Meet Essmaa Litim

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Essmaa Litim. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Essmaa below.

Essmaa, 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?

I come from a people who had to fight for liberation, fight to survive, never taking no for an answer and trust that God will always be there. My resilience comes from my family. The need to be free from a system made to champion complacency and reward with mediocrity disguised as the American Dream. I learned at an early age to always challenge the status quo, no matter how scary the fight might be. My parents taught my four siblings and I to never live in fear because no one can ever take away your power so it is imperative to stand in it. My parents trusted in God when immigrating to the states in the ’90s from Algeria with two children and a destiny unimaginable. They had to overcome adversity in all its forms; cultural, religious, socioeconomic, and more. They never gave up. They had three more children, their last being Autistic and nonspeaking which posed a journey challenging when working with the healthcare system to find answers. Language being a barrier, my family had to learn the importance of advocacy in multiple languages; their native arabic (Darja) tongue, French, and English, using all to answer questions in a world so foreign to them. Watching them work endless hours to keep us protected was their love language.

My parents taught us 3 crucial life lessons: Be a leader not a follower, be proud of who you are, and don’t ever forget where you come from.

These lessons have taught me that when I stand, I must stand tall and if I fall, I will get back up every time. I have forged my own path unapologetically because I was raised to be a leader even when facing adversity. My mom always says that I love poetry because she loves it and used to write poetry in her youth. I love that we share that in common. I was raised to go to school, get that good education, then get a good job and while I did accomplish all that, my heart yearns to pursue projects of storytelling and advocacy. My passion is to keep our stories alive and while going after my dreams may not be the traditional route of work, I was taught to be a leader and go after whatever it is I wanted, so today I chase those dreams. I was raised to always be proud of who I am and where I come from and through my stories the world will never forget. Through my family’s resilience navigating their new lives in a new world so foreign to their own, I have been able to chase everything I want for me and mine to make sure their sacrifice was worth it.

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?

Essmaa Litim is a radical storytelling visionary who uses her voice as her medium to distribute a wealth of information from both a social and political lens. She is the author of the memoir, Speechless, which centers her family’s journey immigrating to the United States in the 90s and shares the cultural adversity they faced in raising five children in a new world. In addition to her book, Essmaa uses her art of storytelling to bring spoken word to the forefront of her experiences and those of her community, powering the stage with effortless wordplay. She has performed in spaces like SOB’s in NYC, WGBH, and Voices in Power at City Winery. Essmaa is the founder of Femme Flo, a poetic collective curated to cultivate a community of femme poets in celebration of us. In March 2023, Essmaa was awarded the EXTRAordinary Woman award by the Mayor’s Office of Women’s Advancement for her commitment and dedication to her community, neighborhood, and workplace. As a first-generation American, Essmaa continues to work hard to help build the community that helped build her through believing it, speaking it, and being it.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

In my journey, I’ve learned a lot of lessons that have shaped me into the woman I am today and will continue to shape me. Learning the importance of relationships is my number one lesson in any industry. The power of connections and genuine relationships is crucial in building businesses, community, and creating an everlasting source of knowledge. We are not absolute beings so our network or knowledge should be vast and evergrowing.

Understanding that there can be no effective communication without effective comprehension in any relationship or setting. It is important to listen to understand instead of listening to respond. This has taught me a lot about the power of understanding each other to work better together and effectively build a better environment on both a micro and macro level.

Another important lesson I’ve learned in life is trust that the redirection is protection. Trust the process and if something isn’t going according to plan, it actually is and lean into the lessons that are taught during that time. Life is meant to consist of ups and downs and anything thrown your way it meant to teach you something. What’s meant for you won’t miss you.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

The book that has completely changed my life and mindset is Atomic Habits. This book has taught me to focus on longevity and what TYPE of life I want to live through the 1% I incorporate into my life on a day to day basis. Instead of aiming for one goal and then focusing on the next thing, I’ve learned to look at my life as a holistic reflection of myself. When I really got into weight lifting and working out, I used to tell my trainer that my goal was to have abs but after reading Atomic Habits I learned that it’s not abs I should be working to attain but rather a healthy and fit lifestyle as that is what truly mattered to me. I learned that small changes in my life can amount to the big changes I want to see in myself. A big lesson I taught myself was waking up for me, not for work. I love to wake up early for ME time, before reading my emails, before touching my phone, before working for someone else. I need to ground myself in self love and care before I even get started with any work. Atomic Habits taught me that in order to the live the life I want I must discipline myself in the small habits that will get me there.

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