⁘ 𖡼 𓇢𓆸 𖡼 ⁘
Meet HSS’s steward —
sárah sao mai habib is an artist, cultural worker, and diasporic child of the lands of Vietnam & Beit Nahrain. habib storytells about intercultural solidarities and ancestral embodiments of defiant kinships. sárah supports their communities by working alongside them to cultivate inner and outer infrastructures of care.
habib works at the crossroads of ancestral remembrance, social ecological justice, land based, and contemplative practice.
( CV ) upon request-
Hello, thank you for taking the time to get to know more about me here. I was born in Kuwait shortly before the Gulf war to a Kuwaiti father and Vietnamese mother. We also have recent culturally distanced roots spanning Iraq, Iran and Southern China. I was raised in Kuwait and frequently traveled to Turtle Island to visit my maternal family who sought refuge there after the end of the Vietnam/American war. My lived experience of traversing borders and embodying many cultures, faiths & economic conditions, and my natural inclination to create, heal & build home in the midst of systemic fragmentation led me to study psychology, art and architecture.
I eventually moved to Turtle Island to obtain my bachelors and masters degrees in these fields. In this process I gained over a decade of experience studying and working on community based design, and creative healing initiatives, including building & repairing multi-family housing with low-income communities, disaster rebuilding, creating educational media around climate responsive architectures, intercultural storytelling, etc. with national & international firms, schools and nonprofits.
After much trials, successes and failures, it was undeniable to me that the status quo of addressing historic & pressing collective issues was perpetuating more of the same problems. This led me to dig deeper: examining my conditioning, assimilation & privilege, while simultaneously reconnecting to my cultural spiritual roots, the earth, community, revolutionary histories, gifts and the fertile compost that my ancestors left me to transform. This led me to engage more consciously in anti-colonial, anti-supremacist, and direct action. I worked at border medical mutual aid camps, lived and worked at Dharma centers, staffed healing retreats, coordinated majority BIPOC fellowships online and in person, co-organized & fundraised over 100k in critical mutual aid funds, crafted free creative offerings, residencies & DIY rest spaces, and stewarded seeds, ancestral stories, rituals, and lifeways.
It has been over 7 years of focused energy invested in these wider & more integrated realms. I continue to commit to unlearning and learning more of our truths. I continue to travel as a bridge with the intention to stretch my understanding, weave & strengthen intercultural, interspecies and interfaith solidarities. It is my aspiration to follow in the steps of our vibrant ancestors, who faced uncertainty, their failures and fully embodied their multitudes and interconnectedness with all that is to cultivate more blessings in this life. I view this as a lifelong cyclic process that asks of me humility and a reverent & curious beginner’s mind. I’m strongly motivated to support others in their specific calling to fortify & multiply infrastructures of care in defiance of all that continue to challenge them.
[bio written in Summer 2026]
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Lineage & communities whom I am embraced by and accountable to :
Aside from my most direct and obvious community, I am embraced by those who transgress oppressive borders and binaries in the multitude of ways that reflect their unique, paradigm shifting, multidimensional, queer, timely, and necessary medicine.
I am honored that my life journey has led me to wonderful people (human and more than human), who embody transgenerational love. They have shown me how we all are accountable to the children and martyrs.
At their invitation & blessing, I answer the responsibility of gathering, practicing, renewing, and sharing their wisdom.
Deep gratitude to my teachers across time and place from:
Earth-based, ancestral reverence, and deep-time traditions of SWANA and East Asian lineages.
The mystics & revolutionary lovers in Islamic tradition.
Engaged Buddhists, specifically Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings and actions.
Ancestral lands and waters who I come from and who raised me: Al-Khaleej/The Gulf, Dijlah wal-Furāt/Tigris & Euphrates (Beit Nahrain), Kỳ Cùng river, and the Pacific Ocean.
The lands & their first stewards who are teaching me how to be a good guest: unceded Chumash and Tewa territories.
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Some navigational ways that guide me:
Becoming “regular-sized” through relating context to context / place to place / water to water. In other words, contextualizing self/community within the larger web of relations and clarifying motivations/intentions wherever we may find ourselves.
Shaping change through: BLOCK. BE. BUILD.
Creating and holding responsive containers.
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Some of the more recent practice spaces I’ve participated & am participating in:
Ancestral Lineage Healing Practitioner Training with Ancestral Medicine.
Boundless in Motion/Ecodharma Sanghas.
Madrassat Al-Aashtarat.
FIELDWORK: Collective Recovery from Colonial Fragmentation Disorder with Co-Culture.
Etheric Gardening (flower essence & energy healing) with Maryam Hasnaa.
Ethical & Trauma Informed Storytelling with Voices of Witness.
Curanderismo: Traditional Medicine Beyond Borders at UNM.
[written in Summer 2026]
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praise
“Sarah brings a light and presence to her teaching that is inclusive and sensitive to differences in thought, while challenging the audience to step outside—even for a moment—one’s own history. She is very adept at interacting with diverse backgrounds in professional environments, with an intuitive and calm nature, understanding how to bring out her audience’s innate curiosity. Sarah understands embodied healing through the depth of her own work, sharing this knowledge with others who have growth aspirations. She is someone from whom you immediately and consistently want to learn and hear more!”
— Kavita Rajasekhar, MD MPH, preventive medicine and public health physician
“Sarah is an interdisciplinarian with an architectural background who embraces holistic approaches that bridge between disciplines, space, and imaginations. Their perspective sits outside of disciplinary silos to address social justice issues related to decolonization while leaning into the discourses that emerge. Sarah is deeply immersed in engagement that centers indigeneity related to land sovereignty in practice and pedagogy and how it translates to experiential and relational practices towards spatial justice. They are dedicated to creating a safe and equitable dialogue for a diversity of perspectives to cultivate influence beyond boundaries while framing discomfort as a portal for learning. Sarah cultivates belonging and connection with self, others and the land that bridge to different scales of repair with the intention to move towards land back and all that it entails.”
— Shalini Agrawal, Associate Professor of Critical Ethnic Studies at CCA, and Co-Director of Pathways to Equity
“Sarah, with your words, I see these karmic cycles like Venn diagrams, whirling and colliding, combusting like exploding stars, creating our new life, as you say, new cycles of collective care.”
— Sangha Member
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INVOCATION
We dwell in the middle
In the middle
In the middle
Braiding earth and sky
Braiding ancestors and descendants
Towards “a world where all worlds fit”
The Cosmic Unfolding is greater
Creator is greater