My family separated when I was 13 years old, making me grow up way before my age. Even with the tension at home, my family ensured that we kids had a positive environment to grow in. Today, we are a family of 11 brothers and sisters, who love each other and make an effort to remain connected, with miles in between us. When it comes to my dealing with life, I realized that balancing is not the way to be stable in either the professional or the personal aspect of it. Instead, it’s about doing our best no matter what role we play in life.

As a woman, too, I take care of my emotions and have control over my life. This is irrespective of my role as a mother, a wife, or a daughter. I believe that I am doing my best, and that is what helps me push myself further. One of the biggest blessings I’ve received is my positive mindset. This drives me to take responsibility for my own life, always making me look for solutions to every obstacle.

This one time in Qatar, I was looking for information on how to hire house help. I had a tough time finding one, so I decided to solve my problem by starting a group on a social media platform to find house help. This initiative started in June 2015, now has about 42,000 members. Today this initiative has turned into a group of people that people use to find house help as well as jobs and clients! I was glad to see that my initiative could make a huge impact in the lives of thousands of people, especially women. 

It was gratifying to read letters that came pouring in every day telling me how our service helped people in their difficult times. Knowing that I could provide opportunities for women to be independent and support their own families with basic necessities such as a one-time meal is what kept me going, both in the past as well as today. So, no matter the nature of our job, what’s crucial is that we put our best foot forward. Yes, as women, you may notice disparities at work every once in a while. But it is also for us women to decide how we want to go ahead with it. We do not need to accept opinions or gestures that are wrong.

We, as women especially mothers and wives, will prioritize their families and their husbands' dreams first before their own dreams. This is since it’s expected from mothers and women in general to be the main support and nurturers for the family. We need to decide what kind of leader we want to be. Leadership isn’t limited to our professional life, after all. I have experienced setbacks of my own too. At the age of 34, I suffered from depression. But what got me out of it was my mindset to get control of my life. However, this period taught me how important it is for us to love ourselves unconditionally. Post this episode, I traveled for two years and found my happiness trying to live my life to the fullest! I stopped waiting for society to accept me and my desires. Instead, I simply go for it. If I had a superpower for just one day, I would like to clone myself to make tens and thousands of me! Our work would then run in double the efficiency helping a greater number of women.

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