Meet Nora Hawari

We recently connected with Nora Hawari and have shared our conversation below.

Nora, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

Resilience has been engrained into my being since childhood, that’s when my chronic illness first began. I started experiencing chronic pain all over my body at the age of 10 years old and it was so excruciating that I found myself in the hospital at least once a month. It was exhausting, scary, and I didn’t think I was going to make it.

I saw hundreds of doctors and none of them could figure out what was wrong with me even though I had 100+ different symptoms. I started to feel hopeless, and my mental heath was deteriorating. I missed more than half of the school year, I had no friends, everyone called me “the sick girl”, I was isolated, in pain, and no one could help me.

Dark thoughts roamed in my head, I didn’t want to live anymore if it meant being in this much pain. I pondered many times if the only way to have peace was death. It was terrifying moment but I’m so glad I had an incredible mom who took care of me, listened to me, and always loved me unconditionally.

She supported me when I was down and would tell me to that trust god/the universe will make a path for me to heal and get better. She told me never to lose faith or hope, she would encourage me to stay strong and positive, it wasn’t easy of course, I still have my ups and downs but that’s how I developed and strengthened my resilience. 20 years later, I finally received a final
diagnoses.

Just this year, I’ve been diagnosed with EDS(Ehlers Danlos Syndrome), POTS(postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), lipedema, and MCAS(Mast cell activation syndrome).

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am an actor, writer, and director based in Los Angeles, CA. I produce own original work centered around the Middle Eastern experience from a female perspective.

My latest work Yallah Habibi has gone on to win Best Pilot at 7 film festivals as well as being an official selection at The Tribeca Film Festival. I was also a selected participant in HBO’s Creators Market in New York City where I pitched among several industry professionals.

I am trained Meisner actor and I’m playing the first female Muslim character on NBC Universal’s Curious George Season 14 & 15.

Right now I have a few pilots I’m shopping around, submitting to different fellowships and diversity programs in hopes of getting my work out there. And starting pre-production on a horror short I wrote about chronic pain, very excited for that project and to spread awareness about chronic illnesses!

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

The 3 most important skills/qualities in this line of work that have been impactful for me would be 1. Joyful Optimism 2. Determination Discipline 3. Passion & Pure love for your work.

1. Joyful Optimism is the idea of not giving up hope, keeping the faith that your dreams will come true but with an element of light heartedness. I think sometimes we have this strong idea of “work hard, don’t ever stop, pain is gain, etc”, and I think these can be damaging because it’s in a negative connotation, it implies that you have to suffer in some way to attain what your desire. Which is false. You don’t need to suffer for what you want, you just need to be joyful in optimism, a true joy in your heart and that’s when the things you want come easily to you. It was hard for me to learn this but the more and more I surrender and realize I don’t need to suffer, life just gets better and easier.

2. Determination & Discipline is consistency, but not with superficial things like cleaning your home, eating healthy, working out, which are of course beneficial but consistent with your spiritual practices. Breath work, meditation, mindful movement, chanting, yoga, prayer, anything that connects you with the divine is so so important. It keeps you grounded, centered, at peace and that’s what you need in the entertainment industry, cause it can drive you crazy, angry, self conscious, sad and much more. But being grounded has helped me in my work feel confident and at peace.

3. Passion & Pure Love, you have to love what you do or you’ll feel like a prisoner to the paycheck. It long hours, it’s long meetings, staying up late to finish writing, something always goes wrong on set, there’s never enough money in the budget or time to shoot right scenes/angles. So, with all this madness, you have to love it or you’ll get burnt out and upset you singed up for this. When you have a deep passion and love for what you do, work just becomes much more fun, for you and everyone around you.

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?

The most impactful thing my parents did, was make me work at a young age. The year I was born, my parents bought a restaurant and you guessed it, my siblings and I worked there since we could walk. Sometimes we joke my parents had us just for free child labor, but I digress. We’ve now had the restaurant for 30 years and the amount I’ve learned working there has been invaluable. Learning to take orders and small talk with so many different kinds of people, leading a team and a kitchen, communicating when getting food out, learning to cook, handling customer service issues, learning to problem solve and deal with employee issues, having to fire and hire people, teaching and training new cooks/servers, and much more. I felt like I was in the restaurant navy or something. There’s a plethora of things that can go wrong during service, especially busy lunch rushes but I think working there has developed me into a well trained leader who can remain calm under stress.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Noorahawari
• Youtube: https://youtu.be/Eu7995Vcuv0?si=e95SpY9DM3g9AqRl