After Illness Derailed Her Activism, Zainab Salbi Is Doing More Than Ever

Two years ago, Iraqi American humanitarian, author, and journalist Zainab Salbi collapsed en route to deliver a talk to young philanthropists. She was rushed into emergency surgery and spent the next few days in the ICU with a mystery illness. When she awoke from anesthesia, she was having trouble breathing and believed she would die. In her hospital bed she was surprised to discover that she was not asking herself whether she had accomplished enough in her life, but whether she “lived in kindness” to herself and others. Eventually her illness was diagnosed as either an “unknown viral infection” or Lyme disease, she says, “depending on the doctor.” Over the next 18 months of recovery, with both her physical and cognitive abilities impaired, Salbi spent several hours every day meditating, “because I couldn’t think, I couldn’t write,” she says. This period of intensive reflection brought forth an existential crisis. “If I can’t [be] the activist or the writer or the journalist or whatever, then who am I?” she wondered.

In 1993, at the age of 23, Salbi had founded the nonprofit Women for Women International, where she spent almost two decades fighting for women’s rights and setting up food sufficiency centers in war zones, “managing what grew to 700 staff members,” and raising awareness about the plight of women in war. After stepping down as the organization’s CEO in 2011 due to burnout, she produced documentary shows, including #MeToo, Now What? on PBS, The Zainab Salbi Project on HuffPost, and Through Her Eyes at Yahoo News. “I would crash every three or four months because I would work myself to death,” she says. Each time she would recover at a wellness retreat, like the Omega Institute. Once she bounced back, she’d dive headfirst into her work again. “I wasn’t anchored in myself. I would just charge,” she says, raising a clenched fist like Joan of Arc, “but then would be left depleted.”

But a year ago, and 12 months into her recovery, she moved to a cabin in Dutchess County, New York, adopted a cat, started tending to a vegetable garden, and switched to a plant-based diet. “To be very honest, I thought I had retired [from humanitarian work],” she says. But after springing into action last month to help evacuate Afghan women leaders whose lives were threatened, she believes her profound lifestyle change has allowed her to become more effective as an activist.

Almost everything has changed in her new life. “I am vigilant about meditation and yoga. I don’t call it meditation; I call it an ‘appointment with my heart,’” she says. “With yoga, I call it an appointment with my body. It’s so easy to skip them, but if I call them appointments, I have to [show up].”

While experiencing chronic pain during her recovery, an alternative doctor instructed Salbi to switch to a plant-based diet. Within a week, she says, her pain disappeared and she became “so grateful to earth.” During the summer months Salbi grows lettuce, peppers, and a variety of herbs in her upstate garden. The weekend before we spoke via Zoom, her family visited from Washington, D.C., and she made plant-based versions of her favorite Middle Eastern recipes. “I use a lot of old recipes from my mom, but I take the meat away,” she says. One dish, a stew called sabzi, requires lots of greens, like spinach, parsley, and cilantro. “Any greens, you chop, chop, chop, chop, chop,” she says, pantomiming the motion. She then adds onions, tomatoes, and “an old, dried lemon” to vegetable broth, which becomes an “absolutely delicious” green stew.