What happens when the thing that once kept you safe begins costing you something deeper?
Dr. Lubna Omar learned early that survival sometimes meant knowing what not to say. Growing up Palestinian in Syria under the Assad regime, silence wasn't simply caution. It was something you learned, absorbed, and carried with you.
But what happens when those instincts follow you across borders? When the danger changes, but the calculation remains? And when staying quiet begins to feel less like protection and more like complicity?
In this conversation, Lubna and I explore the complicated terrain between fear and conviction, displacement and belonging, history and identity, and what it means to find your voice after a lifetime of learning to protect it.
We also wrestle with a question that reaches far beyond Lubna's story: How do we recognize the slow erosion of things we assume are permanent before we realize how much we've already lost?
This is a conversation about the price of speaking. But perhaps even more importantly, it's about the price of silence.
In This Episode01:36 | What History Keeps Trying to Teach Us
04:55 | Learning the Rules of Silence
07:54 | Inheriting Displacement
10:26 | Who Gets to Decide Where You Belong?
23:45 | When Silence Starts to Feel Like Complicity
30:22 | “Fear Is My Comfort Zone”
35:00 | Returning to Syria
42:10 | How Fragile Are the Things We Assume Are Permanent?
56:18 | What Voice Gives Us That Silence Cannot
About Dr. Lubna Omar
Dr. Lubna Omar is a Palestinian archaeologist and scholar who grew up in Syria. Her work focuses on archaeology, zooarchaeology, cultural heritage, and the relationship between people and the past.
Her own life has been deeply shaped by the histories she studies. Her father became a Palestinian refugee in 1948, and Lubna later experienced displacement herself as war transformed Syria and interrupted the life and career she had built there.
Today, she teaches in the United States, where her work and lived experience inform her exploration of cultural heritage, identity, displacement, conflict, and the consequences of losing both people and the histories they leave behind.
Continue the Conversation
The thinking continues beyond the mic. Explore essays, reflections, and extended conversations on Substack:
https://substack.com/@robbinjorgensen
Connect with Robbin Jorgensen:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbinjorgensen/
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