The transformative power of embracing your ancestry
Seven inspiring Persian things for you to celebrate Noruz 2025
What if the things that made people uncomfortable about you turned out to be part of your identity? What if you could give yourself permission to be the one you actually are?
I have epic dreams—some call me grandiose, even crazy. I have deeply felt enthusiasms—for some I’m intense, too much. I love elaborate rituals, huge hospitality, the intricacy of etiquette—some call that indirect and overcomplicating.
Maybe the way I’m tuned is indecipherable in a world of transactions and linearity, but fits right into the music of another world. I am sensual, I follow mystical teachings, I dance. This doesn’t have much room in many places in this world, but lives freely in a part of my heart that can’t be forgotten.
Today I’m here to tell you I’m proud to go on being exactly who I am. Today during our 2025 festival celebrating Noruz, I am excited to share with you a garden of too-muchness, sensuality, paradox, and the joy of being human:
Seven beautiful Persian things for you this Noruz
Muqarnas
Is it architecture or a psychedelic vision? I found myself mesmerized by these Persian domes, and amazed at what humans are capable of creating if they tune into beauty.
Tahdig
I’ve made leaps and bounds in my tahdig craftsmanship this year. I won’t say I’ve perfected the art yet. But I turned out a few darn pretty ones, thanks to Naz Deravian, Bottom of the Pot is still my go-to!
Superadobes
Finally it’s time for superadobes to have their moment in the limelight, like on the front page of LA Times!
(I won’t say “I told you so” but, hey, I told you so — like twenty years ago!) Anyway, I can’t wait to dig my hands in the dirt and build one, shoulder-to-shoulder with friends, when the time is ripe. I just know it will happen someday. Meantime, learn how indigenous Persian architecture can make fire-resistant dwellings at Cal-Earth.
Fairy-tales for kids
These are touching, gentle uplifting kids’ stories told by a grandmotherly narrator in Farsi, produced by the wonderful Golestan collaborative bilingual immersion school in Oakland, CA. Check it out to get the music of the Persian language in your ears. It’s on Spotify and Amazon.
Fairy-tales for adults
Daniel Nayeri’s memoir, Everything Sad is Untrue shows that it’s possible to be both cosmically unsettled while still totally at home. As a writer myself, I loved seeing evidence that a book can be riveting without (as his main character asserts) being "beholden to a Western mode of storytelling that I do not accept.”
A woman’s heroism
During her 3-week temporary medical release from prison, 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi inspired the world, indefatigably raising awareness about gender apartheid. I honor that she has found freedom and her voice even in the face of years of oppression and imprisonment.
Persian Bootcamp
Though Persian culture was part of my upbringing, my Farsi got stunted. During the anti-Iranian racism of the 1980s, fear literally dislocated many of us from our mother tongue.
Then in 2022 I followed an Instagram ad and enrolled in a Persian language bootcamp. It kicked off a healing journey that started to change my life. Thank you, Leyla Shams, for sharing Persian language and culture in such fun ways and bringing us together through your wonderful learning community Chai and Conversation.
If you’re part Persian, Persian-curious, or have Persian friends, check it out! You’ll even get to learn a beautiful Persian poem. In mine I memorized a Rumi piece about being intoxicated on life, declaimed from the ground of our ancestral Kashani rug.
My mom
Me and mom. This year, we’ve been able to do what we couldn’t do since I was three: speak Persian together. Our sparkly FaceTime conversations are spiked with a new tenor of laughter, a dimension of disclosure, and quality of exuberance that seems only possible in Farsi. I have always been fortified and uplifted by my mom, and the deepening of our connection this year has gifted me with the qualities I admire so much in her: vigor, sweetness, and belief in possibility.
Happy spring to you!
I wish you all the joy that comes with knowing and fully embracing your heritage, speaking the language of your ancestors, drinking their music and ritual, even if the people around you don’t understand it. Especially then. Happy new day, happy noruz, to all my friends. I would love to hear your news and what’s stirring within you.