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For a long time our Iranian culture has respected certain customs when it comes to mourning.  Day 3 and day 7, and day 40 are those important days when family and friends get together to pay respect to the deceased one.  These days are a manifestation for dignity, care, love, greeting, value, and healing.   The level of anxiety over losing a loved one’s often is helped when a community is offering its support to the deceased family.
When a trauma hits, our Iranian tradition and Iranian culture appreciates a collective action to individuals, families, and communities in pain.  From a clinical stand point this collective response helps to lower the collective grief and loss, while individuals benefit from one another’s solidarity, compassion, and empathy.  In a large scale of trauma, when our people are being beaten on the streets, tortured in prisons, and life in general seem to be threatening, the mourning ceremonies are even more significant.
Our people have carried a huge psychological trauma due to 30 years of injustice while a collective mourning has not been possible.   Now the barriers imposed by government of Iran creating more harm when individuals and families have no way to get help for an emotional processing.
The violence and brutality to stop people from mourning will result in more damages to everyone’s mind and soul to a degree that people’s every day functioning is impacted. A growing level of pain, disappointment, frustration, anger, and resistance are all feeding a boiling pot, in which innocent people will only be more traumatized and left in a psychological chaos.
A collective mourning is people’s right to deal with their trauma.

July 30, 2009
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Lies, dishonesty, inaccuracy, corruption, falsifications, and deceptions have caused great pain in our Iranian lives during past decades.  Evidently the quality of life back home has been directly impacted by the obvious lies told by those in power.  Our sense of integrity is insulted when authorities keep telling lies about the truth, power struggles, and decisions made over every one’s heads.
There are no needs of examples of lies, because each one of us Iranians know multiple of them.
Now the question is how do we feel about lies? How are lies damaging out trust, worldview, perception, and integrity?  Remember when you were a child and some class mates spread a rumor about you. How did you feel? You wanted to do anything to help clarify the lies and proof that you are not what they think you are.
During past 30 years, our human agencies and our human rights activists have worked hard to raise awareness about the level of injustice and lies in our home country.
After the corrupted election now in June 2009, we Iranians are now facing a whole new situation.   Now the heartbreaking lies about the killings, torture, rapes, and arrests of dissenters in our home country have come to the forefronts of the whole world.
The damages of lying to a nation in this large scale are many.  The direct consequences of a systematic lying that we Iranians have witnessed are anger, pain, frustration, and sense of humiliation.  This deliberate and corrupted way of lying to people in order to control or manipulate them, has caused serious damages to the structure of our communities.  Now that our people in Iran have shown clear distance from their government, people just feel an overwhelming sense of anxiety when they hear the damaging and perpetuating lies about the situation.
The bold-faced lies about shootings on the streets and the brutalities we have witnessed through our TV screens are another harm to people’s well being. It seems that Iranian government has nothing else to do than fabrication and misleading of our people.
Lies allow a stream of widespread pain rushes to our bodies, souls and minds. Lies, censorship, brutalities, and more lies have been a negative circle in which fewer and fewer people can tolerate it.   Lying by those in power does however help the truth to come forward by itself.  Resistance, heroism, action, collective attention and protests have been unfolding as result of the lies about our nation, our communities, and our families.  May the truth be always the only thing we stand for.
July 29, 2009
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 Metaphors in our Iranian culture and our daily life have multiple affiliations.  Currently, our people in Iran are struggling in the darkest time of the history.  People chant “allah-akbar or god is great,” a mantra that besides its religious connotations attracts hope in a frightening, unsafe, and hopeless time.  In a time when people are defenseless and under attack by militia, they call upon god as an effort to fight the injustice. “God is great” is a chant by which people leave the injustice in the hands of god who is supposed to be fair.  This is a peaceful chant because it helps people to stay away from violence and leave the criminals in the hands of god.
Chanting “god is great” creates a style of communication when surviving psychologically, defending self and supporting others have an enormous meaning.  This chant involves unity, solidarity, collective conscious, and engagement for the purpose of change.
Perpetually, Iranians have used metaphors to deal with hardship of life, to increase their resistance and to revitalize their strength. The “god is great” metaphor has a nurturing potential when the cruelty imposed on people seem to be insurmountable. In centuries Iranians have referred the “bad guys” to the god, a source of energy which helps people find peace under the circumstances.
Chanting “god is great” assists our people to have self-confidence while asking a higher power for support. This is a positive statement that has clear message, a positive tone of voice, and a path for releasing the tension. While people’s life are at risk and in the hands of criminals whose main goal is to hurt them, then chanting is only way out to show a legitimate anger and protest.  When a government is against its own people, then citizens try to stay emotionally stable with finding one another’s support.

This chant opens up a door for empathy for self and others, while validating god as a higher power takes the desperation away.

July 28, 2009
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