THE COVID MONTHS | Two middle eastern women MEET BY CHANCE in scotland, united by a baby.
Katy with her beautiful husky, Mara, adopted from Lebanon
Catherine (Katy) Kassis left Lebanon aged twenty one to move to Scotland. Finding a mother and baby for her infant observation led her to back into the heart of her Middle Eastern heritage.
Two years ago, I commenced my infant observation journey completely unaware of the richness of learning, the intensity of challenges, and the unthinkable degree of self-discovery that was yet to come. This journey began with a fairytale-like moment of fate, or better, what I believe to be a perfect moment of synchronicity. I had been volunteering at a charity that provides school tutoring for young Syrian refugees in Scotland. After numerous failed attempts at finding a mother through GP surgeries and parent groups, I decided to put word out at the charity. Two hours later, I received a call from one of the teenagers saying that their mother’s friend’s friend had heard about my search through the grapevine and wanted to be a part of it. It had so happened that she was a young Syrian lady who had never been given a chance to get an education and wanted to support me as a young Lebanese woman in achieving my academic goals – perfect synchronicity.
It is a well-known fact that infant observation comes with numerous challenges, primarily related to the maintenance of boundaries. The maintenance of boundaries between two middle eastern women with collectivistic values who have been separated from their families and are minorities in Scotland? To call it challenging is by far an understatement. Middle Eastern culture dictates that women help other women during pregnancy and early motherhood, but in that moment being a Lebanese woman was not my only identity, I was also a trainee psychotherapist bound by ethical codes. Week after week I felt a deep discomfort and indescribable heartache at having to refrain from checking up on how Mum was doing and how she was coping without her family. They say “it takes a village to raise a child”. I personally feel that, although it highlights the role of community in child rearing, this famous saying is but a fraction of the truth when applied to Syrian and Lebanese cultures. It doesn’t begin to describe the intensity and extent to which all family members and friends want to be and are involved in a newborn’s life, something mothers describe as supportive and suffocating in equal measure. Mum and I weren’t bound by familial ties or by previous friendship, but we were bound by the shared knowledge of the importance of having that Arabic-infused village in a Middle Eastern mother’s life. Unspoken emotions and silent conversations of this mutually understood connection filled the room with a corporeal pressure that felt too much to bear at times. I was relentlessly flooded with the guilt of not being able to provide a partial semblance of that village for Mum, such as not being able to tell Mum to rest and that I’d take care of Baby and handle things around the house when she was clearly exhausted. All I could think of during and after observation sessions was how rude Mum and Husband must find me and how I am disgracing my upbringing and familial values and betraying my cultural identity. I was therefore faced with a weekly struggle of having to put aside all I was taught, in order to fully integrate all I was learning through my therapy course.
The first observation session marked the beginning of two years’ worth of parallel process, one I wasn’t aware of at the time, but one that contributed to my personal and professional development. Mum and I were of the same age and similar cultural background, only Mum was a mother of three who had gotten married at sixteen while I was a single woman pursuing her education. In observation sessions, I would be preoccupied with looking for anything and everything that matched my theoretical learning and jotting it down in my notebook. Mum, on the other hand, was preoccupied with the emotional world of Baby and his siblings. While raising them, she could fully and unapologetically express her cultural values.
As sessions progressed, I found myself being less scientific and more reflective about what was going on inside me during Mum’s interactions with Baby; I was not prepared for this development as my culture emphasizes the importance of avoiding emotion in order to be taken seriously as a woman engaged in education. However, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of relief when Baby was sleeping, discomfort when Baby cried, or loss whenever Mum hugged Baby. Through my seminars I realised that I had been suppressing feelings of guilt for going against the grain by focusing on my education, especially as it was something Mum herself had wished for. However, I soon became aware of the fact that both Mum and I had something the other didn’t, one that each was living through the other. Mum had given up education to fully embrace the values of her culture; while, in my case, education came at the cost of my culture.
Through observing Mum’s interaction with Baby in its rawest form, I was reminded of all the social and emotional values my culture blessed me with and how it made me want to study human connection. Over time, I somehow reverted to a more natural version of myself where I was no longer solely focused on academic guidelines and subduing cultural values that seemingly betrayed those guidelines. I was simply an observer in the room who had the privilege of witnessing firsthand those special moments between Mum and Baby.
It was through this experience that I became aware of the importance of integrating all parts of myself in who I want to be and who I believe I am as a practitioner. I am not just a blank observer, nor am I an erudite trainee therapist who fully operates by one perspective. I am a young person who understands the importance of equality and diversity in the world of psychotherapy and have come to see my cultural background as a strength, not a weakness.
About Katy
I am a trainee psychotherapist at the Northern Guild. I spent the first twenty one years of my life in Lebanon before moving to Scotland a few years ago. I have dedicated my post-school years to the study of mental health, completing a BA Hons in Psychology, a MSc in Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Psychological Practice, and now through my journey with the Northern Guild. My early experiences in Lebanon juxtaposed with my life in the UK made me aware of how value for equality and respect for diversity are at the heart of all I do.
I love books, rock climbing, and walks in the countryside with my partner and the two dogs we adopted: beautiful, playful husky Mara from Lebanon; and mischievous, loving terrier Mila from Romania.