WOMEN’S MUSIC THERAPY GROUP Facilitated by Yifat Gerber and Mousa Sabatin
Supported by: Roots/Judur/Shorashim: The Palestinian Israeli Initiative for Understanding, Nonviolence, and Reconciliation
My name is Yifat Gerber, a music therapist (M.A.) and Ph.D. student in the Music Therapy Department at Bar Ilan University. From 2016-18, I participated in the course “Group Facilitation within Conflict with Music Therapy,” and it was then that I began thinking of creating a group between Israelis and Palestinians through the Roots initiative. I found a Palestinian partner, Mousa Sabatin, to coordinate the group with me from one of the neighboring towns. In order to create a deeper experience between the participants and in order to access deep emotions, it was critical that the group be a small and intimate setting, consisting of committed participants for the journey. It would be a place where participants could share their hardships, their challenges with the realities around them, the fear of the Other and the pain and suffering amongst themselves and their friends. Creating this group is:- Breaking down walls of lack of communication, fear, and negative perceptions of the other side;
- Exposing and becoming acquainted with the historic narrative and current life of the other in living the conflict;
- Developing emotions and empathy for the fear, pain, suffering and loss of the others;
- Creating deep relations and bonds that will last beyond the scope of the meetings;
- Making connections beyond the participants in the group–friends and families from the larger social circles of the participants.
Seeing Through the Noise – The Holy Land
Especially in the darkness of war when all efforts to create peace fail, The Soul of Peace, through deep practitioner Psychologist insight and skill, committed grassroots initiatives, religious creatives, autoethnographic/scholarly researchers, and trusted political colleagues works with deep heart and compassionate spirit to:
– Break from historical acts of trying to negotiate and broker peace – under the shadow of threat, fear, and mistrust – prepare deeper and sacred ground (“pre-conditions”) upon which we can dismantle the reasons for those fears, fundamentally changing how we understand power, resistance, the necessity of the other, reverence, authority, chaos, currency – “God.”
– Root deep peace – name and mobilize sensibilities of soul that have the power to secure, in the spaces opened, deeper ground for trust. Political, economic, religious, clinical, and military interventions will have as their primary goal, not the building of peace but the dismantling of fear.
TRUST-BASED PHILANTHROPY IS INTEGRAL TO HAVING PEOPLE OF THIS LAND, LEAD; WESTERN FORMS OF KNOWING AND JOINING IN CIRCLE ARE FOR MUTUAL LEARNING AND FORMING ANEW THE FIELD FOR PEACE.
ISUTASHINGA:
IsuTashinga (Shona for “Embracing our Bravery”)
It takes a woman to understand other women.
MISSION:
A personal and collective sense of pride and ownership in women as they heal, champion and grow a depth of well-being that gives voice to their silence and power to their vulnerability.
STORY AS CONNECTION AND HEALING
I remember as a child after my parents divorced, my grandmother took us in and raised us as her own. She taught us what it took and meant to love again, speak from the heart and for selves, to stand and fill a gap for each other. She stood with my mother in mending a broken heart and became our heroine. My mother’s inner scars began to disappear as we could see her smile back again.
The journey led me to realize a woman needs another to find peace and heal; it has become my dream to share and live this wisdom with other women.
We all come from the same entity despite our diverse cultural backgrounds. Most women face the same challenges and for healing to happen, women share their stories with other women to birth the new.
A circle is like a womb where women are embraced and can pour out their voices without feeling judged or challenged; we can just be. We feel the warmth of being acknowledged by other women.
Women feed each other’s wisdom by telling their stories and experiences of straining against patriarchal traditions and oppressive regimes.
There is a need to create physical spaces where women meet and share their hearts.
We must be those champions who rise and stand in the power of our gender and be custodians of our families and country.
AIMS AND BENEFITS
IsuTashinga remains a vision for women to touch each others’ souls through storytelling. It is a place for women to find comfort as they find themselves, embrace their gendered existence, and grow in psychospiritual well-being. (This is a premise of women’s psychology).
IsuTashinga is for the risk-takers who want to champion other women despite living in a patriarchal society. The goal is to open space for our local circle, then create a hub for Zimbabwean women who too aspire to realize their personal voice and step bravely into their economic and custodial power.
We ask for the psychospiritual expertise and wise eldership of other women─to hold the space, to mentor/companion Zimbabwean women on how to tap into the root of their emotions, and gain skills for healthy decision-making. We need new ways of seeing our selves, our relationships, and practices that weave and sustain the whole of our lives over time.
IsuTashinga is for the brave-hearted though soft inside to walk the path and celebrate the strong needs of this caring loving gender that loves unconditionally.
EDUCATING THE GIRL CHILD
Empowering the next generation of African women through emotional and spiritual support of their potential and dreams to make a difference in the world, and through financial payment of (private) school fees. Included in the circle of support is the girl’s parent(s), her engagement in community and sports, and friendship/networks upon leaving secondary school.