It’s taken me a year and a half to share this book with you. I’ve been carrying it around with me, soaking in its lessons while changing my life to live by them, and so I had to wait to be ready to talk about it. I read a lot of books, and whenever I’m asked what my absolute favorite one is, this is the one that I go back to time after time after time. When I cleared off the 18 (18!) books that I’d been hoarding on my bedside table, this is the one that was chosen above all others to have a permanent residency so I could be reminded of its lessons. It had a profound impact on my life and I mean that quite literally.
Does anyone else go into book shops and, instead of reading the blurb on the back, they pick up a book and turn to the first page that naturally drops open to see if it’s going to be a good fit? This is something I started doing last year and it’s now how I choose pretty much all of my books. I am usually guided to a book or lesson that I don’t even know I need. Call it the Universe, the earth’s energy, God… Whatever it is, it brought me to this book all those months ago.
In the personal development section, amongst the Brene Brown, Gabrielle Bernstein, Elizabeth Gilbert magic, I happened upon this stunning orange cover and immediately felt drawn to it. Zainab Salbi isn’t someone that I had heard of before, but when I opened that page I felt like she was a long-lost friend. On page 36, she was telling the story of how her marriage was falling apart and how she was struggling to reveal that she was unhappy. By avoiding the truth to spare other people, her silence was causing pain to the people she cared about. I too was avoiding my truth and staying quiet. I had distanced myself from most of my friends and family and was battling with severe depression. I didn’t hear my heart anymore and I had to find out how she was able to come back to herself. So I took it home.
From a top-down level, Zainab is a celebrated humanitarian who grew up as the daughter of Saddam Hussein’s personal pilot and dedicated her life to helping women in war-torn countries. The magic in the book isn’t about her activism. It’s about her own journey of returning to herself over and over again. It’s exceptionally personal. Through arranged marriages, divorce, the pain and ultimate revolution of finding stillness, and the ultimate exploration of self, she teaches us that the way for us to step into light is to accept and acknowledge what is ugly and uncomfortable about ourselves.
She tackles the topics of forgiveness, truth, expectations, beauty standards, doing the right thing, and overcoming fear with intense vulnerability and anecdotes from her personal and professional experiences. It’s a reminder to me that we not only have the power to transform our own lives, regardless of where we are or what we’ve been through, but by doing that we are able to change the world.
These were some of the lessons that changed my life…
I became present and aware of the darkness in which I was residing. I was so unhappy. There was so much darkness and silence in my life and I was filling this emptiness with stuff, food and every avoidance tool I could think of while craving connection to the deeper sense of self. Once I started listening to that side of myself, I knew what I had to do. Having both light and dark inside you is normal, but how you respond to them is how you know whether you’re on the right path.
I realized that it’s through the smallest changes that the biggest ripple effects can be found. Once I had made the big decisions, the ones that mattered when it came to real, long-term healing were the small changes such as sleeping in a little bit longer, choosing to drink one glass of water, lighting a candle, scheduling an extra therapy session… Those are what lead to real revolution.
When one person breaks her silence, she paves the way for others. I’ve always been passionate about storytelling. It’s why I’m a content artist by trade and why I’ve always chosen to focus on the individual at an educational, professional and personal level. But there was vulnerability in her stories, and in how she described the stories of others, that led to true change in my life. In telling the ins and outs of how she left her marriage, how she faced her darkness, and what it meant to come back to herself, she was recounting with an honesty I wasn’t used to. It wasn’t a step-by-step guide, but rather an invitation. An invitation to look deeper at my own story and shine light on the parts of myself that were denied for too long.
Here are ten of my favorite lessons and quotes that I took away from this book. Please feel free to screenshot, download and share her magic!
Ultimately what she teaches us is this: freedom is not something we get from outside forces. Instead “…freedom comes from inside, from owning our shadow as well as our light and from walking in our truths in all their complexities.”
What are you hiding from in your life that is stopping you from hearing your heart and returning to yourself?
