From Iran to Rebuilding Life: Courage, Belonging, and Financial Freedom

The Belonging Podcast by Elev8 Villages with Behi Shafiei | 015

This episode of the Belonging Podcast is one of the most powerful and emotional conversations we’ve had.

Behi Shafiei shares her incredible journey. Growing up in Iran, losing her sister in a fight for justice, and rebuilding her life in a new country. From surviving oppression to creating financial freedom, her story is a testament to courage, belonging and purpose.

In this episode, we talk about:
• What it’s really like growing up as a woman in Iran
• The emotional impact of losing a loved one fighting for justice
• Immigration, identity, and finding belonging
• Why financial literacy is the key to freedom
• How to stop trading time for money
• Building wealth as a woman and immigrant

This is more than a story, it’s a wake-up call!

If you’ve ever felt lost, stuck, or unsure about your future, this conversation will inspire you to take control of your life and build your own path.

Follow Behi’s journey:
Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/behi-shafiei/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/behishafiei/

Read more about Behi in her new Bestselling Book:
https://a.co/d/0g39A8HM

Live in Canada? Work with Behi and learn how to grow your wealth:
https://wealthbridgeto.ca/

Learn More About Elev8 Villages:
Website: https://www.elev8villages.org/
Download your FREE Belonging Kit: https://www.elev8villages.org/FREEkit

This podcast exists because we believe belonging is not a luxury. It’s a human need. Every story shared here helps us imagine a world where no one has to walk alone. 

If this conversation resonated with you, please follow, rate, or share the show with someone who might need it today. To learn more about the movement we’re building (or to get involved) visit Elev8Villages.org.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of The Belonging Podcast by Elev8 Villages - where belonging becomes a place we build together. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Belonging Podcast. I'm your host, Melissa Kay. Today's guest grew up in Iran, lost her sister in a fight for justice. She got out of Iran and is now helping women and immigrants reclaim their life by building financial stability and power. This is such a timely conversation, and I'm so glad you're with us. Welcome, Behi Shefai.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Thank you so much, Melissa. It's just such an honor to share this moment with you and with your listeners who are going to give us their time, which is, I would say, the most precious thing you ever got. So thank you. It's an honor to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Yeah. While your work is very much in the financial industry, I appreciate you allowing us to do some other exploration before we get there. I would love to start with a story that really shaped everything. Can you please tell us about your sister and the fight for justice that ultimately cost her her life?

SPEAKER_02 1:09

I never know, I never know what words to use to describe her our loss. I'll say it was a loss for many Iranians and my family. She was a phenomenal figure, uh theater director, uh, a university prof, uh woman's right activist, spoke three languages, um, had all kinds of invitation from different universities to complete her PhD. Um, unfortunately, um she lost her life fighting for women's right in Iran so suddenly that um she chose to stay back um even when we decided to all escape to be safe, as you all know why. Similar to uh other Iranian folks who leave the country, uh she chose to stay back, and unfortunately, uh we were just waiting basically to see how far she'll make it because um she was loud and she was courageous. Uh we witnessed her activities and the changes she made throughout the country, throughout the province that I come from. But it was scary to watch the news every time um something that was going on which was not aligned with the uh with the regime uh agenda. And unfortunately uh the consequence of that was she lost her life and uh she left us with two beautiful children that are now safely with us in Canada. So I'm very grateful for that.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

So let me get this timeline right. So you and your parents left Iran and she stayed there. She stayed back?

SPEAKER_02 3:04

Yes, about 20 years ago, my brother sponsored us and she decided to stay back.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Okay, okay. So you weren't with her during that time that that she ended up giving her life for justice?

SPEAKER_02 3:19

No, we would visit uh Iran, but unfortunately we were not with her.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

How was it immigrating from Iran as a young woman, leaving part of your family behind and coming, catch us up on some of the lived experience of being in Iran? What made you leave and you know decide to call a new country home?

SPEAKER_02 3:44

I mean, leaving leaving your motherland is not an easy decision. Immigration is a privilege, I would say, as as complicated, as difficult it is to wrap up your life and put it in a suitcase and leave the country you call home. It's also a privilege. We had the opportunity to uh seek safety. Like many other, I would say, anywhere else in the world, immigration is not really a choice in in, I would say, where I come from. As a as a girl, as a woman who wanted to speak up and have a place in the world. Uh, unfortunately, that is not a possibility under the current regime in Iran. Um, I was personally um a couple of times I got myself into trouble for not dressing properly or biking or wanting to play sport on the street and just basically not having the same rights as the boys, which I write about in my book. But immigration is a very complicated process. Um, it wasn't until recently, even though I've been living here in Canada for a long time now, it's coming to its 20th year. It wasn't until recently that I felt the gratitude for what Canada is providing me. We don't want to get into politics and the state of our economy, uh, but mostly like just being able to leave the door, knowing you're coming back, knowing that I'll go out and I'll be safe, knowing that I have the same rights as everybody else, knowing that I have opportunities available to me. I have a voice that I can share. Um and unfortunately, that's not available to um all the girls in Iran or women in Iran who do not follow the IRCG agenda, meaning they don't support the dictatorship and the uh current regime in Iran. That is not available to them. Now, why do I say immigration is a privilege is not everybody have the opportunity to leave. Um, I had that opportunity to leave and I'm grateful for it, but not many do. And unfortunately, as we can see in the news recently, many have lost their lives simply fighting for justice and saying we don't want to be dictated how to live our life, uh, from economical pressure to just basic human rights.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

It's all being unfortunately taken away from them.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

So I feel like for our listeners with what's going on in the world right now, I want to take a little bit of a detour and just let's talk a little bit, let's like kind of address the elephant in the room. Um, I don't have any lived experience um in the Middle East. I don't know of anyone personally, and I'm sure you do. I'm sure it's very different for me for you. So can you just give us a little perspective of what people are feeling right now in Iran? Um, people that would have been your neighbors, your family, people that now are sitting there, like what are they going through on the human level?

SPEAKER_02 7:00

You know, uh, it is so easy for for many of us to watch the news and have an opinion and to say what we like to say and to be able to express that. Even though, even though I lived under the Korean regime and I have left about 20 years now, I still don't see myself in a position to really express how someone feels currently under that regime. One thing I know for sure is that it has to be bad enough that the people of Iran are celebrating the war. That's just crazy. I don't, I mean, I haven't lived long enough to know the other side of the history, but one thing I can see and I know, and the reason I know it is because my own niece and nephew, they have recently left Iran. They still have friends there, ages from 17 to 20, and they're all celebrating the end of this regime. They're all excited for what's coming. Um, I can speak to my own lived experiences when I was in Iran. Um Iran uh prior to IRCG, you could have many different faiths and express your religion or your faith freely. Um we are Zerostian, which is a very old, it's like the older version of Buddhism, but for the Middle East. We have three ruling um um, I would say, guiding principle, which is think good, say good, do good. Like it's very simple, right? And then the rest of the principles follow these three guiding principles, not to get too complicated, but after the regime change, post-revolution, you could not practice anything other than Islam. Um, therefore, when we go, when we went to school, including myself, I was forced to wear uh hijab and to pray um uh in the Islamic way. We were forced to speak Arabic, um, a language that is not, you know, a dominant language in our country. We were forced to do many things that didn't align with our fate and beliefs. And I had a lot of Jewish friends in school who who knew they needed to get out because they wouldn't get access to education or occupation. They could only go through the school uh up until the end year of their high school. And then beyond that, there was no nothing for them there. They could not seek higher education or get employed anywhere else because they were not Muslim. In addition to that, the other restrictions we had was we could not, you know, be seen with boys or even if it's like you're a family member, um, women could not wear nail polishes like at different different eras were different restrictions, I would say. Um we left prior to 2007, so uh things were a bit more complicated. But as a as a as a girl growing up, I personally had to pretend I'm a boy. So I get to play soccer because as a girl, I wasn't able to bike, I wasn't able to play any sport. In my book, I write about cutting my hair and pretending I'm a boy. So until until I had other features of me popping up that I could no longer hide, but until then I pretended to be a boy so I could actually participate in the society per se.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Right. Wow. So it sounds like growing up in post-revolution Iran under the IRCG regime, like I can't even imagine growing up as a woman in that under that type of um regime, would it you learn about power and systems and freedom? And then how did that shape your values? Was it your values that made you really need to leave? How did all that play out?

SPEAKER_02 11:15

I mean, we could take a whole day, talk about systems and power dynamics. Um unfortunately, what I experienced there, I was powerless and helpless and hopeless as a girl growing up in that system. Um, we don't know if we have a future. The the recipe is you go to school if you come from a family with who's who are educated to get you into a higher level of education. So you'll seek post-secondary. And then after that, you're you're gonna have to start looking for a husband when you're married and then you'll have kids. Very traditional mindsets, way of living. Um that was part of the reason we we needed to get out, is because which I simply I didn't have a place in in that society, in that culture. Same with many other women, not just myself. I would say it's a man-made world. It is designed to give you power if you're a man and take your power away if you're a woman. Women aren't second-class citizens and they don't have a right. Like if you get into just the Islamic law of marriage, property, asset allocation, and all that stuff. Two women count as one man. Let's say if you need to go to a court and you need a witness, a man, one man is enough to be a witness, but if you take a woman, you need two women. That's just that's just the law. In the constitution, women don't even have much right to exercise. I'll give you a very um uh interesting example about my own sister. When she went through her separation, the custody would automatically go to her husband, even though the husband was not qualified to look after the kids. And then from the husband, it would go to his brother. And then if the brother is not qualified, then it would go to his father. So it would never come to the mother in the first place. It will go from the father to the father's brother, which is the kid's uncle, then to the kid's grandfather. So women actually have to fight for keeping their own children. My my sister's court battle was one of the lentiest ones. Um, and she had a very strong case to have the full custody of her own children, but it took her two years to prove it. Under the constitution, there's not much of a right or power for women to exercise to begin with. And unfortunately, there is not much of a system. And coming here, then of course, you experience different kinds of power dynamic, which is not similar to what I have experienced in Iran, completely different. Um, I I worked in government for many years, my my my master's in in public policy and law, and I'm all about good governance, but also I saw different different power dynamics here, but nothing, nothing similar to what you would experience in a in a place like Iran. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Wow. For all of the shortcomings that I feel living in the Western world, like so much we can be grateful for living here. Um so you tell you tell your story in a book that came out literally the same weekend that the war started, or whatever we're calling it nowadays. Um, so the book for my listeners, it's called The Making of Her Story or Her Story. It's the collective voice of influential, widespread, and legendary women. There it is.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

That's just the cover, and this is the beautiful, beautiful women who collaborated to put this piece together. So uh it was a beautiful journey.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

I love it. So you were able to tell your story of growing up any rowing. Tell us what it was like telling your story, putting it down on paper, knowing people you didn't even know were gonna read it. What what did you go through in that journey?

SPEAKER_02 15:15

A lot of Brene Brown, but uh, you know, having to be vulnerable to to truly speak your heart, um, write them in words that can resonate with the readers on its own is a whole other becoming. Uh, I'm definitely not the same person prior to publishing this book. Um, a lot of growth had to happen for me to be able to sit down and write my story. The real work has started when I lost my sister. At the time, I was no longer happy as a Treasury Board analyst in the provincial government here in uh province of Ontario in Canada. I know you have listeners all over, so I just wanted to be specific.

unknown 16:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:13

Um, I was no longer happy and I decided to just one day walk away from all of it, and I did. And that was in March 2019. And as I'm trying to figure out the rest of my life, because the last eight years of my public service work didn't get me to a place where I would feel happy or fulfilled, or all the things, satisfactions we're looking for. And then as I was trying to figure that out, I get a phone call from my aunt that tells me about my sister losing her. Um, and that just changed everything. It wasn't just losing her, it was also figuring out who's gonna look after her kids because she had full custody of her children at the time, and they were 10 and 11. All these questions are happening in my head at the same time. No job, not sure what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life, and then all of a sudden, two children. I think the real work started then. The timing of it all was to just trust the process and to just work hard and make make things happen. When we went back, I had to make a promise to her children at the time, which was that I'm gonna take care of you. I don't know how long this is gonna take, but I'm gonna take care of you. And in the meantime, my mom had to take care of the kids until we can figure out the process of bringing them to safety here in Canada. Right. And I guess in my own head, I was writing all these stories, but they weren't like necessarily published, but it was just like, oh my God, what is happening to me or to my life? Um, this whole journey of becoming a version of myself that I've never ever anticipated. It is a lot of growth, I'll tell you that. And to be able to trust the process and to show up no matter what, you'll experience everything that you didn't know you're capable of becoming. Like I literally, if you were to ask me seven years ago, do you see this version of yourself today? I wouldn't be able to answer you. I would say, no, I'm too broken. I don't have a future. I just love my safe and secure government job. I don't know what I want to do with my life. On top of that, I have two kids to raise. So I have no idea. I could have gone so many directions. But I would say purpose is what kept me going. Looking into her kids' uh eyes, they were too little to even know how to process the loss of their mom. Now we talk about it, that they're a bit older. But at the time, they were just so confused and so can like lost. And so I had to be the strong person to give them hope that there is a future, even though you're not gonna, you I don't know how much longer you're gonna live here. Your mom is never gonna come home, but I know there'll be a future and it will be bright. So let's just build it together. So, and having to write all of that seven years later was a quite uh interesting process. I am I'm grateful that I had the ability to do it because it it is tough work.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Behe, your story so far, I just see this line, this golden thread of courage growing up in a country where being a woman wasn't equal or safe. Having the courage to chop off your hair and let people think you're a boy so you could do some of the things you wanted. And then as a teenager, immigrating to an entirely different, not just a different cult country, but a different culture. And then the courage of leaving a job that was secure, but it wasn't feeding your soul, and then the courage of going through such a tragic loss as your sister, and then taking the responsibility of raising your children. It's such a story of courage. And I want to take a moment to acknowledge that. And I can only imagine things that you're gonna do with your life from here on out. Like your whole foundation is so amazing and strong, and the muscles that you've built to be able to create different endings that than somebody else might have written for you. I just think it's amazing and beautiful. And I'm super honored to have this conversation with you. So I just needed to acknowledge that before we moved on. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

Yeah, I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Yeah, so I'm curious, all of that journey, finding justice and finding a place to live where you could truly be free and be yourself. How did that journey take you into finance? How did that all unfold?

SPEAKER_02 21:12

You know, I used to, one of my favorite things to do is honestly, is one of the main reasons that I'm successful is understanding and reading what other successful people have done. I marinated myself in that, in that information, especially during the time that I left my government job. I listened to all Tony Robbins like books, Wayne Dyer, everybody. I was just looking, I was basically looking for an answer in their way of life, right? Okay. So that I can figure out my way of life. Um so it's interesting that success, they say success leaves clues. Exactly. And I was just like, there gotta be because I didn't know how to figure this out on my own. It was just Too complex, too complicated, and I'm too naive because all I knew was my public policy work and it didn't get me to where I wanted to get to. So I needed to marinade myself in information and try to piece things together so that I can figure out what is it I want to do with my life. When I left my government job, I didn't have a job, and now I have two kids and I have no income. All I have is a bunch of savings from my time in government. I was good with real estate. I bought my first piece of real estate when I was 22. So I was like, can I do this for the rest of my life? I said, I'll just give this a shot. Let's see how it goes. And then the market was booming. Like when I say booming, we have vac uh less than 1% vacancy rate in the city of Toronto. Um, things are getting multiple offers. It was insane. I'm like, I should be able to make some money learning real estate. And I did, and it was shocking. I went from a 70-70,000 government paycheck to 150,000 in my first year and an over 200,000 my second year. And then I was the top 1% national. It was insane. Half of it was my hard work, half of it was the market we were in. If you know anything about real estate in Toronto, it was a crazy times, crazy times. And I was not bored, but I found the world to be a bit small for me. And I wanted it a wanted a bigger world, meaning I was just only dealing with one asset class, which was real estate. But then there is so many other asset classes, like investments, stocks, bonds. So I got myself into real estate asset management firm at a very bad timing. What do I mean by that? It's like literally interest rates are high. This is like land development projects I'm working on. Things are getting canceled. I just bad decision at the time, but also a good decision to lead me to where I am today. I was very lost in 2023. So I had to really sit down with myself and be quiet and figure out what's next for me. I knew real estate alone is not the answer. And first of all, I started doing this to figure out what I want to do, but then I started making money and I just like lost track of time. So what was it I wanted to do? So I had to sit down with that question. And I realized how much of what I wanted to do, and in terms of my financial structure, my financial foundations were missing from people like me. What do I mean by people like me? I'm a visible minority first-generation immigrant, woman, business owner. I had all these things that kind of in that top 1% world of business, when we say top businesses, I was like this little, I remember telling my broker at the time that I'm like, I'm like a fish in an ocean full of sharks. And I don't know what to do. Like I have all this money, I made all this money, I didn't know how to manage it, I didn't know how to build wealth from it, I didn't understand corporate structures. It was a whole other language I needed to learn that I didn't. And I, unless I would focus on financial literacy, I would not be able to be a successful business owner. I would make money, but I would burn it. I would be lifestyle rich, but networked poor. Right. So, and then I started digging, started digging, started to realize that, oh my God, I'm not alone. There's so many other women, so many other first generation immigrants, so many other business owners were completely lost. They're like, I don't even know what you're talking about. I just talked to my accountant once a year. So then I had to sit down with myself and figure out well, there's no system for people like us, and I'm gonna have to create that system. And I had to come up with a name. Okay, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna call it? So I called it wealth bridge consulting. It was like, this is where the real world is, this is where you are, we're the bridge. I'm gonna take you there. And then I needed to create the process of making that happen. And that was to bring in professionals for different from different paths of life, such as lawyers, accountants, financial planners, investment, investment advisors, to speak with this business owner and individual to support them to get to that, what I call the ultimate possibility for them. It was just all a vision, but that I had to actually now go take the actions to make it happen.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Why is financial literacy so important and what can it do for immigrants and for women that maybe we're missing the vote on because we're in those groups?

SPEAKER_02 26:40

You cannot participate in a whole new society with a whole new sets of rules, with a whole new way of being, without understanding the fundamentals of that system, society, country. Canadians pay taxes to participate in government services, but many don't understand it. The majority don't necessarily know the rules of the game. The financial services and the financial systems of Canada and many other countries were not designed with people like us in mind. Okay. Right? And unless you understand the rules of the game, you cannot participate in it. You already participate because you're paying the taxes, you're paying the fees, you're paying the interest, you're in the game, but you don't know how to play it. So you end up losing all the time. And that happened to me as a business owner. I lost so much money in my business, not understanding what is the right corporate structure that I need to have. I was operating as a solo business owner without a corporation, and I lost$100,000 in taxes. And then after I lost that, I realized, oh my God, my earnings in my corporation could have been reduced to 12.2% and instead of 50%. We're talking about 40% saving that I didn't know was available to me. And then the next thing happens, which is okay, now I have all this money in this corporation. Now I'm gonna pull it. I treated it like a saving account. Every time I pull money out, I create, I trigger a tax event. I didn't know that. The second year I realized that. So why is it so important? Because you cannot participate in a society, in a system, in a way of being without understanding what the basic rules are. I had to go educate myself and learn and understand so I could save my business, I can save, you know, feed my family, and instead of just giving dollars away to the tax men. But at the same time, that information or this way of living wouldn't be wouldn't be coming to me if I wouldn't to make myself financially literate. It's impossible.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

So would you say that like financial literacy is learning the rules of the game? Pretty much. Okay. What else besides The money game?

SPEAKER_02 29:12

The money game.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

The money game. Okay, so it in addition to learning the rules of the money game, what would be the second thing that you think people misunderstand most about money? Is there anything else besides just learning the rules? Yes. And it's a big one.

SPEAKER_02 29:28

Okay. We're so trained intentionally, by design, to trade our time for money. That's industrial era. We still trade time for money. Money is a tool for liberation. My goal with teaching folks how to up their money game or you know, plan their financial life is to experience financial liberation. Because it's only then that they can tap into their creative fundamentals to figure out what's their purpose in this life. Many people are still lost trading time for money and they're not happy or fulfilled or satisfied. They're struggling, right? They're not happy. They don't make enough. There's not enough time in the day for you to trade for money. And then the money that you trade your time for is not enough to feed your desires and needs and wants in the life. You gotta have to understand how to flip the coin and make money work for you and not be a slave to money because that's what it is right now. And you have to change your relationship with it. Instead of chasing it, you wanna chase you, and you want to be understanding how I get this money to work for me. Every dollar needs to have a role, every dollar needs to have a responsibility. Every single dollar you earn. Now, you would you may ask me, how is that possible? How does that work? We could tap into the things we need money for. We need money for retirement. In your 60s, you should have multiple streams of passive income because of the decisions you made in your 30s. Right? So right now, I know the stats in Canada, I don't know it elsewhere in the world. We're expecting Canadians to live 30 years longer after their retirement. That means you need to have 30 more years of an income to support your well-being and your lifestyle. And as we grow older, our living expenses will be higher. Therefore, if you don't plan it in your 20s and your 30s, you're not gonna have enough to live by. And what ends up happening is these folks work longer, do different couple of different jobs, because one job is not going to be enough. We need to, we need to break that pattern by educating folks around what is the role of money in your life, and how do you stop trading your time for money and give every dollar you earn a role, an intention. That's just like one small example, but there's many.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

That's a great example. I want to take just a little side trail here, and then we're gonna come back to talk to you a little bit more about financial literacy. Um, thinking about your life and what we know about you so far, you've lived between different cultures and systems, you've worked in the social spec in the social area, you've seen what your sister's done there, you've uh been a mother to uh, you know, your your sister's children, you've now worked in the financial industry, you've you've had such a plethora of experiences at this point in your life. But thinking about those, where do you where have you felt belonging the most? And what did that feel like?

SPEAKER_02 33:08

Belonging is a is a state of mind to me, and I had to create it for myself. I didn't feel like I belong for a long time because I I was in circles that all my life was trying to fit in mostly. Um this example applies to my life in government, also my life in asset management or the top one percent world. Um I always wanted to fit in. And because of it, I got myself the education I needed to fit in, uh, the work experiences I needed to fit in, and I always had to work 10 times harder than the people who had the ticket to those tables to get there. So belonging didn't come to me easily. It came to me when I started to rearrange my life and realizing my worth and the value I bring to the table. And when I was able to do that, I was able to create my own table and then now select who I want to invite to that table. It's a way of being. And then as soon as I did that, I started attracting those who appreciate my way of thinking, my way of living, my way of being, and we just lifted each other up from there. One of the examples I'll say is I'm a business owner. I've built two different businesses in the last seven years, and I felt very lonely doing that. And I'm not alone feeling lonely doing that. There's many, many, many of us out there. And I always would get so bothered by watching different videos, YouTube, whatever, or be in networking events where everybody's so glorified and happy and everything is going so well, and everybody is just so successful. And I was just like filled like shit. Cause I was like, I'm none of those. Not that I'm comparing myself, but this can be real. Like you can't just get there so glorified and with a lot of like, you know, aura and light around you and not really had any hiccups. So then I had to create to prove it to myself that building a business is not or belonging in those circles is not pretty. I had to create what I called confessions of the founders, meaning bring people from different different founders who build successful businesses together to tell us about the messy part of building businesses. And then truly is when I felt like, okay, this is the room I belong in. Because life is not all pretty. Life has its own ups and downs. We're not perfect, things happen. One day I don't feel like working, one day I want to go take over the world. And we want to be able to speak those truths and give the the some of us who don't necessarily made it to the Forbes magazine or this award and that award, that you you could get there and you could the path is not as straightforward. And to go to connect this to your question, I just got a bit sidetracked is you have to create that way of being for yourself, no matter where you are. And then I've realized that it has nothing to do with where I am and the system that I'm in, and it has everything to do with how I think and who I invite to my table. And none of it happened until I could acknowledge my word, wordiness. And then I had to drop working 10 times harder, 10 times louder, all of that. Uh, and I just gave my time and attention to those who could see me and who could realize my potential, right? And that's how this book came to my life, and that's how I started building my business handpicking who I want to work with. So belonging is that to me. I because until then, even though I've lived here for long, long enough, I never felt like I belonged anywhere. I always squeezed myself into places. I always had to fight for my place, right? And that's just not a that's just not a good feeling. I don't, I don't wish to go back to those days.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

Yeah, I'm curious. You know, I love this podcast because I get to talk to different people and different with completely different life experiences. And so my questions around belonging have become deeper and more layered. And so, like on the more esoteric side of myself, I would like to think that it's possible to build a world where we all belong. Like my fundamental belief is that we all belong to each other. Then, like, you think of the system that you were raised in. And obviously, they did not want to create a world of belonging. Like it was about I I'm gonna create belonging for the people who I want to belong, and everybody else is going to be less than, and that truly isn't belonging. And then I think so many of us are just like we take it for, we just take it that that's the way it is, that you, you know, someone can be powerful and someone else isn't, and you have to work or fight for your belonging. So I'm always sort of curious in my mind, I'm always chasing that ideal of how can we create belonging? Like, what part am I playing into a system where we are kicking people out of belonging? And what can we build where we're actually bringing belonging? Like right now, you're building your table. So you're choosing who gets to belong in this business and who's gonna really, you know, treat my clients right. And on a business level, like I absolutely understand that. And yay! And good for you for building your table. And then on the other side, like the flip side of that coin, I'm like, wow, how do we extend belonging? And for you, I'm thinking, you know, you did this for your sister's children. Like they came over, they had to leave a country, they had to lose their mom, leave a country, and come and live with with you, with the family. So I'm curious when you think back about that time when they first were coming into your home, how did you create and extend belonging to them?

SPEAKER_02 39:47

Yeah, it's a very deep question, and you're absolutely right. It's something that happens subconsciously. Um, and I would say for all of us. I don't want to exclude any human being and uh from this. So I agree with you that we can all create an opportunity for us to belong. Um, and we belong to each other. I love that. I think the key is acknowledging where that person is coming from, especially if you are the person with the power to create that opportunity, which is in my case, if you just go to that simple example and then apply it to a broader concept. In my situation, I was the one holding, I don't know if it's a power per se. The word is not a power, but the opportunity. I I was the person that had the opportunity to create that belonging, if I'm speaking the words uh properly. Um, I had to look into their lived experiences and where they're coming from. What are they looking to achieve? Um, and how can I enable them? Right? Like I feel like enabling someone automatically helps them feel they belong. Absolutely. Right. Um, and what do I do to do that? For example, in my niece's case, she loves playing basketball. So I called a few people I know around the city to say, hey, can she come and volunteer? Now, you know, she feels quite happy about her immigration, which I didn't have that opportunity when I immigrated. I had to go immediately go to work because I needed to support myself. Um, for him, he loved soccer. I started making some phone calls saying, hey, I've got him. He loves playing soccer. Would you, would you mind if he comes and just like sits there and hang out with the kids? Um, so now he feels like he's blending in easier, right? So, to your question, which it's a very complicated one, and I I don't have the answer to it, in my pl in my position, I would look for what would enable this person to get to what they think is they want to get to. And we can't determine that for them. So I had to have that conversation with them. What is it you want from this new life? Right? How can I help you and support you? And I feel like when I emigrated, I can only go to that story, it was more like this is what this is how you're gonna live your life. And that was part of how I felt out of alignment with what I really wanted, because I was just dictated what to do, whether it was the system or my situation or um the services available to someone like us. It was more a dictation of this is what you're doing, this is your process, this is your new life, go on.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

Versus it should be the other way around. How what do you want and how can we support you? Which I think a lot of those conversations are happening and it's it's more common now than it used to be 20 years ago. And I, if you just want to talk about immigration per se, but it's not possible unless you find out what that person wants and what can you do to support them. I think that's the ultimate goal when it comes to help.

SPEAKER_00 43:08

I I love it. So when your niece and nephew came to live with you, you could have looked at it as um a uh obligation, as a, you know, you're really disrupting my life, or how can I use you to make my life easier? Like there was a lot of other ways you could have taken that, but instead you stepped back selflessly, you created conditions where they would feel welcome and by therefore belonging. And their journey could be is going to be different than yours was because they they were already welcomed in with that sense of belonging. And um, so I love that. Thank you for reflecting back on that. I know it is a it's such a complex the more I get into belonging, the more complex it is, but then kind of Returning that to the youth that we're serving through Elevate Villages and villages that we'll be building, like welcoming them in. And it's not about, oh, this is how we do this and this is who you are in the village, but going, what do you want? What is the life you want to build? Because certainly these youth, especially after going through the foster system, by the time they age out at 18 or 19, on average, they've been in 18 to 20 different placements. So they haven't belonged anywhere. And now we're going to give them that opportunity. We're going to create the conditions where they get to come in and build the life they want. Not just how do I survive in poverty the rest of my life? How do I just trade my time for money and just try to survive? But let's now create conditions where you can do different, you can do better instead of just the generational poverty, which led them to this situation. 70% of youth coming out of foster care, their children will go into foster care. It's just, it's such a perpetuated problem. So kind of coming back around to finances, if you are teaching financial literacy to these young people that will be in our villages, where would you start? We're talking they're from utter poverty. They're 18, they may or may not have graduated high school. Obviously, we'll finish that off for them. But where would you start on teaching them financial literacy in a world that has truly not worked for them?

SPEAKER_02 45:36

First of all, kudos to you. This is this is huge and it's a massive problem you're solving. And um I just don't, I just said, you know, the world is a much better place with people like you and it, Melissa. So thank you for that. Like it's just my honor to even share, you know, just my way of life and what I think you're doing all the work on the ground. But one thing I experience personally, um, when I and I I'm gonna keep going back to immigration because imagine the immigration is like a le like the uh, you know, like you enter, it's just it's exchangeable, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 46:15

Like for us was like I love the you have to like restart a life where you know nothing.

SPEAKER_02 46:21

Oh right. Yeah, but a suitcase. Um yeah, absolutely. One of the things is if I were to teach these kids, and survival is a very key thing here because remember I said we're so trained to trade our time for money, and we keep repeating it, and we could we keep living based on the old systems that were in design with a lot of us in mind, finding something they love to do, and the pleasure of earning an income from it will make it so satisfying. I think that small little switch to connect earning money with pleasure or with joy can play a significant role in how they receive the money and what they give to exchange their time with money. Um, I think that would that would be a beautiful way for them to experience uh or have that experience of initial earnings. Go do something that's related to who you want to become in the future. And that's usually have been my conversation with like a lot of kids. Um, I used to volunteer with Covenant House. Um, that immediately changes everything. That puts them five, six, seven, eight, ten years ahead of this game of life. Or split your time between doing something you absolutely love with something you have to do because you need to survive. Like I know a lot of entrepreneurs do that. For example, they still have their corporate job, but their passion is to become a life coach. So they still do that, but they know that by doing this, they can enable this thing that they like.

SPEAKER_03 48:07

Right.

SPEAKER_02 48:07

So I think if they're introduced to money in a more pleasant way, what is the ultimate goal? And let's reverse engineer that to what you're gonna be doing today, we'll give them that joy and will give them the satisfaction initially. And then once you earn that money, then you want to teach them, okay, congratulations, you earned money. Now, do you understand how to budget? How do you divide your fixed expenses from your lifestyle expenses? What is must-have and what is good to have? Like that's a great education right there and then, because I still have this conversation with people in their 40s who buy things they want and they live lifestyle rich, forgetting about their retirement and not realizing that it takes time to build wealth. It doesn't happen overnight. And how do we teach you to budget for your fixed expenses and for your lifestyle expenses and then be able to save the power of saving, the power of compounding, get your money to now work for you. It's like building one uh brick after the other. First earn the money, then learn how to budget, then save it. Then let's teach you how to invest it and then just like repeat that, right? That's that's all it takes. It it is just simple. But unfortunately, we don't teach these in school to our children. Money is never to be found in any of the conversations we have at the dinner table. And there's a lot of shame around it all the time. I don't understand why. So there is a lot of systematic change that needs to happen, and these kids need to start connecting with money and see it as a mean of liberation, not as something that they just have to go, oh, it I wasted all my day doing this. So bringing joy into making money is a big piece. To all this, there's the rest of this formula.

SPEAKER_00 50:04

And then like what you said earlier about like assigning every dollar a job. And so your money is working for you. Like that was I that's just stuck with me. It's such a brilliant way to look at it. We're gonna have this space within the village. You know, in the beginning, they're just safe and they can start healing. And then as they begin making money, it's gonna be uh we're gonna have to be working with budgets, and obviously I'll be calling on people like you or other uh financial literate, like the people who understand finances at all the different levels to say, okay, so they just made money. Now this percentage is gonna go towards their rent, or can we make this sort of a, you know, their rent now is actually going to buy it so that when they leave the village whenever they choose to, they actually have an asset? And like how do we teach them financial literacy kind of in that long with all, you know, considering all of those things. So what you said about every dollar has a job. I've never even looked at my own finances that way. Um I love that. I mean, I you know, percentages and budgets, but every dollar has its job to serve me. I'm not serving the money to try to pay my next bill. That's a shift. That's a shift, shift. I love that. Yeah, thank you. So well said it. So for our listeners, Behe's book, her business, all of her social links will all be down in the description. So please follow her. Behe, what question did I not ask you today that you wish I had asked you?

SPEAKER_01 51:38

I think we covered a lot.

SPEAKER_02 51:42

Thank you so much for giving me the time and the opportunity to share what it was like and to live under uh a regime that just I don't even have words to express uh feelings of many Iranian these days. The traumas we had to live under, things we had to do to just make it survive. It's not that it's not a question, but I just want to leave your audience with one one one thing, if you don't mind, from the book. This never occurred to me until I was I started writing the book. And I feel like it's gonna connect all the dots for us, if that's okay. Yes, please. My story is proof of one thing. You don't have to accept the systems you're born into. You can dismantle them, you can reimagine them, you can build new ones, brick by brick, choice by choice. And when you build something better, you don't just change your own life, you become the revolution, the unseen repo, reaching people you'll never meet, in places you'll never go, in moments that exist long after you're gone. This is the work, this is the bridge. And someone, whether you know it or not, is already waiting for the bridge only you can build. For me, it began in grief. In a goodbye I never taught I'll have to say, in a promise I didn't know how to keep. But today, years later, continent cross, paper signed, prayers whispered into silence, I hear the sound I've been waiting for. Footsteps, laughter, life. Her children are home. So I just wanted to say that because I know we talked about how things have been difficult for me. And I wanted to say when I was writing that, I've realized that there are so many of us out there waiting for a sign to do what we're called to do. And I didn't have time to wait. I had to make things happen because of what happened, what was because of the loss. But if if you're out there and you're listening, um I want you to know that if there's something in you whispering that you're called to do it, just do it.

SPEAKER_01 54:20

Just go for it. There are people waiting. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 54:27

Yeah, beautiful. Thank you for being with us today.

SPEAKER_01 54:31

Thank you, Melissa. It was an honor. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 54:36

Thank you to my listeners. If you enjoyed this conversation, please remember to subscribe, like, leave your comments. What do you want us to talk about? How has belonging showed up in your life? You definitely belong here with us. Thank you to Deanna Laughlin, our patron who makes the belonging podcast by Elevate Villages possible. We are so grateful to you seeding into belonging. And like I said before, we all belong to one another. Go out today and find someone who doesn't know they belong and create a little bit of belonging for them. This has been the Belonging Podcast by Elevate Villages, where we build belonging together.