Diva Girls' Blog Post - December 14th (Healthy Relationships & more)

This session the girls talked about healthy relationships. We started off by listing traits of a healthy relationship, then we listed traits of an unhealthy one. For a healthy relationship, traits like compromise, respect, and trust were listed, for unhealthy ones, traits like possessiveness, jealousy, and anger were listed. 




The girls talked about red flags someone should look out for. When asked what to do when someone you know is in an abusive relationship they said that the person needs someone to help get them out of that situation, I mentioned that some individuals who are in an abusive relationship may not be ready to leave and forcing them to may lead to more trouble than help. We then talked about the cycle of abuse.




So what are some things that can be done? A friend can help set up a safety plan, for example the person in the unhealthy relationship could text the friend a word, when the friend sees this word they would call the police. Because the girls did not know of many ways to help, this was new information to them.The girls mentioned the importance of knowing this, especially when married. 



After this conversation the girls wanted to talk about how marriage in certain parts of the world have been twisted by internalized racism. TAARM (Taking Action Against Racism in the Media) defines internalized racism as the personal conscious or subconscious acceptance of the dominant society's racist views, stereotypes and biases of one's ethnic group. They talked about how there are tribes in Ethiopia that only allow marriages between individuals in their tribe who are outcasted if they marry someone from another one. 

This brought them into the conversation about how as muslim women, they sometimes feel overwhelmed at the expectations individuals tend to have of them but also about how important it is for them to remain respectful and follow their faith.

Amna Quaid Azam