Just four months before she passed we celebrated her 80th birthday where I crowned her the queen. The queen that created her own kingdom, on her own terms. My mother, a singularly beautiful soul inside out, is a story to be told. Not because she is my mother, but because she is the seed that bore this blog.

It has been two years since the budding idea of the Creative Bloom blog first broke ground.  In that time, I had numerous lengthy conversations with close friends speculating on the form that the blog would take, but never being able to clearly define its existence.

You see, I have always maintained a natural curiosity across a multitude of areas and a comprehensive knowledge in a fair few. I have trained, consulted, managed, created, marketed, coached and researched with executives, managers, employees, entrepreneurs, women, students, children and many in between! So, each time my eyes rose to the heavens to attempt to connect the constellations, I always came back to the same question; who should I target and what is it that I wanted to say?  The answer finally came to me in the days following my mother’s passing.

Consumed with grief over the loss of my mother, and yet feeling her presence in every fibre of my being, I could hear her gentle voice persistently telling me to, ‘get myself together and be useful; to use my gift’. I kept quietly replying, ‘what gift? I have no gift; you were my gift mama and I just lost it.’

The question lingered unanswered, until I awoke one night to a vision of my mother in a pure white dress.  She was gazing down, deep in thought, as she would always do and uttering one word: GIVE! The word illuminated my night and the recesses of my mind, like a neon sign in a dark alley, radiating a tangible buzz of energy into the still air. Excitement, fear, hope, happiness and sadness charged through me in unison, overloading my senses, when suddenly, through the melee, my focus settled on the word, ‘Give’.  What a beautiful word to begin my conversation with mom and yet, what a responsibility mom had given me.

The giving of material things is easy, but giving from within takes commitment.  I believe there is nothing more beautiful than a person courageous enough to give freely from their heart and mind, unconcerned with seeking anything in return.  Meditating on this thought, I began reciting ‘Yacin’ from the Holy Quran each night before I slept.  I hoped it would reignite my conversation with my mom, so I could understand how I should proceed, to know what I should give and how I should give.  Night after night though, Mama did not come back, yet!

Fruitless in pursuit of another vision, I decided to look within.  Suddenly, I knew that the answers already resided in me, nurtured by my mother over our decades together and ready to bloom when I was.

So, I asked myself, ‘what did mom represent’? What message did she give to her children and to those she touched? What resides in me that can reflect her being? Mulling over each question in my mind, it came to me: Female empowerment! Mom was the perfect embodiment of female empowerment. She was the one who taught me to believe in myself and never allow anyone to make me feel inferior because of my gender. In fact, she made me feel unstoppable as a woman in our traditionally male-dominated society.

Surprisingly, and this is the uniqueness of my mother, she was my cheerleader without defying this mindset nor rebelling against our own culture. She was a devoted mother, a loving wife, a committed society contributor, a respected member of family and friends, and a good Muslim. She symbiotically belonged to her time, at the same time as being ahead of it.

The first time I wanted to do something that moved against what society viewed as acceptable for women, my mother patted me on the shoulder and approved. The next time, my mother held my hand and walked the mile with me. The time after that she left my hand and just maintained a caring eye. Every time after that she would look at me with pride, my job is done, she probably thought. Watching the seed she planted blossoming with colourful petals full of potential, finding its own path in the ground. A ground that is fertilized for all kind of seeds, big or small, strong or fragile, male or female. The ground fits us all.