Please support my sister Seda with her recovery.

My name is Art. With my sister Seda and brother Artak, we grew up in soviet Armenia where the presence of community was palpable and at times overpowering. We always felt safe when our parents weren’t home because we were surrounded by our neighbors up and down the stairs and of course our relatives. Bread wasn’t always readily available at the stores. We had to wait until the next morning to go stand in line for hours to get some fresh bread. Meanwhile, we could knock on any of our neighbors' doors, or they on ours, and ask for some bread or eggs, salt or butter, until the store received some. Such was our life.

When we moved to the US, I was very skeptical at first of the idea of community here. I noticed that everyone was alone walking the streets. Our neighbors didn’t even say hi to each other. Everyone smiled passing us by, but deep down there was loneliness, aloneness, and isolation in their eyes. Our neighbors weren’t approachable; not even to ask them to move their car blocking ours. Imagine asking them for a piece of bread?

Later as I became more mature, educated, and experienced, I started seeing things differently. I realized I had been wrong. In fact, on many occasions, I would talk about how the idea of togetherness and community gave this new country the backbone to evolve and become the most powerful country in the world. Her power was in her unitedness.

American poet Walt Whitman said it much better than I could even dream of explaining.

He said,

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

Whitman’s symbolism is a spiritual one and there lies its power. This is exactly what I came to eventually understand: the fact that we can retain our identity and integrity as an individual and still expand our embrace without limits, to identify with all of humanity. This is genuinely as American as it gets!

I’ve never asked for anything in my life. Lord knows I have given and when I have, I have given my heart, and soul… I have given myself.

A time has come in my family’s history that I must reach my hand out, knock on your doors, and ask for that piece of bread.

My beautiful sister, Seda Sevada, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and she is currently undergoing treatment. With the help of some amazing friends, we were able to find the right doctors and specialists who could give us hope that she will be ok. The process began a few months ago. Seda underwent a painful, exhausting, and a strenuous experience physically and mentally. She could not go back to work because of the obstacle this had created. We thought this would take a month give or take, but it took longer than that, and now she has come to a place where she needs our help. Her medical bills and household expenses have piled up. Not having been able to work for months hasn’t helped. Now it looks like there are more complications that have risen, and more procedures are needed. She can’t go back to work for a while.

We thought long and hard about whether to reach out to our beautiful community here on social media and beyond, and we came to the conclusion that there is no shame in asking your friend for help. In our Christian heritage, it’s a noble tradition to create spiritual bonds between friends, relatives, and the community at large to help out someone. I am sure this kindness is present in every culture, every religion, and every community around the world.

If you can, please donate any amount you can towards the amount that will help her cover medical bills, and be able to maintain her family until she is cured and ready to pursue her beautiful and inspiring career as a brilliant Art Historian.

A little about Seda:

My beautiful sister Seda Sevada is a robust and creative mind. She has natural confidence and innate kindness. She is one of the most rare people I personally know. She has sacrificed most of her adult life and her health to raise sane children of her own and to give her precious irreversible time to the children of others. I am sure we can think of many other people in the world or people we’ve read about in books, but that does not concern me because I know only her, I see her, she is real, she is family, she is a friend, she is an embodiment of compassion, and she is here, she is now. I saw and witnessed as she day by day worked hard without a hint of a scowl or a frown on her face and in her seasoned and intelligent eyes.

In a short class time she is able to inspire tiny little children to bring out their innate creativity, simplicity and directness. Simplicity!, which is the amalgamation of complex intelligent universal patterns in perfect harmony with one another to be reborn as one simple perfect moment in a tiny little child. She teaches them acute observation of the natural world, human behavior, delicately nuanced sounds through music, subjective emotions through application of symbolic colors. She creates an environment where they can appreciate the small and seemingly unremarkable incidents of everyday life. One class time per week per class may be considered a short period of time to spend with kids but she is able to do all that in that short amount of time. She has the same impact with her Art presentations on social media and in her other lengthy writings.

My phenomenal sister, Seda, just graduated with Honors from a Master’s Degree Program in Humanities. Over these past two years, we’ve had many conversations about history, about humanity, about art, and the meaning of all within the context of our lives. She shared with me her virtuosic writings, her ideas, and thoughts, her imaginative stories, comments and observations, conclusions and deductions, and her verdicts and her own visions.

I stood and watched her receive her Honorary Master’s degree and I couldn’t be more proud of her. In a short year and a half she managed to take care of three kids, our mom, her household, write her lengthy research papers, and start a brand new chapter in her career - and on top of that worry about her brothers. Watching her pick up her degree made me think of and appreciate all the academicians, the art historians, the brilliant musicians, and passionate human beings who do research, exploration, and practice day in and day out, so that we can stand in front of a painting and find a common thread.

We all have our own intuitive thoughts about everything in life, but to start a conversation, we rely on those who actually spend an entire lifetime to bring us knowledge buried under the weight of historical debris.

Now I stand watching her again go through tremendous suffering but I will not act as a hypocrite and say that this is not a meaningful time in our lives. It very much is. I am honored to witness a superhero go through suffering in our lives, in my own family who I feel blessed to have held my daughter's hand and walk her through this path we call life: my beautiful sister Seda, our Joan of Arc who needs our help!

Thank you, Thank you, and Thank you.