Written by Tumay Aslay

Jess Semaan, photo by Tumay Aslay — *Jess Semaan, photo by* *Tumay Aslay*

Jess Semaan is a queer author, activist, performer and a psychotherapist. Since the day she set foot in the United States at the age of 24, she has not stopped stretching the boundaries of her creative mind. It was 2010 when she first arrived in the United States with a big suitcase, average English, and a full scholarship to attend Stanford Business School. Growing up during the Lebanese Civil War, Semaan found comfort in her own imagination. “I never felt safe growing up. It was not the classic safety we refer to, as in not dying. It was more, the safety of feeling loved and seen.” Semaan writes in one of her articles on Medium, “When you grow up in violence, you often rely on your imagination to survive. In return, it develops your creativity.”

Semaan’s Arabic background and deep roots in Maronite Catholicism, a small religious minority in Lebanon, plays a major factor in who she is today. After years of trying to absorb herself into the American culture, Jess is exhausted from what feels like a constant act of performance. “I recently started a group for Lebanese immigrants to explore our identity. It has been immensely healing, making me proud of my ancestors, my culture, and my roots. I am more aware of how the collective trauma has shaped me,” says Semaan. “I describe myself as complex, endlessly curious, broken, and beautiful.” she adds. “I now also identify as a queer. I am always questioning the gender expectations and the binary, as they have kept me trapped for so long. To me, being queer is saying no to heteronormativity as being the only way. It is a way to express myself radically as I am in a constant process of liberation.”

Semaan was twelve years old when she first started writing French poetry. “I think I was born a writer. My dad is a writer and my great-grandfather was a poetry professor in Lebanon,” she tells us. It wasn't until she was in her 20s that she revisited writing again. Feeling depressed and burned out by the high demands of her earlier career in tech, she found emotional escape in writing. With the success of her article Fuck Working Hard on Medium, Semaan felt encouraged to invest more into writing.

Child of the Moon, an illustrated poetry collection, was released in 2019. In her book, Semaan touches on themes such as her journey through fear, shame, and despair, and the unconditional love that helped her begin to heal from childhood trauma.

“in between being your mother and father

I forgot to be your daughter

and became the child of the moon”

Jess Semaan

The complexity of Semaan’s creativity continues to show up in different phases of her life. Healing is a form of art and an everyday practice for her. After the journey of her own healing through psychedelic-assisted therapy, Semaan recently decided to embark on a career in psychotherapy to help others explore relief from their past traumas. Her own background shapes her to be a sensitive therapist for all cultures and identities, especially with BIPOC, immigrants and LGBTQ patients. “It feels as if it’s my duty to support people who look like me, help them find their voices and power, and contribute to dismantling the toxic system we live in that is literally bringing us and the planet disease.”

So what’s next for Jess Semaan? “Loving myself, and perfecting my self-care plans. This includes having better internal boundaries, as a start. For example, how do I take care of my younger anxious part, so they do not have to go on Instagram and instead, I invite them to meditate before bed to calm the anxiety? Another challenge that came up in the pandemic, is sitting a lot and not moving enough. In turn, it would get my emotions and my client’s emotions stuck in my body. Getting off my couch and going on a walk has been revolutionary.”

“I am also exploring whether I want to be a mother and how to go about it. Being in my mid 30s and unpartnered has posed its own unique questions and challenges. But the process of navigating my fertility has been a growth experience to come more into my power, own my body, and uncouple motherhood from romantic partnership. Would I have loved to be raised in a community and not in a nuclear family? A million percent. And I am hoping that for my unborn child. Maybe imagining a world where I can have both? Why not.”

Tumay Aslay is a Seismic Sisters writer and photographer.