Hala Taha

I've got to be really intentional and create that that content.

Yeah.

There's a couple like pivotal moments in my life that I think I had to overcome.

Number one, I'm Palestinian and grew up in my teenage years.

You know, when I was 16 years old is when 9-11 happened.

right?

And so that was really tough.

And I remember just, you know, our family was treated so much differently in that moment.

We grew up in a very white town.

My dad was a surgeon and like very successful.

And we were treated like

All the Italian kids, all the Portuguese kids, like we were treated like, you know, an immigrant family.

But everybody was like I was popular.

Everybody was like I had friends that would sleep over and everything was normal.

Like my brother was captain of the football team and we were loved, you know.

And then suddenly it's like in one day it's like I was an outsider.

And people would scream at me in the hallways and I wasn't invited to the parties and I wasn't getting on the cheerleading team and I wasn't in the plays anymore and I wasn't allowed in the talent show.

And it was like one thing after the other.

And like, I really feel like those three years in high school were...

Not that they were, like, horrible, but it's, like, I wasn't living—like, I wasn't Hala anymore, you know?