My Mother’s Braid, the latest children’s story added to Mariam Library in a sing language enables conference, to continue our dedication and innovation supporting our heroes.
Launching at at the Holy Family School in Nazareth, My Mother’s Braid is a children’s book that tells the story of a young girl being introduced to her mother’s breast cancer. The story is told through the eyes of the girl which introduces the reader to her inner thoughts and feeling about her mother’s sickness, and most importantly, about losing her hair due to chemotherapy.
The goal is to offer emotional support for children that one of their parents is facing cancer, and to focus on the importance of standing by their parents, accepting the situation, and not to let fear control their emotions, taking an easy storytelling style which is close to the child’s imagination.
The conference was hosted by media personality Eman Hawari, who managed several interesting panels with our guests: Mohammad Hamed, CEO and founder of Mariam Foundation, Ruba Warwar, Management member of Mariam Foundation, Dr. Jawdat Eid, Katy Noufi, Mary Eilabouni and the social worker Kawthar Qablan.
The book is based on the true story of Mary Eilabouni and her daughter, Wardi, who both spoke about their inspiring experience from the diagnosis of cancer til beating it. Wardi spoke about how she faced her mother’s cancer and the idea of shaving her hair, which she was attached to it so much. However, she stood by her mother and helped her overcome cancer by being strong and brave.
To convey this is inspiring story into simple words and ideas that a child can understand, Dr. Jawdat Eid, a writer and a social worker, wrote the book according to Mary and her daughter. Dr. Eid spoke about the importance of portraying such impactful events on a child’s world in simple words and ideas, being close to his imagination, and the importance of involving the child with everything that is going on and not hide information from him.
One of the ways to achieve this goal is by telling the story through pictures and drawings. That’s where our ambassador the painter Katy Noufi comes in. She spoke about how she chose the colors, facial impressions and the general look and feel of the book to mimic the characters’ feelings and getting it close to the child’s imagination. Also worth mentioning, that some of Wardi’s drawings that she drew while her mother was sick, were included in the book itself and are a part of the story.
Connecting all these dots, social worker Kawthar Qablan spoke about the importance of such support in this creative and innovative way, using storytelling to convey such an important message to a child is blessed and important way of offering emotional support to children who struggle sometimes accepting impactful events into their lives, such as cancer.
In between the panels, our dear volunteer Anwar Sharara performed several songs accompanied by the pianist Hiba Sadran, all to be broadcasted live on social media and for the live audience as well. And at the end, few lines of the story were read by Ruba Warwar, ascending the stage with our guests revealing the book’s cover.
We would like to thank everybody that made this event possible, Mariam Foundation’s ambassadors and friends, Deek.Sleem strategy and advertising office, the hair dresser Kamal Safeieh and the sign languange interpreter Mahmoud Berri
