Letter from the Founder
I thought I was named Farah because it means joy.
My parents chose that name in Lebanon in 1987, a year when joy was not exactly abundant. It took me most of my life to understand how much they were asking of me with that name.
I was born in Tyre, in South Lebanon, and grew up attached to language before I understood what it was doing to me. Language was the way my mother said things. The names we gave places that only we knew existed. Language mixed with memory turns a universal experience into a personal one.
I was the child who talked too much.
That is what a teacher told my mother at a parent-teacher conference in fourth grade.
I carried those words for years like something I needed to fix. I did not know yet that talking was never the problem.
It took me time to realize that I simply loved writing and telling stories.
Years later, I stood in a classroom teaching Biology, spending a decade taking complicated things and finding a way to make them simple, memorable, and human. All I knew back then was that I was good at this, and that I found it fun.
Then I became a mother.
Julia, my gem. And in March 2020, at the peak of everything falling apart with the pandemic, Angelina and Catalina arrived. Going back to teaching stopped making sense for our family. I stayed home and extended my leave. Somewhere inside that uncertain season, I started making cards.
It was an outlet. A breather. Nothing more.
It gave me something else to focus on.
On March 10, 2021, the journey of Maraseel began. Just like that.
It started with greeting cards, but it took me a while to see that I was never really making cards.
I was writing down the things we say to our loved ones.
- The expressions we grew up hearing.
- The cities we miss.
- The people we love.
- The faith we carry.
And most of all, I was saving the memories we were terrified of losing.
The cards started traveling into homes across America and beyond. The art prints carried villages, cities, and pieces of Lebanon onto walls thousands of miles from home. Customers began sending me the stories behind the names, the places, and the phrases they wanted kept.
And somewhere in there, people stopped calling me Farah.
They would see me and say, "Maraseel."
That was the moment I understood this had grown beyond the little business I started from my basement.
People started reading the stories I wrote about the brand. Sharing them. Responding to them. Telling me, again and again, that they felt seen in the way I told them.
And so much of my life finally made sense.
The girl who talked too much loved stories.
The Biology teacher who could make difficult things understandable was telling stories.
The woman building Maraseel was doing the same thing she had always done: finding the words for something people already felt but had no language for yet.
Today, Maraseel is a storytelling brand rooted in Arabic calligraphy, memory, belonging, and home. We make cards and art prints that help you express what matters, remember what matters, and hold a little closer to the people and places that made you.
Today I am the founder and CEO of Maraseel, where I also hold the creative direction. I still take care of my own dreams while nurturing the dreams of my three girls.
I teach branding and storytelling part time, and I run workshops for business owners who want to learn how to tell the story of what they have built.
Every other year, I run a small cohort called Legacy Brands. Five founders at a time, limited space. I have helped five women build their own brands so far. If you are building something and you want to learn how to tell its story, you can find it at byfarahbazzi.com/brand.
Maraseel began with me looking for a Ramadan card.
The mission has become much bigger than that.
I want our stories to have somewhere to live.
I want our children to recognize themselves in what we make.
I want the names of our villages, the words of our mothers, the prayers of our families, and the moments that shaped us to stay visible long after we are gone.
And I want every woman building something meaningful to know that her story deserves to be heard, too.
Maybe that is what joy meant all along.
A moment of time we long for, that we cherish, save, and pass along.
Maraseel is our ancestors' wildest dream.
Together, we are bringing it to life.
Love,
Farah Bazzi
Founder, Maraseel®
