The paintbrush trembled in her hands. For a moment, time seemed to fold in on itself for the 83-year-old Syrian grandmother – it had been over sixty years since she had held one. She placed a few colors, her own story beginning to take shape, and then came the instruction: Pass it on.
Around her, a group of women exchanged their unfinished canvases, each trusting one another to continue their story. The grandmother hesitated, then took a deep breath and passed her painting forward.
In that small act of trust, the retreat’s theme – “I’ll Go With That” – came alive! A soft chuckle and gasp escaped the grandmother when she received her painting, and it was nowhere near what she had envisioned. It was an exercise in surrendering control, trusting in sisterhood, and embracing the beautiful, unpredictable painting that emerges when we let others add their color to our lives. But perhaps, it was exactly what it was meant to be.
Earlier that weekend, AMHP hosted a Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training at the Islamic Center of Cedar Rapids, home to the historic Mother Mosque of America—the first mosque built in the United States. Led by AMHP instructor Linda Humaidan, the training set the stage for what came next: a women’s retreat rooted in faith, wellness, and sisterhood.
On World Mental Health Day, while global conversations often focus on clinical tools and public health data, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa—at the heart of the American Midwest—a different kind of healing took place. It unfolded not in a therapist’s office, but in a sunlit lodge where nearly one hundred Muslim women gathered, united in reflection and connection.
The fourth annual Sisters’ Retreat was a living example of culturally responsive, faith-based mental health care in action. For Muslim women navigating isolation and intersectional stress, especially in less diverse areas, the retreat offered something rare and transformative: sisterhood-centered healing as a form of public health.
Our theme, ‘I’ll Go With That: Finding Strength in What Is,’ became both a personal mantra and collective mission. For a community facing the universal pressures of modern life, the added challenges of being a religious minority, and the shared grief of a global ummah in pain, this phrase was not passive resignation. It was an act of courage—an invitation to look at our reality and ask: How do we not just survive, but find genuine strength and sanctuary right here, right now?
The answer was not a single workshop or a lone keynote. In fact, our keynote lasted only thirty minutes, by design. Our goal was larger: to carefully construct an ecosystem of healing —a blend of Islamic spirituality, trauma-informed practice, professional insight, and the profound power of peer support.
We called this ecosystem “The Third Space.” In most lives, we move between clinical spaces for “fixing” problems and religious spaces for worship. Both are essential —but the retreat was something in-between: a sanctuary for the heart, a workshop for the soul, where one could bring a broken spirit and find it mended not by a single expert, but by a community’s collective embrace. It was a therapeutic and spiritual container where healing could unfold holistically.
It was therapeutic, not therapy. Women overwhelmed by anxiety learned somatic lessons in strength through Taekwondo stances, finding embodied resilience. At the art station, complex emotions found color and form. On a guided nature hike, reflection became meditation, and each woman created a flower arrangement to take home as a tangible reminder of peace.
It was spiritual, not a sermon. The focus was on spiritual resonance — connecting heart-to-heart with Allah and each other. The opening reflection turned inward to their personal mihrab (prayer niche), while the “Releasing with Trust” ceremony was a physical act of tawakkul (trust in God). The sacred infused the entire space, making every conversation and silence a potential act of worship.
In this Third Space, a woman could share a burden and have it held by sisters who understood its cultural and spiritual context without explanation. This is the power of the Third Space —it removes the need to fragment the self. You can simply be a whole person, seeking peace. This wholeness was built on a foundation of non-negotiable psychological safety, faith integrated into every aspect, and practices that honored mind, body, and spirit.
But perhaps the most crucial element, the active ingredient that brought it all to life, was the culture of sisterhood itself. This wasn’t a collection of individuals receiving a service; we were an us. Every woman’s story became part of a larger tapestry of belonging.
From Cedar Rapids to the World: A Model for World Mental Health Day
This model speaks to the heart of World Mental Health Day. If mental well-being is a universal human right, it must be universally accessible – which for the Muslim women in that room meant care that was community-led, culturally grounded, and strengths-based.
A ‘universal human right’ cannot be one-size-fits-all. True mental well-being must be culturally congruent, meeting people where they are in a language and context they trust.
Our Third Space offers a blueprint. It shows that alongside essential clinical services, we must champion spaces that allow people to draw strength not despite their identity, but because of it—through faith, culture, and sisterhood.
The power of this space was reflected not only in its design, but in the women who filled it. The room held a microcosm of the global ummah, rooted in Iowa soil. Twenty-seven nationalities were represented, and diversity was not a challenge—it was the source of strength.
There was the elderly Syrian grandmother, her hands, weathered from a lifetime of work, gently arranging flowers next to a university student born and raised in Cedar Rapids. A Somali mother shared a laugh with a Bosnian sister. Their journeys were vastly different, yet in this Third Space, those differences did not separate them; they enriched collective wisdom.
They were united by a shared, unspoken understanding. Here, they didn’t have to explain the experience of wearing hijab in a small midwestern city, the nuances of family expectations, or the specific grief of watching crises unfold in ancestral homelands.
The container also held a beautiful cross-cultural exchange. Our three interns—white, non-Muslim women—came to practice holding space. The trust built was a respectful, human connection that proved to be more than enough. The ultimate testament was an activity they led: a simple exercise with a leafless tree. They invited each sister to inscribe a struggle and a strength onto a paper leaf and add it to the branches.
In that act of vulnerable participation, the “Third Space” revealed its strength. The women did not offer polite small talk. They entrusted the group with raw truths: the trauma of war, the fear for children, the pain of injustice. Right beside them, they declared their formidable strengths: an unyielding hope, a demand for justice, a faith that refuses to be extinguished.
Every person strengthened the whole. The interns learned a profound lesson in cultural humility: that healing begins when you listen to the real stories, not the ones you expect to hear. The sisters were witnessed in their truth, their narratives honored exactly as they were, even—and especially—in a space held by those from outside their community.
This diversity was our strength, proving the universal need for such spaces among Muslim women. It showed how healing in community lets us borrow strength from one another. As our day settled, the question remained: what now?
World Mental Health Day is not just a day of awareness – it’s a call to action. The retreat was never the finale, but a proof of concept: that the most powerful forms of healing are those created with the community, for the community, and shaped by its culture, faith and collective strength.
So, let this be an invitation to every leader, healer, and woman wondering how to make a difference: look around you. What does your community’s “Third Space” look like? Perhaps it’s a small circle of women who walk and hike together, an online support group for new mothers, or a shared creative space. We’re also beginning to explore needs in other areas of the community; piloting father-son workshop and gathering. What matters is not the form, but the intention – to create a place where people can bring themselves and be met with empathy, tools and connection.
We built our sanctuary in the Heartland, on the foundation of “I’ll Go With That.” We found our strength not by escaping reality, but by building a beautiful, resilient space right in the middle of it.
On this World Mental Health Day and every day, that is the work. To build sanctuaries together. The Syrian grandmother’s final painting was not what she had first sketched. It carried the colors and strokes of a dozen sisters. It was layered, messy, unexpected—and far more beautiful than anything she could have created alone. That is the blueprint: not a perfect plan, but a faithful community, each willing to add their stroke to another’s healing.