Embracing Your Life Journey

When we are young do we really know that the decisions that we make for our own education despite hurdles will shape our future? Do we really fully acknowledge the blockages, suffering, challenges and life changes that occur to us due to medical pain and also cultural beliefs and hard core coservative mindsets of close family members who mean well but are actually stopping you from achieving your dream of being a teacher? Do we fully know that when we stand up for ourselves and not follow the crowd despite consequences such as homelessness in your 20s as a young female muslim girl that it will not only impact you but others who come your way in your future career?

I never knew fully where my inner childhood struggles would lead into adulthood. I never knew back then that the strong, determined child that I was would end up making a huge life for herself and rebranding herself from an ordeal that many others would struggle to comprehend let alone have to live through.

As a grown adult working and living abroad I continue helping those around me in my community with various charity work projects as well as working full time, writing, doing my podcast shows and various other achievements that help serve and support my community. Many will speak ill of me to this day because they stick to a false narrative and don't see me for what I have achieved by myself as I ventured on the journey of self love and finding myself again despite all the hurdles that stood in my way.

This very personal podcast might reach out to others facing similar dilemmas or fates as I.

Much love, peace and blessings on your journey back to self.

Host: Miriam Khan

Transcript

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Hi, and welcome back to your host, Mimcarn at Razor Vibes. This is another podcast with me. Today's one is quite an interesting one because perhaps many of the viewers out there won't fully know some of my background, some of my language differences. It might come as a bit of a shock, bit of a surprise, perhaps that I speak more than one language. And this is quite an interesting one to think about because it connects to a book I have been writing since 2021, and it's still a work in progress. So, for those of you that don't know, I am a self-published author and podcaster. This journey of mine began when I was in lockdown, and I was in a lockdown where we could not leave the area, we could not leave the facility, we could not leave the country. Later it got a bit easier, but there were severe cases of lockdown happening. I was teaching at the time. I'm working abroad in Kuwait and I'm from England. And just to give you a bit of recap about that situation, it was a time when I really sat back, looked at myself, and looked at all the things I kept wanting to do with my life, and not fully, fully, fully doing them, but because I had the time and I needed to watch my mental health and was watching and supervising, I guess, the mental health of many others, I was sitting with all my dreams, all my thoughts, all the things I kept wanting to do, kept putting off because of time, because of restrictions, because of limitations. Now, obviously, I wasn't physically at work, although I was at work at home. I had to really sit with myself and think about what it was I wanted to do. And next thing I gave birth, not literally, but uh in a spiritual way to my podcast show and my books, and it's been something I've been working on for a long time. Now, in regards to me personally and background to me, if you've you know just tuned in for the first time you're listening to the podcast show, Raise Your Vibes. My name is Miriam Khan. My actual birth name is Bibi. I'll come back to that soon. But my name is Miriam Khan. I am someone that is born and raised in the UK. I am someone that is basically um from a Pukhtun family, okay, and this means that you have a language that is very rarely spoken by many people. Um both my grandparents and my grandfathers moved to the UK. My great-grandfather had fought on the British side in World War II, I believe, on the airplanes. Uh he was a pilot. My grandfather then, well, both grandfathers then moved to the UK in the late 1940s to rebuild England after World War II. And obviously, much later on, I am born there. I am the first generation that is born there, born and bred there. And understandably, culturally, like some of your family will have very, very strong ties to their homeland, their motherland. They will also keep cultural roots tight because they don't want to lose, understandably, the main principles of their upbringing and their culture and their tradition and their homeland, you know. So obviously at home, different languages are spoken to recognize that. Cultural things are done to recognize that. And my grandfather's journey is something that I am writing about. Like I said, it's a book that now I'm seeing taking very different shapes and forms. But I digress, you know. This um unique understanding, this unique upbringing brought different, different dynamics to it, different concepts to it. Because in the UK at the time, I didn't realise, although I saw some of it in the 70s, late, well, I'd say early 80s, because I was born in the 70s, late 70s, I saw quite a lot of changes happening. I saw a lot of racism. And only as I'm an adult now and you endure racism and you endure hardships and you endure similar battles, explaining to people that you know, you don't speak this particular language, you don't speak this particular phrase, you don't come from this particular land. People will always stereotype, judge, typecast, try to put you. At times I might be guilty of this myself, innocently presuming that a person can speak one particular language and actually it's something completely different. Hands up, I'm guilty of that and I will apologize where I've needed to be. But in these predicaments, in these situations, I am remembering the hardships that my families have faced in making sure all of us had that upbringing, had that dynamics, had that connection to both England and our native home countries where our ethnic roots are from. My family roots come from a village called Tajik. Tajik back then was in the northwest frontier of what is now Pakistan and has been Pakistan, but understandably borders have changed. If you know your history and you know it well, you'll know that prior to my grandfather's era, my grandfather's 84, bless him. Prior to that era and that generation, you know, this was different land. It was owned by different people, it was called something else. The Bukhtuns are very, very strong tribe um families, they have very, very strong code of honor, they have um, you know, they believe in respect and justice, they believe in uh keeping things till it's done, it's quite a male-driven uh community, but there's also a lot of strong females in that community, also, you know, and we do have this big thing on pride, we do have this big understanding of respect, and we do have this big drive of tradition as well. And we are known for our, I guess, warrior style surname because we do like to have an argument, and you know, very, very rarely will someone win that argument, whether it's verbal or physical. It we are very headstrong, let's put it put it that way. That I think that's the best way to put it in a polite context. So imagine I am born and raised in that culture. Um, I do not know that I have two grandfathers growing up. I believe I have been told I only have one, and that is my maternal grandfather, that's my mum's dad, and that um individual had a huge impact on my life, continues to do so as an adult. And I have fond, fond, fond memories of my grandfather, always will, although I'm not part of his life and haven't been for a very long time, which I will come to in a in a little while, but they had a huge impact on me. I'm aware of the sacrifices my great-grandfathers and great-uncles made in moving from their little village, going across, you know, these ferries, these ships, to a land they didn't know, to a land that's cold, to a land that's, you know, not very welcoming at that time, okay? To rebuild England, to help it start from scratch, to help it get back on its feet, especially when it's coming from a place where it's been war-torn. And a lot of these first generation migrants that had moved across were understanding of this, I guess, preconception narrative that, oh, you know, when I go over to the UK, I'm gonna be like the gentlemen and the ladies here, chilling, imagining that the land is full of gold. I'll be sat there sipping my cups of tea. That wasn't the case when they landed there, you know. They had to work, work, work their backsides off. They endured a lot of hardship, they endured a lot of difficulties. You know, there was a lot of them living in one house just to survive, okay, because lots of houses were not rented to people that were brown, okay? And my grandfather's um, you know, sort of roots were all people that were from Jamaica, from Trinidad, from the Caribbean. Um, to this day, my grandfather, I'm aware, still has friends from that community. They were Sikhs, they were Hindus, they all worked together, they all lived in harmony together. They were brothers, they were brothers in arms, not in physical arms of violence, arms as in arms of resistance, arms of community, arms of love, arms of support, you know. And then I come along in the 1970s. My uncle and my um aunts are a couple of years older than me on my mum's side. As I said, at this point, I don't really know my dad's side of the family very, very well. I do know my uncle and my aunts on my dad's side, but I don't know the rest of the family that I meet later on when I'm about 16. Throughout my whole life, I personally had to fight for my rights and my freedom in especially education, especially being able to go to school to high school. My dad was firm on us going to school. I was the eldest, I was the one that would drop off everyone to school. When I say drop off, I mean we would walk a long way to school. I would drop off every sibling at the nursery school, at the junior school, at the middle school, and off I would go to the primary school myself. There was myself and Mill cousins, there was about 20 of us, roughly, um, sometimes, you know, on that school journey. Now social services would be called in for things like that. But back then that was acceptable. It was okay, you know. Imagine when I got to high school, well, wanting to go to high school, everything was a fight, was a fight, was a fight. Um, I didn't want to go to the same schools where my cousins were gonna go. I didn't want to go to the same schools and same catchment area where they were gonna go. I could already see back then in Sheffield where I was born, the high school that was called Ill Marshall School was already notoriously getting quite rough. And I'm like, no, don't want to be part of that, don't want to be with these people, don't want to have that same mindset, don't want to be part of their growth, I want to do my own thing. And we were moving property, we were moving house at that time nearer to the catchment area of where my new school was going to be. And back then in those days, I was moving to Firth Park school. So Firth Park was on two different premises, it was on two different uh sections of the school. One was on like Bellhouse Road, one was far, you know, far away on the other side. Um, I forget the name of the street. Sadly, that school's gone since then. But it was a very, very highly established school, mainly white demographic, and there was just a handful of us children that were from brown, ethnic minority uh backgrounds. And you know, even in primary school, uh we had a lovely team of staff that always cared for us, always looked out for us. And I guess at the time we didn't realise how much they were trying very hard to look after this ethnic minority group of kids. And I'm talking about a school called Whiteways Middle School, I believe it still exists. At that school, I was encouraged and supported to play the guitar, something my dad and I had in common. My dad uh is a huge Elvis Presley fan, my dad had a guitar. I would, you know, I wasn't supposed to play it, but I did because it was culturally seen as no, a girl doesn't do that, and I like to be of the opposite, so I would sneakily go and learn how to play chords, and through again, through lots and lots of arguments and fights, I became part of the school assembly and part of the school like choir, I guess, playing the guitar. And there's me in this hijab um walking from school, coming home with this big guitar strapped to me, and you know, in between cleaning, cooking, doing various chores in the house, trying to play the the guitar at at school and at home. And I ended up being part of the school choir and part of the school assembly, didn't realise, I guess, at the time how pivotal that point was. And with me being me, I was quite a sensible child, so I ended up being given the responsibility of running the tuck shop along with other people and you know dealing with cash and change again later on in my career as I worked in finance, that would come that that experience would come in handy, and we didn't know back then that that school was giving us the tools to become, you know, young adults. But one pivotal moment I remember exactly is um, and I guess now as a teacher I understand it fully, but this Indian lady who wore a sari coming into school one day and um basically taking all of us brown children, including one uh two students that were from like Caribbean and Trinidadian roots, to one side and basically saying, you know, oh, I'm here to support you in the class. Now, there was about five or six of us that were ethnic minority back then, you know. And um, I guess now this is called EAL, English as additional language, or you know, some people say English support language, whichever you want to refer to it as. And I remember one of my teachers saying to me, you know, oh go sit with Miss So-and-so, because she understands you and she understands your culture and she understands you. And I'm like, sir, she's she's a Sikh, I believe. Um, she doesn't understand, she might know some things about the Muslim faith, but doesn't represent me. And I said it in a respectful way because obviously my grandfather had raised me to say, you know, uh butter, which means sweetheart, like butter always respects, you know, uh similar Sikh, Hindu, we're all of the same, we are respectful of each other because my grandfather grew up with um people around him at that time that supported him, people from the church, people from the mosque, people from synagogues, we were all one community helping one each other out. So I was trying to explain, I didn't mean it in a disrespectful way. I mean like I'm a completely different culture to you, but I respect the fact you're here. I respect your presence. And at that time, I remember that being a very, very pivotal point, which is why I ended up going into education, because at that time there was no one in the classroom that represented me and that r represented children like myself coming from Asian roots, you know, and understanding our context, our culture, our uh faith, and understanding the language background as well as the mindset, but at the same time understanding our curriculum in regards to the British curriculum and connecting, you know. And we were all very strong in English, like we are now, obviously. But that at that time, that was something that they did. When I moved to high school, you know, um moved to across to the other high school, which was Firth Park, we ended up moving family home, and obviously that school was then closer, my whole siblings then changed. My cousins also ended up um, I guess, um copying me in some respects. Some of them copied me later on in life, coming to that school, and they realized that the other school I mentioned, Earl Marshall, went down really badly with behavior with academics and so on. So they realized, yeah, this is the better choice. And, you know, I spent that time in that school. Um first couple of years I was in in and out hospital with my hip. That's another podcast that you can listen to. But academically, you know, it pushed me, um, pushed me to excel. Of course, there were bullies, of course there were people there that I struggled with. When it came to IGCSC time, when I was back in school for the time that I was there, because I spent a lot of time in and out of hospital, in and out of hospital since age 10 onwards, um, close to age 11 with my hip, like I said. It came to options, and I remember having this big argument with my father. I'd already had an argument just trying to go to high school, because back then there was a girl that I used to go to school with from the junior school, who said to me, Oh yeah, um, you know, I'm going back home. My parents are sending me back to our country, to our land. And it turned out that actually that wasn't the case. And she was being kept from having an education. And back then, culturally, that was seen as acceptable, although social services slowly started to take some matters into their own hands and started to notice that you know there are people that are missing, attendance is missing. Hold on, there's an issue here because the boys are allowed, but the girls are not. They noticed a pattern. In fact, it happened with me because I had travelled at that time, I recall, with my dad in the summer and my uncle. We had gone to our village back home, travelled all over the northwest frontier of Pakistan, and you know, seen family routes, seen family villages, seen cities all over. And I think I must have been away for four months because I remember bumping into my teacher in Asda of all places in Darnell, because that's the only place there was at Asda back then. You had to drive very, very far to go shopping back in those days. And my teacher coming across me and going, You better be in school tomorrow. And I was trying, I was so embarrassed. I remember at the time saying, Look, talk to my dad, talk to my dad. We've just literally come back from the flight, and I had been bitten by mosquitoes left, right, centre, on that vacation. And obviously, I had I was quite sick, so I was waiting to recover. And obviously, I was back at school after that. When I was at the high school, that story of the friend being kept at home, obviously, similar culture to me, same language as me, resonated with me a lot. I had a lot of fear that what if my dad does the same? And thankfully, after lots of fighting, I was allowed to go. And my siblings are not aware of some of these fights because obviously they're younger than me. But I am grateful for fighting and standing my corner. When it came to IGCSEs, I remember having a huge ding-dong with my dad because when it came to choosing options, I wanted to choose history. He was like, No, you need to do geography. I wanted to do art. Thankfully, he let me because he could see that I had a very, very creative side, but the art side was purely if I did the geography. And it was like battles, you know. Um, some battles you had to lose, some battles you had to win, some battles you had to keep trying to find. And all the while you're still sticking to your home, you're still ticking, sticking to uh key information, you're still ticking to sticking to the key things that you're trying to hold on to, and you're holding on to your culture and you're holding on to yourself, but at the same time, you're wanting your freedom for yourself, which is important, you know. And I wanted to be educated, I wanted to embrace that part of my life, I wanted to be able to help myself go forward and excel. And this was something I felt pushed to do, even at that young age, you know. And having these battles with my dad meant that I was able to win some resolution in being able to go to high school. Like I said, I was in and out of hospital still, having various surgeries done, missed a lot more school, but managed to come back literally as we were doing IGCCs. And then I discover that I've got another grandfather that they told me had died, but actually was alive and living in Northampton. And I discover that we've got this secret, like half-uncles. They're my dad's uncle dad's brothers, but he doesn't see it that way. But you know, suddenly realizing, whoa, I do belong to this family. Oh my god, I look like my dad's side of the family. I'm very tall, like them. My uncles were six foot four, six foot two, six foot six. I'm like, okay, then that makes sense. Like, I I clearly am linked to this side of the family. And at that time, when I when I was like leaving school, like I literally had just got my GCSEs. I did the best that I could, but I know that I had missed a lot of schooling. I'd started off in the top sets of school, I ended up in the bottom sets because I'd missed so much school due to my health, and that was that. And yet again, another fight with my dad to try and get my education and go to college. And that was another battle in itself, you know. Um it seems like each battle was was continuing forward till I I got to the stage where I did my A levels and unfortunately I failed them the first time. At the time, I was very, very embarrassed by that. I had trauma. I didn't understand it. But I remember that I was not the only one at that time. You know, during two years orally, I was very, very confident in giving responses, giving answers, but I was not able to write it in the particular format. I'd miss the academic side of skills, you know, which I understood at that time. You needed to be able to converse and to write and to put structure together. And that's going to take time to learn and to pick up. So in this devastation, I had to explain to my dad, like, I cannot believe that I failed everything. Like I'm I was distraught. And um I ended up writing by hand a book, ironically, like a pamphlet with other people that I'd interviewed at the time. Imagine this is me, age, you know, 16, 17, uh, doing this. And other people had also like not done as well as they thought. And we were in the same circle. There was people at the college trying to help students in the counselling section that had not got the grades, maybe they'd not got a grade C, they got a grade D, trying to help them through clearing for university. And again, that was another battle I had to go through with my dad of like, I want to go to university. I want to go to university, I want to study, I want to, I want to make something of myself, and again, another battle. And you know, it's like banging heads because me and him are both stubborn and we're both both stubborn mindset, and we're both very, very alike in many, many ways, and some ways not alike, you know. And we were the bestest of friends growing up, like you know, you've got to understand that background. So then in adulthood, you're facing clashes and you're facing battles because you're trying to make choices that are for you, and your parents are trying to steer you and direct you in the thing and then the place where they think is the best. And in my circumstances, I'm trying to explain about different university courses I want to go to. I'm adamant that I want to go into teaching, and at the time, um, we do go to Bradford because there's like an interdisciplinary course that's facing all different types of subjects, and at the time, my cousins don't live far from that place, my aunts and uncles don't live far from that particular university. But dad is like, nope, you will go to university in our own city. That is the condition, that's it. And I'm explaining at the time that dad, look, to get into Sheffield University or even Sheffield Hallam, I need to have grade C's or grade B's or grade A's, like they were at the time, still are very, very uh, you know, amazing universities. They need the best of the best. And he didn't understand the whole university concept because he'd never been himself. He'd been up to college, he'd resat certain things at college. He's an engineer, my father, um, in the in the first, you know, part of his whole career, and he didn't quite understand that you've got to have particular high grades, it's not that easy to get there. And much, much later, you know, when I was obviously accepted and did various courses, I put down Huddersfield University and Sheffield because Huddersfield was where my grandparents lived. So, on the condition that I got in, that was the only precondition that okay, if you go there, then your grandparents are in that area, then at least there's people in the community watching you, observing you. Because back then and even now, you don't need a security camera, you didn't need AI, you didn't need people scanning you. The community would do it for you and report report back to your parents about oh, so-and-so went to this cosby shop, oh, so-and-so did this, oh, so-and-so did that. It was very much like the culture looking out for each other, but also spying on you at the same time. When I resat my whole university, sorry, college courses again. I start from scratch. Um, luckily, the following year I passed, I picked up the skills, I picked up the essay write skills, I picked up how to write it orally. I mean, we're talking very, very able, it's just written, no, it didn't match. So when I got to that stage and I'm at university, I actually passed my course, I passed the grades, I get in and I got accepted at Huddersfield University. Prior to the results coming out, I was fighting with my dad and saying, Do I have permission to apply for a job? And again, I was saying to him, like, you know, this is something that would help me as a student. Jobs at that time were a no-no. My aunt, my mum's sister, was given permission to go to university, was able to be trained as a dentist. She worked at Leeds Uni. She she'd had a lot more freedom because my grandfather was quite chilled and quite understanding, was fiercely for education. My dad, on the other hand, no, he wanted us all in a very, very tight grip. And I understand some of that, but obviously it caused quite a lot of mental health issues for me much, much later on. In doing this university course, um, when I was finally accepted, I found out that the job I applied to on the same day uh I had been accepted to work in the bank. And through that situation, I was able to go and work for Halifax Bank as the first Muslim girl to do that. I have done another podcast on that, you can tune in and listen to that one. But obviously, that job allowed me to save, it allowed me to be financially strong, it allowed me to find my voice more because I had to learn to be persuasive, I had to learn about sales, I had to learn about marketing, I had to learn about being a student and balancing everything, not easy. You know, textbooks for university, especially for English, were very, very expensive. Some of them were£100 each, which back then might not sound like a lot, but it's like saying a couple of hundred quid for one book that you'd use for six weeks. Back then you didn't have digital text. Back then you didn't have uh things you could go and find. You'd have two reference books in the library if that and there's you know a hundred and something students looking for the same book. Um, you could photocopy, but you could photocopy only a certain amount because of copyright laws which still exist. So there's many, many obstacles you've got in your way when you're trying to study. It's not like studying now. Move forward, you know, when I'm going through my university career, I am balancing a job, I'm balancing living with my grandparents towards the weekend, and also then travelling back when I have the shift in Sheffield. Imagine driving all the way from Sheffield, going back to Hoodersfield, coming back here, studying, doing the assignments or by hand, and later doing some typed up, but it was very, very difficult times. They're not easy times. And I don't see how challenging it was because I was disabled, like I said, at the time. I did have a disability badge, I could not walk very far, I could not sit very far. Um, we knew I had issues with my hip. We didn't know at times I could sit for a couple of minutes, then I would be straight stiff, I would be walking with you know um a wooden cane. It was very, very difficult when I look back on it now. Very difficult, and maybe that determination and stubbornness in those early age of being 20, something, you know, came from from that experience. And now when I look at it, I think, wow, like I really did persevere to become a teacher. And towards the latter part, I had surgery during the summer vacation. I think it was my second year or first year at uni. I had my summer um hip replacement, that was a shock to the system. It took a long time to recover from that. I learned to re-walk again. I am thankful to my dad and my family giving me support at that time, but very, very difficult learning how to walk again. And that was another battle, which is in another podcast about how you know these things come into our lives and the obstacles we face in just trying to get the health care we should be getting. Because at that time I was told I need to wait till I'm 60 to have that surgery. And again, like I said, you can tune into that podcast to hear more about that. Education-wise, when I recovered and went back to uni, you know, eventually I gave back the disability badge. I explained to my dad it wasn't ethically right for me to still claim disability when I'm able to walk. Yes, I'm restricted, I've got 45 degree movement, but I'm restricted, but that money can go to helping someone else in more dire need than me. And it didn't seem right that I was still claiming it. So I did do that, and I guess my moral comfort has come from my grandfather's and parents' influence of doing the right thing at the right time. When I was just before, I guess, hitting dissertation time, the final year, me and my dad were very, very heated arguments, very heated arguments, and the long short of it was that that April of that year I ended up being homeless. I never saw my dad again for 15 years, and unbeknown to him, I had been secretly applying for teacher training and getting the letters sent to my friend's house, and doing that because I wanted to have my freedom to do that. I knew he wouldn't approve. I knew that there was other plans for me, other things uh put in place, you know, that he didn't think I knew, but I did know. Um, I did not want to get married. I wanted to, um, at that stage anyway, I believed in marriage, don't get me wrong, but I wanted to have my freedom. I wanted to be able to be educated, I wanted to be able to be a teacher. And through those difficulties, you know, that I faced, I was able to do that eventually. So I persevered, and despite being homeless, despite having nothing, um I had one friend that had helped, and then some friends tried to help, but obviously I saw through them because people don't stick to their word, people don't stick to their bond. And if it wasn't for the kindness of someone at the university accommodation, because I was very naive at that time, thinking that, oh yeah, I can, you know, get any place I want. Didn't realise you have to have a guarantor, didn't realise you have to pay six months' rent in advance, didn't realise many things, many, many things, because you you kept from this bubble, you know, when you live with your family, you don't you don't understand some of these hardships that you're gonna face. And you know, I guess God was with me from the beginning, um, but through that difficult, difficult time, um, despite being in a lot of trauma, I was able to feed myself, clothe myself, put myself through university. I was the one paying all the tuition fees. My dad had been redundant at that time. He was quite embarrassed by that, but at the time, you know, it wasn't anything to be embarrassed by because the steel industry had gone to part. And um my dad had been given a redundancy check. I remember that being in my bank account and I had saved it. And even though, despite being homeless, I made sure that when I was in a position to do so, he got every penny back, and I sent that back through the bank I was working in. When I moved to Leeds um in secret, I didn't tell anybody where I was. Understandably, I was very, very scared. There was somebody that came looking for me, a bounty hunter. Later I understood who sent that person, but I was still in shock, in trauma, trying to refine myself, trying to rebuild myself, trying to heal from that. And one of the decisions that I made later, which my friend encouraged me to do so, was to change my family name, which I did. Changing my family name from Bibi Miriam Khan to then Miriam Grace Fairchild was a different adventure. I did that to protect myself, to save myself from not being hurt, from not being manipulated, abused, um, from not being downcast by the society, and also to live my life in a fair way so that I wasn't attacked verbally or many other ways I could be. And obviously, I re-found myself again, re-healed myself again, healed in many, many ways, got myself through very, very difficult times of working night shifts whilst, you know, working for the bank in the Leeds Call Centre, but at the same time working on myself, passing my degree, passing teacher training degree, all of these were very, very big challenges because I had to very, very quickly become an adult whilst in my late teens, you know, and other people were not in the same concepts, let alone understanding. They had family support, financial support. Obviously, I'd been doing that for myself anyway, because my dad was not in a position to do that due to losing his job. And I must admit, those initial years of teaching were hard, very hard. And I I gave back to my community. I gave back where I could, I gave back to the people I felt had supported me and helped me. And I also ended up doing various different roles from trauma to helping people, um, you know, as a looked after coordinator, we called it. We we I became a safeguarding officer because this role is where you are looking after the most vulnerable in the society. All of those things are based off things I'd experienced growing up, and I experienced many, many things. And I went through, like I said, you go through fixing stages when you can't heal yourself because you're trying to help the outer community when really you need to heal within. And I guess those 15 years of that career, climbing the ladder, climbing, you know, different paths, becoming a trade unionist, I guess following my grandfather's steps, becoming this version of the community that there needs to be outspoken people standing up for other people's rights, standing up for people that can't find a voice, standing up for injustice, standing up for where you see cracks in the community, where you see gaps in the community, where you see basically holes, you know, in our in our whole wider context. I worked in schools with deprivation, severe deprivation, severe issues of trauma, severe issues of many, many aspects of trauma, and this hardens your heart but softens your heart at the same time. And you know, you don't think it you when you're going to teach and you don't think that that's part of the teaching process, but it is, especially with when you're working in inner city high schools that are extremely challenging, working with a lot of deprivation with a lot of people. Some people could just walk away and wipe their hands off it. That's not me. I stuck to that school, stuck to those systems. And 15 years later, I am then doing my masters, not just one, doing two, doing one in special educational needs, which I get a scholarship for. Then I end up doing my masters in English literature, and at that time I don't really understand the full concept of what I'm doing because I've beginning given a senior role at a high school, uh well, a high school that's come out of um being privately run, privately being independent, and then next thing they've got somebody like me. I didn't say to the school my cultural roots, my cultural background. I let them presume, but I did face a lot of difficulties in that school for the first for the second year, because the first year they were very happy with what I was doing. I was in there cleaning it up, getting it ready for offstead, putting in everything I needed to do. And then clearly, when I was meant to be on a higher pay scale and people felt threatened, they did what they did to get rid of me. And next thing I know, I collapsed at work and was in a ball on the floor. My body just couldn't take the stress anymore from what three people at work were doing, which was bullying in the workplace. Um, I did take them to a tribunal, a personal one, and it got to the point where I ended up walking away from that career. And ironically, at that same time, I reconnected with my family. I changed my family name back by Deed Paul Eagle, and I realized there was nothing for me to be frightened of, nothing for me to be scared of anymore. I faced on um and tried to rebuild bridges with my dad. This was in 2014. Sadly, it did not go the way I thought it would go. And even in 2026, still broken and fractured family roots, family land. But I realized that without all that context, without that narrative, without those things happening to me, I would not be doing what I'm doing now. I was ready to leave teaching, I was ready to leave my career, I was ready to just say I'm done with it. And ironically, I moved in 2015 to Egypt, gave up with all my possessions, everything. Again, another podcast. But that journey took me back to me. That journey brought me back to myself. I ended up getting married, as many of you know, then divorced. Uh, again, other podcasts um explore that, but didn't realise that the person I married was basically resembling very much so triggered parts of me that I'd not healed from. And you end up marrying someone that resembles your father. Of course you do. And I ended up divorcing at the same time, lost a hell of a lot, came out of it very broken. It was a very narcissistic, abusive marriage. And I walked away with my freedom, lost the house, lost the car, was in debt for a long time. A long time. Had people try after me, yet again, similar to before. The same pattern, the same cycle. Only this time I walked away with my life in my own hands and my freedom. And I don't think we can truly understand that fully till we walk that path. Because there will be people very, very judgmental as I came across saying, Oh my god, look at you, you're getting divorced, you're this, you're that, and look what you're doing in the society. They don't understand the pain and torture that you've had to endure just to even get to that stage where you can say, I want my freedom. I want me to be me. And only recently upon a voice call to my own mother a while back, I didn't realise that still there is this stigma in our society that women of my age, I'm in my late 40s by the way, that I should not be working abroad, that I should not be travelling abroad, that I should not be basically putting a roof over my head and feeding myself because culturally it's not acceptable. And you know, this goes back to society and it goes back to me not conforming and doing not whatever I please. I am not hurting anyone. I am keeping a roof over my head, I am empowering others, enriching others, I will not stay silent. And I could sit back and be ashamed of all these things because that's how they have made me feel in that community. And they come from a place of this is all they've known. This is a place of mindset, of control, this is what they've always known. And I am always gonna be different. I will always speak out different, I will always speak my truth, I will always say, no, that doesn't roll with me. No, that's not how we should be. This is what we should do. And I'm coming from a place of love and harmony. I am someone that sat down and had, and I'm not ashamed to say it, many, many counselling sessions, despite being a counsellor myself. I have had therapy where I've needed it because something, anxiety has been at an almighty high, my stress levels all-time high, and I need to know what is triggering me, what is causing these issues. And being embarrassed by me working abroad as a Muslim female, independently, putting a roof overhead, keeping finances afloat, trying to pay off a mortgage, trying to work independently, helping people in my community where I can, whether that's here or other communities abroad, should be something people should be proud of. The fact that I have done my own podcast show for years speaking on topics that I know are culturally map perhaps seen as oh no, you shouldn't talk about that, it's taboo. No, this is not taboo. This is not taboo. I'm talking about being embracing all of us, ourselves, our true selves, and speaking about the difficult journeys that we do go through because there'll be somebody out there facing similar hardship, fit for similar difficulties, similar atrocities, similar pain. And all they want is their freedom, all they want is to be able to work, to be able to study, to allow themselves to teach, allow them to help others, allow them to help the community wherever they feel fit to do so. You know, and there's no harm in that. There's no pain in that. The pain is the journey, the pain is the keeping the silence, the pain is keeping the trauma trapped down. The truth is speaking your truth and getting it out there. I've not hurt anybody, I've not harmed anybody. I'm just living my life within the cultural bounds of where I see fit. And working out here in the Middle East or the East brought me back to myself, brought me back to my faith, brought me back to my culture stronger than I ever thought I would. Because in a lot of ways, I had turned some of my back to it. It didn't, it didn't appeal to me anymore, but actually it was always there. It's just I now I'm okay with that. I have made peace with that. And that's the beauty of it. That's the beauty of being away and working on yourself and working on trauma and working on healing because you know that your bloodline and your family line needs you to heal, need you to work on it. And if people do label you as, oh no, she's the black sheep of the family, don't have anything to do with her, so be it. Actually, I'm not. I'm the alchemist, I'm the goat, I'm the one that's the one that's gonna leave the legacy for other people to follow. And that's what they are afraid of. When it hurts them saying that to me, actually, I'm meant to be the one that stands up, I'm meant to be the one that voices it, I'm meant to be the one that makes those changes. And from that, I've birthed my books, from that, I've birthed my podcasts, from that I've birth birthed different workshops and helping people really vulnerable in our community and helping them find a voice. So, what's wrong with that? And from those situations, I didn't know that I would end up on Kuwait Television, Hala Kuwait. Obviously, I've done film um, you know, interviews for the union when I was with NESUWT. You can find that on YouTube. And that was just before I left the UK. But I didn't know where my journey would go. I didn't know that I would end up writing a collaborative book with minus speakers, with 28 other female authors in the Middle East, all voicing things that happened to them. I didn't know that I would end up working, doing different various workshops, speaking workshops. I'm proud of myself, and I guess sometimes I forget the ripple effect I've had because I don't gloat about it. I keep myself humble. I understand I'm here to do work for others, I'm here to help others, support others, and keep myself at a humble pace in a humble way. And it's not sometimes all about the fame. Yes, we'd like some of these things to pay the bills, we've got rent to pay, we've got bills to pay, of course. And wherever you can spread that message, you can. And it's funny because not funny haha, just recently I'm reconnecting with people in different countries asking me now for support and help to help them with their schools, for example, or help them with their communities. Obviously, with the different podcasts I had done, or even my books, I had people reach out to me and say, Thank you so much, because you wrote things I've been too scared of dealing and healing with. Um, I had people that I had contacted through different news outcasts and that had helped before even doing the same. So I know that I'm supporting and helping, and you know, instead of fixing, doing the fixing stages which I used to do, I'm now helping others with support and healing, and that's beautiful, and that's what we should be about. There's a bigger reason as to why we're here, there's a bigger journey as to why we're here, and I am grateful for all the different soul connections, all the different harmonious connections I've made, as and when it's meant to be the right time. And I'm grateful for that journey of coming back to myself, of embracing myself, of embracing the different parts of me. And the reason I've done this in English, although I can speak various other languages, is because I think it does need to resonate in the different tongues, and perhaps at another stage I will translate this into the different languages of either push the urdu, I'm rusti on my German, my Arabic is shwai schwai, but wherever I can speak, I will get that across because there are times when all of these aspects of us should resonate with each other. And if this podcast resonates with you, and you're at that stage of your life where also you're facing similar hardships and obstacles, just know you're meant to keep going, you're meant to keep going forward. No matter the haters, no matter the naysayers, no matter the backlash, and at times, like I've said, it's very, very painful when your own bloodline doesn't support you, doesn't encourage you, doesn't nurture you, but other people do, and that is the whole beauty of Soul Tribe. That's the whole beauty of extended family, and you know that you're on your right path. Now I know this has been a very, very long podcast, but a very, very important one. And I hope that it helps and it resonates, and you know, if it feels like you can connect to it, it feels like you can uh relate to it, reach out to me. Let me know your journey. In the meantime, thank you for listening. Obviously, there'll be more coming about my journey, but bless you wherever you are in your stage of life, and bless you on your situation and circumstances, and sending you lots of love and blessings. This has been your host, Marim Khan. Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been Raise Your Vibes.