Rabia was born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan and moved to the US at the age of 25 to pursue her Masters where she met her husband who is African American. We chat finding our own identity outside our families, choosing the role faith will play in our lives, finding our own independence, and more!
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Rabia was born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan and moved to the US at the age of 25 to pursue her Masters where she met her husband who is African American. We chat finding our own identity outside our families, choosing the role faith will play in our lives, finding our own independence, and more!
BWWPS Book Club Form share your thoughts on what we're reading!
BWWPS Guest Application
Anonymous Suggestion/Request Box
DishaMazepa.com
SHOP: Disha Mazepa Designs on Etsy Code FESTIVE6 (buy 5 get 1 free)
Be sure to SUBSCRIBE & LEAVE US A REVIEW if you enjoyed the show.
Follow me on Instagram @Disha.Mazepa
Like the show on FB here.
Music by: Crexwell
Episodes available on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Overcast.
Hi everyone, welcome back to. But what Will People Say? I'm your host, disha Mazzappa, and this is a South Asian Insuritial Relationship and Lifestyle podcast. Welcome back for another episode. Hi everyone, welcome back.
Speaker 1:We're back with a guest this week. Her name is Rabia, she is 31 years old and she is, of course, sharing her story. We're talking about moving to the US when you're 25, from Pakistan, meeting her now husband and all of the work in between, of sort of finding who you are, finding your sense of self outside of your family, discovering your own independence and the little steps you can take to build up that confidence, to know that you can take on the world, and also reminding you that your existence in this world is enough to make you valuable, that you don't have to earn it. You don't have to do anything to deserve it. The fact that you are here and alive makes you valuable and I hope you all remember that, because I know sometimes I struggle to remember that. She was a wonderful guest. We had a great chat. I hope you enjoyed this episode, but without further ado, let's get to it. All right, here we are, everybody. We're here with Rabia today. Rabia, welcome to the show. Introduce yourself to everybody.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Rabia and I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Thanks for coming, tell us where you're from and a little bit about your backstory.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm from Pakistan. I grew up in the beautiful city of Lahore and I've lived there for nearly 25 years of my life and afterwards I moved to the US for my master's and now I'm working towards the end of my PhD I'm actually going to defend in like a month and a half, so I'm very stoked and excited to be out of this hellish nightmare. I also met my husband when I came to the United States and I met him within the first week of being in the United States. At first we didn't quite get along, but it was kind of like enemies to lovers pipeline. And here I am on this podcast.
Speaker 1:I love that we threw in a book trope.
Speaker 2:We're both into writing like writing and media and storytelling is one of our favorite things. I think it's very fitting to put that right there.
Speaker 1:I'm glad enemies to lovers happens in real life because in my head.
Speaker 2:I'm like that doesn't happen. I love the books that have it.
Speaker 1:It's my favorite trope, but I love that that happened for you. So your partner is African American. You now live in the US. You guys are married. Tell us what that process was like, because you came here at 25. So you're like a full grown adult. And then you came here. So it's not like you were raised here like so many of us who have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's really interesting for me because I feel like a lot of people both people who grew up in the US and in Pakistan, india and the diaspora kind of assume that where you grew up kind of delimits you to the kind of partners you're going to pick. So if you grew up in the US, you're like more open to the possibility of interracial relationships. You grew up in Pakistan, you're never even going to think about it, but I don't know. I feel like there's a lot of flexibility in our human experience and in my specific case, I didn't have you to look for a husband, I came here for a degree, obviously.
Speaker 2:So it just so happened that I met someone who, even though we had very different lived experience to the point that we hadn't lived in the same part of the world, we hadn't even known each other for the formative years of our life, but we still resonated on a level that was much bigger than our cultural background or even our religious background, which is the same a lot, considering I'm a practicing hijabi Muslim.
Speaker 2:Many people assume that they look at me and they're like oh, you're someone who must adhere down to the last letter off your face. Your face must be like this intractable book in your life that you adhere to perfectly and every hijabi presumably adheres to it in the exact same way and it's like no, there's a lot of flexibility in religious expression, at least that I've learned over the years. And specifically with regards to my relationship, it was very interesting for me because when we first met, like I said, it was kind of an enemy to lovers thing, so we didn't like to be fair, we weren't like hating each other, but like I remember coming home after I met him and the way I met him, I guess I should tell that first. I had a best friend in college who came to the US for an exchange semester.
Speaker 2:And while she was in the US for the exchange semester she met my now husband. They became friends and so when I was coming to the United States I was like, oh, I don't know anyone here. She's like oh, I know this guy. He can like show you around town. I introduced you to you know just the city, because he happened to live in the same city I was going to be in, and so he takes me around town. We like have breakfast, look at some like popular tourist destinations or whatnot, and remember coming home later that day and being on the phone with my friend and being like, oh my gosh, this guy, he is so cocky, like he is such an ass he thinks he's so full of himself. And my friend's like you're right, he is really stubborn.
Speaker 2:And so we just kind of like connected on our mutual dislike of this guy, although he was again really nice to take out a person he didn't know around town for the record. And then I don't know, whenever I wanted to do something I was like I want to go hiking. He had a car, so we'd like go hiking. Or like he was having a friend's giving. That was my first thanks friend's giving in the United States, so that's not a very uh, south Asian thing.
Speaker 2:And before I knew it I had a friend that I didn't like, but he was really funny and charming and he had an amazing sense of humor and we actually were state friends for like two and a half years and it wasn't until I had been in the United States for like three years was when he first asked me out and then I turned him down. And it was actually quite awkward because I turned him down and of course my primary reason was that we were so culturally and religiously different that we just couldn't possibly be compatible and I didn't see a future with him. But we stayed friends and we continued to hang out with each other. And here's the kicker All my friends who knew about our friendship have told me that was very obvious, that I was smitten with him but wasn't denial about it. Now I say that I was not smitten with him and I will go to my grave with that declaration that he was just a friend, even if everyone who knew me says that it was obvious that I liked him.
Speaker 2:But, then, almost like three and a half years into our friendship, I did realize that I was smitten with him and I decided to ask him out.
Speaker 2:This was after me rejecting him three times, so I think it's only fair that I finally asked him out and, yeah, we started going out.
Speaker 2:It was very different for me because, again, I grew up in a very, very religious family with very strict values around dating. Well, dating is not a thing in my family, that's not a thing that happens, but even so, very strict ideas of what it's like to have a relationship and what kind of husband I should have. And so it was very scary for sure, and I've had to keep my relationship secret from most of my family for most of my relationship. But before you knew it it was, we were married and now we're building a life together and I can't imagine having lived a different life. Honestly and I know that sounds very corny, like I'm picking up a fairy tale, but it does it seems insane that I hung out with someone who became friends with my friend because of some like placement at a college through the government, and that is the reason that I'm living the life I'm living, and living with a partner that I have today.
Speaker 1:Love that. What's interesting is the thing you mentioned is that you grew up very culturally different probably than your husband, and you still found like mutual ground and we always say like, I mean, that's like a theme on this show, right, as long as you have the same values and they, you know, make you happy and treat you with respect, there's no reason not to give them a chance. But what point did you start thinking like, oh, this might be like something real?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. So here's where, also, like, my sexual identity comes into play. So something I realized even before I had started going out with my husband is that I'm not like other people in my sexual attraction, where I don't experience attraction to most people unless I form a bond and so, which is demisexuality, basically the term, and so for me it was by the time we started dating, I already knew who was my person.
Speaker 2:And I know again, that sounds super corny, like I picked it out of a book but it genuinely took me to feel extremely safe and secure with him, to even perceive the potential of a relationship, and so it kind of for me was happening at the same time, the process of getting closer to him, finding safety with him and also seeing that he's the right person for me. But before we started dating, I think for me one of the things I really loved about my husband and this is against someone who grew up in Pakistan surrounded by not really great male role models I'll say that just out there and not really great models of a partner. So it was really easy for me to see how just fundamentally different my husband was from that toxicity. Because, even though I was so different, he like respected how I dressed. He never made me feel like, oh my gosh, the way you're dressing is like appropriate because you know it's too conservative or is too, you know, different from how women may be expected to dress in America that thing, there are no hijabies in America but and he made me feel really good in my skin, like we're comfortable, like we could be hanging out wherever we were and I would never feel self conscious about the way I look or the way I'm talking.
Speaker 2:I could really be my truest self with him and not fear judgment, and not just in the sense that, oh, I can tell him whatever comes to mind. But I can tell him whatever comes to mind, and not only will he be excited to listen to what I have to say, he'll actually make the effort to understand, and I think that's especially important when you have an intercultural, interreligious, interracial relationship of this nature, because there are experiences that he doesn't understand, that have happened in my life and there are things I don't understand. And so, for him to be able to create that space where it's like I don't need to get everything that you've been through to honor it and you don't have to understand everything I've been through or what the history is to honor it, however, we still make the effort. We still make an effort to understand. And so, for example, him being a black man, he is very strongly invested in the civil rights history of America, he's very committed to anti-racism and diversity in education and medicine, and while that wasn't something I was very familiar with when I came to the United States, I made the effort to learn with him and to learn more and more about the struggles of the black community in America, because I know this is important to my husband and it's a part of his heritage and, on the other hand, he's done the same for me. He's made a parallel effort to recognize what it's like to have grown up in Pakistan, the unique challenges of the South Asian community abroad, as well as in the US.
Speaker 2:What is it like to be a first generation immigrant? In my case, and part of that has been watching a lot of Bollywood movies, and I think I've watched more Bollywood movies with him than I had in my entire life before I met him and, like you know, he gets all the trouble. He understands all the different social issues that are generally touched upon in these movies and he appreciates the appeal of the genre in a way that I don't think he would have if he hadn't made the effort to understand all these things. So, yeah, I think for us it has been a lot about.
Speaker 2:We are very different in our lived experiences, but there are things we share, such as values and beliefs, and I will say it really helped and I think this is something our parents didn't have, so people who might have immigrated into 60s, 70s, 80s is that we do have a shared media landscape. So I watched the same TV shows growing up that he did, and I've read the same kind of stories and that really is important for the two of us because we're both kind of obsessed with TV and movies. That's kind of our guilty pleasure. Every single night we sit down to watch something together. So it definitely helps that my generation, specifically in Pakistan, grew up immersed in English speaking media and so that wasn't the same kind of barrier that we had to overcome. That I imagine. Someone who grew up in the 80s lived, yeah. So for us it's really been about finding the mutual ground and celebrating it and then whatever is in between, we just kind of try to overcome it by making our best effort.
Speaker 1:Amazing. I think you said it perfectly. It's just about making the effort and also just like not feeling the need to like be overly understood by your partner, like I've said that on the show, where I'm like Michael's never going to totally grasp, like all the brown girl shit. Okay, like I could sit here and perseverate and drown in that jumpster fire like forever. And most days I don't want to Like, I just I struggle to feel like a regular person some days because I'm like why can't I just have some like white girl problems?
Speaker 1:You know, like that would be nice. I don't want any of this generational trauma crap. And the thing is I don't feel the need for Michael to understand every part of it as long as he's there when I maybe I'm kind of having a rougher time with it, and he's being supportive and he's listening and he's fucking trying his best, like that's good, that's enough. But you said you kept your relationship a secret, as so many of us have done in the past. Tell us about that process. Does your family know now? How did they react? How did we kind of overcome that?
Speaker 2:Oh my God, I have so much tea.
Speaker 1:Tell us all the tea. Sometimes people think this podcast is about the tea, which it's not, but we like to share it sometimes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the way it happened is, once we started, dating is actually one of our first rules is we can't tell anyone. So we slowly increase our circle off safe people. She started with no one knows except the two of us and, like my best friend, who's American, and then we slowly included my friend, my workplace, his workplace, his family, and so at this point in our relationship we're married. We did elope, so my family didn't know at the time that we were getting married. So one of my sisters, who I will send her this episode so hi, sis, I love you she was actually one of the people who knew. She's actually the one who encouraged me to date him, even when I was like this is a crazy idea, and she was like go be happy, be happy, and I appreciate that. So now, at this point, I have told my mom and my other immediate family members my extended family still does not know and I don't know when they will know, because I've left that decision up to my family.
Speaker 2:I think the advantage of being here in the United States and not having my family here is that I'm very removed from the day to day drama of my family. They don't have a way of really knowing how I'm living my life and how I live my life will have very little impact on their lives. And I do think that's kind of a privilege, right, because when you're trying to hide a relationship and your parents live like an hour away from you, that's probably much more challenging. I don't have the same challenge. I can kind of live my life very honestly in the US without my family knowing. But yeah, my mom was not happy and I was expecting that. She felt betrayed and she felt hurt and she felt that I had slighted her in some way by picking well, firstly, by picking someone off my own choice, but also not sharing this information with her. And one of my siblings has cut me off as a result of my decision and that sucks. It really does, because I can't talk to my nieces and nephews anymore. I can't talk to my siblings anymore, but I honestly wouldn't have it any other way.
Speaker 2:It was already really hard to hide this. Like I have no social media presence of this relationship. I have no. Like I don't like sharing any photos online. We even had pseudonyms on our phones for a very long time, so like if I was visiting home, no one could figure out who I was talking to.
Speaker 2:And, honestly, living like this was starting to take a toll on my mental health, because it's like I'm living a full life that I have to hide every time I talk to my mom, or every time I talk to someone from Pakistan, or if someone's like we're going to drop by your apartment, are you going to be around, I literally would pull down the shades of my windows and hide in the bedroom and be like we're not, I'm not home, you can leave it outside. My roommate, roommate being coached. Obviously here We'll take it from the door or something, and that was just really stressful living that kind of life. My mom is coming around, that's just good. I'm really happy about that. I don't know if my sibling will come around, but I hope they do. And certainly on in the relationship, I think that there's still possibility for some flexibility.
Speaker 1:That's a lot. It's a lot to unpack, a lot to go through. I can you know, I can hear how hard that is and so many people listening absolutely feel it too. Because, yeah, that feeling of like literally hiding this part your whole life. Basically, by the time someone is your partner, that is significantly a part of your life. It's like they're everywhere, right, every decision you make, they're a part of it. You're home, they're a part of it. Your lifestyle, it's all there.
Speaker 1:And then it's like the anxiety of like what if somebody stops by, what if he texts me and they see it? Like all of that like every brown girl here has had some form of that I'm just like, oh, I'm just gonna go hang out with my friend Michelle, but like, really I'm hanging out with Michael and like we also like we went through the whole pseudo names thing and my cousins would literally refer to him as Michelle if they ever wanted to talk about him at like a family event which sucked, and it's weird because you constantly live in that fight or flight mode and it is astonishing how we managed to normalize that in our head for so long, just to like get through it. And then I'm like I'm just getting off of it and I've been out of my parents' house for like six, seven years and I'm like now we're like kind of not freaking out all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we even wouldn't hold hands at the local Indian store on the off chance that someone who knows someone, who knows my family, might report on me, which is like such a ludicrous idea and like abstract. But like I'm not the only brown girl I know who does that Like I have friends who were even not necessarily an interracial relationship, but in some kind of relationship that they didn't want their family to know about, and they have to do this kind of like when we're in Indian stores or when we're in an Indian restaurant. You have to be very careful and I'm like white girls won't get this.
Speaker 1:No, they don't get it. But yeah, I know it's a rough spot to be in, but we came out of that Cause. Like you said, you live here. Your life can be very separate from life at home, but do you ever struggle with still feeling like you have to have two lives, even though it's like on the other side of the planet?
Speaker 2:I definitely struggled with that a lot before my mom and my siblings my other siblings knew because it just felt like the minute my mom's calling, it doesn't matter if I'm sitting on the couch with my husband. I suddenly have to pretend that I was doing something by myself and I have to like, even if I don't say it, I have to concoct this lie for the period of the conversation or when I'm visiting Pakistan. I have to like be very careful and again pretend to be single when I'm not. I think once I've told my mom and my siblings like I feel like I can live authentically all the time, and that's primarily because I'm very distant from extended family. I don't actually speak to them on a day-to-day basis, if at all. So really it doesn't affect my life whether they know or don't know.
Speaker 2:Of course, some of this has to do with, like, just my family dynamic and the way I grew up in a very dysfunctional family, and some of it again has to do with the fact that I'm like far flung out in the United States and none of my family is really here keeping tabs on me in any way. So it does feel great to be able to live authentically and because I did make it a point to like be open and honest at my workplace or during my PhD. I think that also helped because I do have spaces where I can be myself and I can share what I'm going through and share my relationship and celebrated with people, which is great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the thing nobody really, I guess, talks about is when you have to keep your relationship a secret. Not only do you have to hide, like the drama and the lows and the toxic stuff, you also don't get to like have a full relationship in like sharing things, like telling people about like oh, I got proposed to her. Oh, like you know, even just like being Instagram official, like that's such a big step, especially when you're like young right, when you were a kid and like going on Facebook and being like in a relationship with someone and like, you know, when you were 17, that was a big deal for you, you know. Now I'm like I don't want to tell anyone anything, go away. But when you're a kid, that's what you want. When you're even, when you're young, and especially when you find someone that you love so much and suddenly it's like who do I share these joys with?
Speaker 1:And that can be really hard too, because then you're like living in a vacuum by yourself and it can feel like you're on this island. But that's, unfortunately, the things some of us have gone through. So one thing that comes up a lot or I notice comes up a lot is the pressure to get married and you came here when you were 25, which by then the pressure is at peak. We're like on top, everyone is like you're 25. If you make it to 26 single like you're done, you're a spinster. There is no hope for you. Please get married. So how did you, or if you, did you, face any of that? And if you did, how did you?
Speaker 2:manage to convince people to move to.
Speaker 1:America instead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I faced a lot of that pressure. Actually, I think a week before my flight to America, my mom took me to a matchmaker to see if she could set me up with someone. I've been to many matchmakers in my life, but I think in my case, well, I first came here for my master, so I was able to convince my parents that I'm coming back. So I came here for my master's and, to be fair, I didn't have a plan to pursue a PhD at the time, but in my mind I was like they will let me come here for a master's. So definitely not let me come abroad for a PhD. And I had been trying to get my mom and dad to kind of see that this is something really important to me and if they'd just let me go abroad for my master's, that will quench my thirst for knowledge. Of course, that's not what happened, and I think, because I then went on to apply for a PhD and got in and I didn't ask for permission, kind of ask for forgiveness instead, my mom was very unhappy with both me coming over for my master's and for my PhD, but she couldn't didn't like end up actually stopping me from pursuing it. I think what really helped is that both my sisters were extremely supportive and they both were like you have to let her go, like don't stop her. And then my dad, who has now passed breast and peace. He was also extremely supportive of me pursuing an education. He himself was a medical doctor. So when he really wanted one of his kids to pursue some kind of professional education and I was the only one who was like on the path to be, I guess, a pseudo doctor in this case, and so he was also very supportive of that. And so I think, at the end of the day, in spite of the fact that my mom really wanted me to get married, this my family being on my side, ended up helping me and while I don't think they could have imagined when they sent me for my master's that I would end up going for my PhD and potentially getting married to someone, that's what happened at the end of the day.
Speaker 2:And I think the other aspect was that, while it was pretty common in my family and a lot of Pakistani families for women to get married fairly early in their 20s, in both my sister's case and my mom's case they actually all got married a bit later in life. So my mom was 25 and she got married, which doesn't sound drastic, but for her generation that was like glacially late. I was like, oh my goodness, how did you even wait that long? And both my sisters were also past 25 and they got married. So it didn't seem like I was setting a remarkable precedent by going abroad for my education first. So it did work out. Also, it helped that at that time I didn't have any proposals that my mom was super excited about. I'm sure if she found someone who she was excited about, there was no way I was leaving that house. She would have made sure I tied the knot right there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure when parents get it in their head that this is the one and I'm like, how do you decide that? Like what do you mean? But one thing you've kind of had to do is like you now have this whole other life here and how did you find your sense of self like outside of your family?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean this was something that was very important to me since I was very young, because I wasn't a very happy kid. I was a very sad kid who wasn't very happy in the family dynamic I found myself in. I was also very lonely because I didn't have any people in my life no cousins or siblings that were around my age so I was someone who spent a lot of time by themselves and I was also did not have a lot of friends growing up, in school, up to college I think I can count on a single hand the number of people I would consider friends that I had accumulated. And so, because of that sense of isolation and not belonging both in my family and my community, it was always very important to me to like find who I was for myself, to like remove myself from that context and see if I can thrive outside of it. And so when I first came to the United States, the way I decided to do that was travel. I traveled a lot.
Speaker 2:I believe I traveled to 15 different states in the first year that I was in the United States, and it was so much fun, it was so liberating, because I grew up in a house where I wasn't allowed to leave the house by myself I couldn't cross the road without someone chaperoning me and to then be in a house where I leave and come in ago as I want. I planned travel and trips all by myself. No one with me was so exhilarating and so fun. It gave me the sense of realization that I'm stronger and more capable than people might have led me to believe I am able to do things for myself. I don't need people's permission or support to pursue the things that are important or exciting to me. And the other thing is it helped me see that I can have fun by myself. I don't need a partner to enjoy my time, I don't need people around me for it to be a fun experience. And so that sense of loneliness I had grown up with actually turned into a sense of loving myself, and I know that that's something that's very disliked in our culture. Right, because loving ourselves is equated to being self-obsessed and being selfish, and I think that's completely wrong.
Speaker 2:I actually think loving ourselves allows us to love people even more. It allows us to be more generous, and it is important to love yourself, because who else is gonna do it? You are your own most important priority. It would be so toxic to say that my husband's biggest priority should be me or my mom's biggest priority should be me or my mom should be my biggest priority, because why I should be my own biggest priority? Who else knows me better? Who else has to spend the most time with me? So I took that approach, and this is from someone who spent 13 years standing in front of the mirror. This was an exercise I used to do because I was told by someone this will make me a better person. I would stand in front of a mirror and I would point out all the flaws in myself and scold myself, being like you're rude and you're arrogant and your teeth are crooked and things like that, without fucked up. Sorry for that.
Speaker 1:That's fucked up.
Speaker 2:And it is, it absolutely is, and I have to realize. No, I have to look in the mirror and have to be my own best friend. I have to be my biggest cheerleader and that is important because that means I'll never be in a relationship where I'm not valued and loved, because I know I can value and love myself and I'll never find myself in a context where I am at the mercy of other people because I can take care of myself. And I know that's a very deep philosophical derivation from just traveling. But honestly, if someone's listening and they haven't taken a solo trip yet, you absolutely should.
Speaker 2:Solo trips are so fun. I know they're different. The context of solo trips are always going to be a little more different from a group trip or a trip with your partner, but they have their own beauty and they have their own joy. And I've hiked on my own, I've gone through, I've gone swimming through the ocean on my own, I've gone on cruises and all of these things were a lot of fun, even though we have this idea that travel has to be something you do with a loved one or in a group setting for it to be meaningful. But in my experience it was very meaningful, to do it on my own terms and in my own way.
Speaker 1:I love it. Preach a little ladder for the people in the back, because you're right. First of all, whoever told you to trash yourself in the mirror as an asshole Like? And as someone who literally had to go to therapy to learn to not be an asshole to herself, I get that Like.
Speaker 1:Honestly, the biggest thing my therapist taught me was like you need to be friends with the voices in your head and but you need to make sure those voices are your voice and not your parents' voice, Because a lot of the times, the things we're saying to ourselves are what our parents told us or whoever's voice it is, and I was like oh my God, I don't even know who my voice is anymore. Like as like an existential crisis. I'm like my brain is never silent, and then to have to dig through my own head and be like where's Disha, who is she, Where's her voice, and I'm like this sucks. So yeah, but like the doing things on your own is so important. I encourage people to do it all the time and I know travel is daunting, Like you can feel really overwhelming.
Speaker 2:Expensive.
Speaker 1:And expensive, especially in 2024. Everything is expensive, but Even like you said, like you weren't allowed to cross the street without a chaperone, like that significantly, like reduces the size of your world view and what you think you are capable of. So even if the step is doing one thing every week by yourself, that can be enough for you to feel like, oh, I did that. You know, I go to the gym by myself, I went out to eat by myself. I once a visitor friend who lives five hours away and I went and I went by myself to see her. And all of that takes a lot of courage, especially when you've been told that you are not capable of doing those things on your own. And so many of us in our culture that is how we were raised that you were just told, like you can't travel by yourself, you can't decide your career on your own, you can't decide who you're going to marry by yourself, and those are big life decisions. But even small things you were told that you are not capable of doing by yourself because something bad will happen or someone is going to follow you and kidnap you or something like you know, whatever catastrophic thing they came up with. And even the smallest steps, like you said, will help you find that sense of confidence that actually you can do stuff, you can decide, whatever the decision is.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's like for me it was a lot of money. I've always struggled a lot with like being comfortable with spending money on myself especially, and feeling like I needed to justify that. And then having a partner who's like if you're going to have a hobby, why don't you just do it right? Like why are you trying to buy like the? Because you know I'm always like what's on sale, what can I get really cheap? I don't want to buy, like you know, the professional podcasting equipment. I'm just going to get like the $20 one. He's like no. And then this bitch ordered me a $200 mic with like all the equipment. He's like don't worry about it. Just if you're going to do it, you got to do it right. And I would have never had the courage in myself to take a hobby that seriously, because I've just been told over and over again, like don't spend money, you're going to waste all your money. You're going to end up homeless on the street because you started a podcast, which is possible.
Speaker 2:But you know what I mean, and it takes a lot Ramsters deserve a medal for catastrophizing Like oh my God the catastrophizing something.
Speaker 1:And it's weird, because when you're out of it and then you talk to people that aren't out of it, you're like, oh my God, that used to be me. And you're also like that's such a broken way of thinking about it. I talk to my mom, and every time I talk to my mom, I'm like, oh my God, you cause all your own problems. Lady, like you are, I don't even know how to help you. Like you, my mom doesn't think she can take a walk by herself. Oh my goodness. Like she's like, no, I can't do that. She'll wait for my dad or my brother to go with her. And I'm like you live in like a residential neighborhood, like we're not even near a highway or anything. We don't even get trick or treaters there's so few of anything near my house, okay and she thinks she can't go for a walk by herself. And I'm like this is so sad and a little pathetic. Mom, get it together. But she hasn't. She will never do it, but whatever, that's her life.
Speaker 1:Getting back to you, though, obviously you grew up in a very conservative culture. There is a lot of sense of finding who you are and doing all of those things, but you also had mentioned that you had to acknowledge, like, the harm of the family dynamic that you had. You've mentioned a few times that it was pretty toxic and probably not the healthiest environment to grow up in, and I think we all at some point as we become adults we come to terms with that, that, oh, actually, I didn't grow up in a normal household, like everything my parents told me that was normal, not normal in other households. But then you kind of go through the resentment phase, right, you're just like pissed, like what the hell you know. It's kind of like you ruined my life and you screwed me up for the foreseeable future. Thanks, mom and dad. But then how do you kind of okay, we can acknowledge this and now we can kind of move on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so just to give like a little bit of context as to what I mean when I say dysfunctional family environment. So I grew up again in a very religiously conservative context. I was for the fourth daughter in the family no sons which in my community is like basically, oh my God, could you be more unlucky? And so I really felt that the fact that I wasn't a wanted child across my extended family, my own parents and my own parents were not in a healthy marriage. They were people that I frequently told people should have divorced before they had kids. But again, the cultural context of not wanting to divorce, not wanting that kind of notoriety associated with you, kept them from breaking up their marriage and so they were a very unhappy couple. And that affected everything in the house. It affected how I felt about myself, it affected how I felt about my siblings and my family and, of course, how I even felt about my religious beliefs.
Speaker 2:And initially it's a lot of you think everything around you is normal because that's how you grew up. Then you talk to your friends or you talk to other people and you're like, oh my God, what is wrong with my family? And then you get angry and then you're like what the heck, I deserve better, or hopefully you say that and you're not blaming yourself. But there's also a period of blaming yourself for all of this and I think one of the ways to move past it is actually the physical distance, because I have to leave that environment in order to heal from the effects of that environment. It's really hard to heal while you're actively living in that environment and you don't have any autonomy. And I have a lot of compassion for people who don't have a choice, so who are living with their parents. They can't move out. They're not 18 yet or, like you know, they're not in a financial position to move out yet and at the same time they have to go through the healing process. I won't say it's impossible, but I do think for me it was very necessary to be physically away so that I was in day in and day out, encountering like a confirmation of the pain or off the toxicity that I lived in and once I was physically removed from it.
Speaker 2:I do think I know not everyone is a therapy person, but I do think therapy was really important in my healing journey, having a therapist. I initially had someone. Let me rephrase that I initially had therapists who weren't South Asians and they were very helpful regardless. But now I've actually switched to a South Asian therapist because I do think that some of the intergenerational trauma and enmeshment, especially that I experienced, is really hard for someone who doesn't have that cultural context to parse and understand in the same way, and I think that can be a really important part of it.
Speaker 2:I think surrounding yourselves with people that actually love you and care for you is important, and that doesn't just have to be a partner, like I'm not saying go shop for a husband and then that husband will fix you, but do go shopping for friends, do go looking for people who you have shared interests with, who you can build a healthier form of relationship with and learn how to hold relationships in a way that's fundamentally different from how you were raised or how you encountered through most of your life. And I also think another thing that's really helpful, I think, sometimes for some people, is meditation, yoga. These practices can kind of help us release some of that physical tension we hold in our bodies from our childhood experiences. And last thing I guess I would say is I know a lot of people are able to like commit their age with their siblings like, once they're grown up and they're like man, all that shit that happens was pretty messed up, huh, and it's like, yeah, it was. I know that everyone can do that. I know for sure I can't do that, because my siblings don't necessarily see that everything that happened was messed up.
Speaker 2:But if you have the opportunity to, I think for me the best thing has been talking to people who've been through what I've been through or something similar to it and for them to validate that what happened was bad and what happened wasn't good for me, but that I can move forward from it. There's a path forward for me and that doesn't have to be how I live the rest of my life. I don't have to repeat the things my parents did. I'm not condemned to the same kind of experiences.
Speaker 2:I will also say I read a lot of books on dysfunctional families and narcissistic family disorders and things like that, which also informed my understanding of these issues from like a more. What is it that psychologists say is going on? I think if you understand why these dynamics occur and what would be their recommendations of how to work through it, I imagine that can also be a great way for some people to work through it. I know not everyone is a big fan of it, but I think reading books and literature on this subject can also be helpful and, of course, podcasts, like yours, I think, also play an important role in helping oneself both commiserate with others because it validates what you've been through but also finding resources on working through it.
Speaker 1:So, yes, yeah, all great advice, all advice we've definitely given lots of times around here. It's funny. Therapy is such a weird thing because nowadays everyone recommends go to therapy, go to therapy. And you're like, what am I going to do? Talk about how sad my life was. What do you think that's going to do for me? And I was that kid for a long time.
Speaker 1:I went to therapy when I was in college and it was so useless. My therapist literally didn't say any words to me for a whole year. She would just let me sit there and talk and then the hour would be up and I'm like, are you going to say anything? Like no, okay, you know, once in a while she might ask a question, but it was just like so to me. That was my first introduction to therapy. As, like this is not doing shit for me, I'm good, I'll just fucking figure it out. And so I did for a very long time until I got a therapist.
Speaker 1:Last year. I decided to go back. I got a South Asian therapist and I, literally, within a matter of months, this woman like changed my life and so and I think I saw her for like 12 weeks or something, and I've just taken a little pause, but I'll probably be back again soon because you know it's expensive and but yeah, like good therapy versus bad therapy are just like night and day, even if it's a matter of it's not about all the shit you went through so much as like understanding it, like understanding maybe why it might have happened, and like generational trauma is the worst thing ever, because there's the phase of like Suddenly you have words for the things you went through and realizing that they weren't normal, because for so long, like I was just like I just had brown parents, like all brown parents are like that. Like what am I complaining about? And and then realizing it wasn't normal, but then realizing, like, why it happened to my parents and why they turned out the way they did and then Proceeded to do what they did to me, and then feeling guilty about being angry at them, but then also validating myself that like no, it still was fucked up and you did not deserve that and it's like so it's almost like a double-edged sword, right, and it's complicated and and eventually I think, at least for me, it just came to a point of, like you said, it's like it happened, it's not gonna define me, even though to some extent it always will.
Speaker 1:It has permeated my whole life, but it's like you can move forward, you can decide. I'm gonna decide what I want my life to look like. I'm not gonna repeat these patterns again and I'm going to just move forward and Leave it in the past, because that's all we can really do. Right, you can't, you can only play the cards. Your doubt, yeah, and eventually there's that acceptance of like this is the hand and we're gonna make it work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean to be fair. It's Completely valid to feel anger or sadness at a loss of a childhood. So you think you should have had, or wishing that things would have been different. I think it's completely fine To grieve what you don't have or you didn't have, and you know that grieving process will not happen. So I know as someone who's still grieving her father.
Speaker 2:Grief is complex, it's long, it can be. It can be like you've spent two years not thinking about it and all of a sudden you're sitting in the car crying because something reminded you of someone or something that you experienced. Uh, sometimes I'll see my husband's family and just how supportive they are, and it will not at me Because I'll be like I wish that was my family. I wish my family had been like that, and you know that's okay, don't be. I don't have to blame myself for feeling that way. I can appreciate that I'm still human and I've taken the first step. I've acknowledged that there's a problem. Instead of my parents who like kind of just perpetuated what was given to them, they just kind of took it and passed it along, I'm trying to break that cycle and I'm going to do it differently. And you know that's the biggest step previous generations took, so kudos to me for even taking that step. And you know it is possible that I will still mess up, but I think what makes the difference between at least my family and, hopefully, me, is that taking accountability for venue mess up, taking responsibility for not necessarily having done things the way you should have, which my mom still doesn't take responsibility for not having been a great mother or not having protected us from the various harms that we experienced during our childhood. She's still like Kind of centering herself and her experiences instead of trying to understand how it was like for me. And you know that's Not fair, right, it's completely fine, it's. I think it's completely valid to be like. I want to empathize with my parents and I want to understand that they're only humans in the circumstances they found themselves in, which resulted in the parenting decisions they made. But ultimately, if they're not going to take responsibility for those actions, that is on them and you can absolutely hold them to account on that and and what. Something you should also be able to do for yourself is when you make a parenting decision that isn't a good decision for your kids, or if you make a relationship choice With your husband. That isn't healthy. You can front it, you acknowledge it and you take responsibility for it.
Speaker 2:So one of the first spikes my partner I had, I Gave him the silent treatment because that's what my mom used to do. Whenever my mom would get really angry, she would just go silent treatment and the only solution to that was that you would beg her for several minutes to like talk to you and until she felt that you had done that enough, she wouldn't talk to you. And that was a very distrustful experience as a child, and so I did that to him and then I realized I was doing the exact same thing that had been done to me and how much I hated it. And that was the last time I have ever done that in my relationship. It but it took me recognizing how toxic that was and Also apologizing then to my husband that you know I've eponized this thing that I learned as a kid against you. I shouldn't have done that and I'm not going to do it again.
Speaker 2:That's two things. It's one they Never even realized that something was wrong, or they don't accept that something's wrong and they still don't take responsibility for it, and I think both those things are. Something we can do now is in order to break the cycle, and that puts us steps ahead from where they were in their personal and relationship to all of men. Not to like keep tooting our own horn, but you know it is important because society Constantly reminds us like it loves telling brown women especially never not smart enough, or we're not, you know, good homemakers, or we're not good mothers or we're not. This like we're never quite right on the spectrum of Womanhood, and you know what. We're much better on this specific issue and we should be able to celebrate that amongst ourselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, definitely, and it's so funny. The one thing that is dawned on me kind of recently is because we are so hard on ourselves and South Asian culture has so normalized the most minor flaws in someone and these are arbitrary flaws that our culture has decided is a problem but even the slightest thing that it makes you less than perfect is enough to literally write you off as a person. You know, like we've, like you said, like you know you're not a good enough homemaker, you don't. You don't know how to cook, you don't know how to clean, you know whatever. Or like you were as a kid. Maybe you got a B instead of a 100 on your tests. It wasn't like, oh, maybe you had a bad week or you know, next time, what can we do differently to do better? It was you're a terrible student, you don't work hard enough, you're not even trying, you don't even care how hard we work for you. Like look at all these things we did for you and you're just throwing it away. And like the escalation of getting like an 85 on a test to that and making you feel like you're a bad person, for it is like so fucked up because being out of it now and being around like my in-laws and my extended family on my husband's side and realizing, like Nobody judges people for imperfections the way brown people do. Like there are people in our like extended like Friends and families and whoever where. If my family heard this about them, would have like disowned them and it's like still not even that big of a deal. Or like people that are you know, they're just struggling right, like oh, this person just can't get their life together, or this person is struggling with whatever mental health problems or Whatever it might be okay, things that are actually like you are really like screwing shit up right now and my whole extended family on my husband's side is like it's alright, like he's gonna figure it out, like we're there for them. Like if they need help with something, like we'll, we'll get through it. We're not gonna like throw this person to the curb for you know, messing up in whatever capacity that might be.
Speaker 1:Whereas like and things that like our brown parents, like I Literally have to remind my parents that I'm like listen, when I was telling them about my husband especially, it was like I didn't murder someone, I'm not addicted to drugs, I didn't go to jail. Let's stop acting like this, like I'm such a bad person because I know people who have gone to jail and their parents went and bailed them out and were like I still love you, sweetie, it's okay, okay. And then brown people, and so it's like oh, like you think the fact that I don't cook like you do Makes me a complete waste of life and no one will ever marry me. And then there's like my in-laws, who are like oh, my god, sweetie, you made this today like amazing, this is so great. Like maybe we need to add a little salt to this, but it's great. Like we'll just, you know.
Speaker 1:And Also coming to terms, like you said, recognizing when our reactions Take a while to match up to that Peace, because I remember, like when my husband would mess up like a little bit and I would get like really like annoyed by it and be like why can't you do this? Like it's not even that hard, and I'm like, oh shit, I'm doing that thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm doing that and you know, then being like actually Nothing is that big of a deal, because you didn't murder anyone today on purpose, so you're doing great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've had a chance to bar yeah, and, like I also think this is something I think that's come up on your podcast before is that Brown women especially are. Their value is derived socially from what they can do for other people, and that's not good at all, because our value should never be derived by our utility to other people's needs. That's why so many of us are caretakers. If my husband's sick, he has nothing to worry about. I'm the best person to take care of you if you're sick, but I don't know how to take care of myself. That's the thing. That's how we're socialized, is that's why, apparently, not being able to cook is such an insult to our identity Although I am a good folk, I think question mark Because we're not able to provide that service to others and I think it's really important to take emphasis off of that. Our value is not derived from what we can do for other people. It should be derived from Just who we are. Just our existence in this world is what makes us valuable. I mean so.
Speaker 2:I imagine it's especially really hard for immigrant parents who come abroad and have to work really hard to establish themselves financially in a community. For them, they couldn't have derived value from their mere existence. They have to prove their value in every facet of life. So I completely get it. I understand where that comes from but I've read this quote before and I think it's very relevant to this conversation Is that we want for our kids what we couldn't have had.
Speaker 2:And it's a good thing that our kids don't have to just fight to survive In this country, that our kids can actually aspire for self actualization, they can actually aspire to be happy, whether it means that they don't know how to cook but they are a painter, or they are pursuing a doctorate and you know, whatever it is that they're doing with their life, we should be happy that they even have the option to do that, because, sure, maybe our parents didn't and that's sad, but it's also good that we do. It's how we Get our culture to grow and flourish we can. We don't want it to be stagnated in the 50s now, do we?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, sometimes I think it's second 80s, but it's another day. But obviously through all of this your faith still plays a pretty big role in your life. But you also had mentioned before that you sort of stepped a little bit away from your faith for a while and kind of found your way back. Can you talk to us about that journey?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I guess that I grew up extremely religious. I actually grew up in a house where no one were at a job. But when I was a teenager I kind of had a crisis of faith. I first was like I don't believe in God. I had like a mini rebellious period and then I decided to go full frontal into my faith, which meant I just suddenly became extremely religious. I was probably a very annoying person. So if you knew me between the ages of 13 and 18, I apologize I was a really annoying person. That's gross. Well, I was going to teenage hormones, but then I was also a sanctimonious B-word who thought she knew everything because she had studied a religious book once. So, yeah, I was very terrible. But then that was not sustainable because I eventually realized that I could not hack my way to heaven. And then, once I entered college, I had a crisis of faith Once more. I became very distant from my faith.
Speaker 2:It was really difficult because religion had been both used to hurt me, but it also gave me a lot of meaning. I saw a lot of beauty in my faith. So it was really hard to figure out what it is I wanted. I knew I wanted a connection with God, but I didn't know how to have it because every religious authority around me was using that connection to tell me hey, as a woman you're not equal to a man. You have to be subservient to men, like, your function in life is to breed children, basically. And you know, that was the kind of teachings I grew up with and so. But I wanted to come abroad and I wanted to travel, I wanted to do all these things which were very against how I was raised. So it basically came to a point where I was like I don't know what to believe, so I'm just going to do what it is I want to do, and we'll come back to this later.
Speaker 2:And that's kind of what happened, actually, when I started dating my husband, because, again, it was important to me that he had some kind of connection to Islam. I didn't want him to like not have any understanding or relationship to it at all. So he started to study the religion and then I was stumped because I wanted him to learn things, but I didn't want to turn him into a misogynist either Not that I think you could forcibly make someone a misogynist, but I was like, how do I teach him the parts of faith that are beautiful and not the parts of faith that I think are poisoned. And then, of course, I'm not a spiritual and religious person, so I'm going to say this was maybe God's intervention, but I can you can also say that it was just sheer dumb luck.
Speaker 2:I actually came across an online community of people who shared a lot of the anxieties I did, and then I started studying different like branches of Islam so that's definitely different sects, but different like schools of thought within it and then I realized that a lot of things that were talked to me as like this is canon. You disagree with it. You're basically a blasphemous person. It's not true. It's just again, in the same way that patriarchy has controlled brown women's lives so strongly in South Asia, that diaspora, or in South Asia, in the same way, the same forces have tried to use religion to control women. It doesn't mean that that's inherent to the religion. To be clear, I don't want to make it sound like that people who have experienced religious trauma shouldn't blame that faith for their trauma. Like their trauma is valid and however you feel about it is, you know, completely valid.
Speaker 2:But in my case, I was able to find that separation where I found out okay, I don't think that's what God wants from me, and everything that's messed up 99% of the time can be explained by humans using their limited understanding to interpret a divine text in a way that was often misogynistic and patriarchal, into one way or the other. And when I found more and more Muslims who felt that way, I felt more valid. I didn't feel like I was just a heretic who was like trying to impose her beliefs onto a text from God, actually felt more. Now. I am someone who sees a problem and also sees that that problem is mostly created by men, and I started to read more books by women scholars. I found more progressive scholars and like, as a result, I think that gave me a completely different perspective from what I had been raised with, to the point that you know and this is something a lot of Muslims don't necessarily think is acceptable I'm personally affirming of people of all gender and sexual identities.
Speaker 2:I am also, at this point, believe that interfaith marriages are completely acceptable and, yeah, I have a very different lens of how I relate to God, and I say all of this while I also don at hijab, which often shocks people because people are like how can you wear a hijab, which is like a symbol of conservatism in Islam, and also have like a more progressive interpretation of the faith? And I think that's the thing. There are no strict categories that you must adhere to. You can. There's a lot of fluidity. The structure has been imposed by people who want it to control, not necessarily intrinsic to the faith itself. And, yeah, that's how I've basically found my symbiosis with my faith.
Speaker 2:I'm still I'm still walking, you know, I'm still journeying through this process.
Speaker 2:I don't claim to have achieved that place where, you know, I'm in perfect synchrony with what I believe.
Speaker 2:There are still things I don't have answers to sometimes, but that's okay. I genuinely believe that this is how it was meant to be and I'm I'm glad because I remember, before I decided to date my husband, I performed the Isdaha'ra, which is like a religious prayer you do before making a big decision, and then remember like being like I know you like to God, being like oh my God, you must think that I'm just trying to break the rules and do something terrible and you must be so mad at me. But you know, please stop me if I shouldn't do this. So you know, I went through with it. I dated my husband. We're married now and you know what? I obviously can't prove what it is that a celestial being wanted me or not wanted me to do, but I do believe that. You know, my faith is not about suffering and mystery, it is about beauty and love, and that's how I have consolidated both a religious perspective with my very progressive lens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you found a place that works for you. Because religion is so subjective, even though people want to think, it's not like.
Speaker 1:interpretation is up to the reader, the believer, and because I think you know, as someone who, when I was younger, was very anti-religion also, grew up in a very religious household but have also learned that, like for a lot of people, faith is a real sense of comfort and something to turn to when things are uncertain, especially and it's a you know there's something there and, if anything, I think having no sense of faith is where people end up struggling a bit, because then where do you lean when the world is uncertain?
Speaker 1:How do you come to terms with, like the essentially Russian roulette that is life? Right, like bad things happen to good people. Randomness is what really controls the everyday, right? You can't decide what's going to happen when you walk out the door and that can cause a real existential crisis for people. But I find that people I know who have faith playing a role in their life tend to struggle a bit less with that because of that locus of, I guess, understanding and comfort that comes with it. And so I think I think it can go on, go on.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I think it can go both ways. I think there are a lot of people who use the comfort of religion to justify really shitty behavior. Oh for sure, Like, I know people who will be like oh, it's not that I'm homophobic, it's that my religion tells me that should be this way for you. And it's like no, just say it that you hate a group of people on the basis of some bias that you hold. But no, like they'll use that comfort of knowing that religion often provides. And I think that's why some people don't like it when we're like oh, it's not subjective, because they're like no, it's not subjective, it's this and this and this is the rulebook, and you deviate from it and you're going to hell or you're not a good person if you don't follow it down to the exact inscription that you've been given. And I think that's terrible.
Speaker 2:I don't think that that's a good way to live life. We shouldn't like use our faith to justify our behaviors. Our moral compass should not be restricted to because someone says so, I have to do it. But at the same time, to your point, I think faith does for a lot of people, myself included, provide a sense of meaning, a sense of security that even when nothing makes sense, something does make sense and you can lean on it, you can commit with it, you can kind of process even bad things in your life through your faith, and I think that's a good thing.
Speaker 2:I also think at the same time that if you're someone who doesn't like, I've also met a lot of cultural Muslims people who are raised Muslims don't necessarily have faith but enjoy having that cultural relationship to the faith, and I think that's fine too if that is how. And I know a lot of their cultural Hindus as well who will also kind of celebrate the rituals or participate in a lot of the penance of faith, but not necessarily in a very spiritual or religious sense. And I think that's great too because a lot of the times religions have evolved because they provide a sense of community and a sense of belonging to people, and so I think completely natural if you find your sense of belonging and meaning through these structures, even if you don't necessarily best your beliefs Exactly.
Speaker 1:Whatever role it wants to serve in your life is up to you and, like I always tell people, you're not married to your beliefs. You can change your mind. It's not a big deal. So that's kind of where I leave it on religion, but I feel like we've covered so many different topics. I think there are lots of good things here that I'm sure people will take away. But thank you so much for being a guest. My last question is always the same. If you could leave the audience with some words of wisdom or a piece of advice, what would it be?
Speaker 2:I think what I would say is that you are your own best friend. I already said that earlier, but I think I just really want to emphasize that you're your own best friend. Find a way to love yourself. And once you have found a way to love yourself, you don't have to love yourself all the time, but once you've found a way to love yourself most of the time, you will find that you will cultivate relationships and pursue goals that are meaningful and supportive to you.
Speaker 1:That's it, beautiful, love it. Thanks again for coming on. It's been a pleasure. Happy to be here. Thanks so much for tuning in guys. Make sure if you enjoyed this episode you leave us a review on iTunes. You can find the show on all major streaming platforms. You can find me on Instagram at Dishamazeppa. You can shop my Etsy shop, disha Mazeppa Designs. Find out everything you want to know about this show at DishaMazeppacom, and if you or someone you know would like to be a guest, you can email bwpspodcast at gmailcom. And I'll see you guys next time. Bye. This podcast is hosted and produced by Disha Mystery Mazeppa Music for the show was created by Crackswell.