different. For me, I've had my children in hard circumstances, in spaces where there was a lot of suffering. I think with motherhood there comes a lot of guilt. Because of our wants to give our children everything, we sometimes feel we haven't done enough.

One thing that as a mother I have learned to let go of is guilt and fear for our children. When we are very fearful or have guilt, or when we look at our children in a certain way, it's whatever energy we project on them is the energy they become.

Looking at our children, we have to look them as souls who have come for a journey, who have come for an experience. It took me a long time to know that. Our children, we think they are ours. We treat them as material sometimes and we feel like they're ours.

I realise each and every child ‑‑ I have five children, and every one of them was different and unique in every way, in the way they chose to come into this life. Even when I was having the baby, how they chose their entrance, each one was different.

Again, each one tells you the way you're supposed to treat them. Some are more autonomous than others. Through that journey of motherhood, one of the things that is important that I learnt is the fact that we call them souls and they have gifts and learnings for us when we're ready to receive.

I learnt a lesson from each and every child of mine. When we are open to the lessons, I think we grow. The biggest growth I have had came through my children. They have challenged me in ways that are beyond understanding. For me in the beginning, especially when you come from a culture and you want to pass it on, it's like the story that I have been given by my parents and I want to pass it onto my children.

Having come with them to the West, I feel that they've gone ‑‑ well, I think we're going to be the first generation that are going to reject this story. They stopped and they said, "No, Mum, this is not what we want. This is what we want."

I think as a speaker and storyteller and a space holder, I learnt to hold space with them and for them. One of the sweetest things that came out of that is I work with my daughter now. We call ourselves "Intergenerational Story Inspirers". We want to use our story to inspire mothers and daughters, especially mothers and daughters. They carry the lineage of the female, the matriarchal, which we've lost. 

I think when we make sense of that lineage that comes from the grandmother to the mother to the daughter, then we can dismantle a lot of things. I love the Native American saying of "If a woman heals herself, she heals the women before her and the women after her."

I think a lot of healing has happened with myself and my daughters. The boys don't open up as much, but with my daughters we hold space for each other.

Louise:           

I find everything you're saying inspirational and also challenging. Coming from English parents, where you did as you were told, you're now living in Byron Bay where it's a different way of parenting. It's so challenging, so I'm very inspired to hear you speak about that.

Mariam:           

In my book, I have a whole chapter called "Parenting in the West". It's different. When you parent in Africa, and you parent through the communal system, it's so different than parenting in the West, where I didn't have that communal space. But I gave a lot of work ‑‑ I had my in-laws here. I wanted my children to have ‑‑ almost every Saturday, I called the whole families. 

Mohammed had two brothers here who also had wives. I would bring the cousins together and cook for them. Again, we used food, but I think that connection of community, of family ‑‑ relationships aren't easy, but we can support each other in building relationships. We can have amazing and incredible relationships with our children when we choose to.

It's not an easy job. It's sitting in the discomfort. I think we most often bypass grief. There's a lot of grievances within us. I believe the heart is where grief and grace co-reside. The intersection of the grief and the grace is to sit in that space of discomfort. In that space, we have the power to catalyse that grief into grace. 

The grief needs not be bypassed. We need to feel it. Unfortunately, not many of us feel that we can do that. We almost always run away from our distress. Especially in the West, there's so much destruction. 

Louise:            

You feel like in your old community or previous community grief was dealt with in a different way? People knew they had to sit with it?

Mariam:           

Yes. Because of the culture of storytelling, and also because of the faith ‑‑ religions have their dogmas. I know a lot of people are walking away from religion and rightfully so sometimes. But it also teaches you to really connect with the ritual world. 

You know how I was talking about TRUTH. You do understand the truth about yourself spiritually, but you also know the truth of the worldly. Sometimes you know this is a storm and it will pass, so you sit with that. Especially with death. How death was the West was different for me. In our African culture, we don't believe in death. We believe in the continuation of life.

That someone passed away doesn't mean that they've gone. We knew that. You would grieve that person ‑‑ in our Islamic tradition, you grieve three days. You give people three days to grieve, and you grieve with them. After that, the family is left alone to do their own grievances.

Louise:            

I want to flick over to the momentum we've seen with the Black Lives Matter movement. Obviously, you being a woman of colour, how has that impacted, and your thoughts on it. I'm deeply reading about white privilege and our responsibility here and our blind-sightedness in this moment. I'm always interested to hear your perspective.

Mariam:           

I think one of the hardest things for me was the death of George Floyd and his parting words, which were "I cannot breathe." And it feels that ‑‑ that talks so much about the suffocation, that we're suffocated by the systems that are around us. That we do not have voice, that we cannot even breathe. His was a literal meaning, but a soul like that comes and demonstrates that to us.

I think this is the work for humanity to look at that thing and see how deep and dark our atrocities have become. And then talk from that space. Sometimes you listen to people and we're not even talking about the issues that need to be talked about. Again, we're not sitting in the discomfort. 

As a woman of colour, I feel this is the space where we are called into the arena. We cannot be spectators anymore. We need to be part of the decision-making tables. We need to step up in our leadership. We need to step up in our economic space. We need to step up in politics, in all walks of life to make the world a better place.

Louise:            

Yeah. 

Mariam:           

I think that's why we're having these conversations. I really do know that these conversations are the starting point of making things happen. We sometimes jump into action, but I think before the action we need to come together and feel, first of all, this grief and listen to each and allow each other space to ‑‑ hold the space for me to grieve. We haven't done that yet.

We're not doing much of that. We are in the anger phase. I think we're in the drama triangle, where it's either we're victims, or prosecutors and angry, or we're saviours and want to save others. I think it's time we transcend this triangle into the triangle of empowerment, which is we have to be creators. To know we did this, and we can create differently.

We've got to be able to challenge each other and to coach one another to come out of that. I think when we want to coach people, you have to allow their dignity. You have to dignify them. Sometimes people may be in lesser privilege or lesser ‑‑ but it doesn't mean they can't do it. See their potential before they do and give them that power. Even if it's not by action, give it to them by heart.

The heart is the first space of enabling someone. That's the observation with no judgment. Don't judge someone. Allow them, dignify them. 

Louise:            

Mariam, this has been such a beautiful conversation. I could talk to you forever.

Mariam:           

I hope you do. I love your magazine, so I'm going to be featured in your magazine ‑‑ 

Louise:            

You're going to be in the magazine, yes.   Thank you so much. 

Thank you, everyone, for listening to our first Lunch Lady podcast. I really hope this chat with Mariam left you feeling hopeful and inspired. If you liked this conversation, you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you really liked it, be a legend and leave us a good review. 

Lunch Lady is a magazine where parenting is not taken too seriously, but a balanced approach to family life is. It's a beautifully printed, kitchen keepsake full of recipes, inspiring family stories, DIY craft, and funny, relatable opinion pieces about the ups and downs of raising children. 

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