Journaling Prompts for Healing by Hala Alyan

December 18, 2023

When we’re looking to bring to light practices of healing and reflection, novelist, poet, and clinical psychologist Hala Alyan (@hala.n.alyan via Instagram) is one powerful Palestinian-American voice we turn to. Hala created a few journaling prompts for AAFSC’s #MentalHealthMeans campaign, an opportunity for us to collectively increase mental health access in immigrant and refugee communities in NYC. We hope that these prompts will be helpful for your community members, co-workers, clients, students, loved ones, and for yourself.

  1. Where do you turn to feel replenished? What people, places, practices help expand your capacity to endure?
  2. Write a letter to a city of your choosing: write your hopes, your memories, your imagined future for it.
  3. What does liberation look like for you? This might mean liberation for yourself, for your community, for the world. This can be any genre: poem, speculative fiction, nonfiction, letter to self, letter to ancestor/coming generation.

We’re also sharing some of AAFSC’s favorite pieces of work from Hala Alyan. Please feel free to support Hala by checking out her work below.