Annual Celebration of International Women’s Day
What Do the Women Say? 2025
Healing and Resilience: A Guided Meditation with Ashira Darwich
What Do the Women Say? celebrates International Women’s Day on March 8, 2025, with a guided meditation and Q&A session led by Ashira Darwish, a Palestinian journalist, therapist, and activist featured in the powerful film Where Olive Trees Weep.
March 8, 2025
at 11 AM Pacific
Available globally online
Where Olive Trees Weep will be available for on-demand viewing for two weeks leading up to March 8, 2025. The film offers a searing exploration of the struggles and resilience of Palestinian people under Israeli occupation. Featuring Ashira Darwish, grassroots activist Ahed Tamimi, Israeli journalist Amira Hass, and trauma-healing work by Dr. Gabor Maté, the film delves into themes of loss, trauma, and the quest for justice.
Ashira Ali Darwish is the founder of Catharsis Holistic Healing, a trauma therapy project in Palestine. She is known for pioneering Sufi active meditation to help people suffering from continuous trauma. This type of active meditation draws its roots from ancestral and Indigenous knowledge. Her personal journey of healing from full body paralysis with a severed spinal cord in 2012 has given her a deep insight into the process of recovery and healing. This unique perspective allows her to offer a highly specialized and culturally sensitive approach to trauma healing.
In 2021, she received the “ISABS Honours” from the Indian Society for Applied Behavioural Science for her contribution to positive societal transformation through the application of behavioral science principles and practices.
Ashira started her career in Palestine as a journalist; she worked for 15 years as TV & Radio journalist and researcher for the BBC, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.