World Mental Health Day & beyond.

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A Letter of Truth and Resiliency
in sharing my greatest discovery within these
7 months of solitude as a creative entrepreneur.

​By Saira Hussain

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​My name is Saira Hussain and I am a powerful womxn of colour of many gifts and offerings. As a creative entrepreneur and newly wed, I decided to take control of my life instead of living in fear of what could have been the result of...

If I remained in fear of the unknown.
If I allowed societal pressures to refrain myself from crossing boundaries.
If I further isolated myself within my own home and relationship.
If I increased the volume of my inner critic; my inner voice.
If I deprived myself of nutrition and voluntary movement.

Here is where I share my journey of what I have learned to be some of the greatest lessons while living in the pandemic.

Before we begin, I'd like you to take a moment to applaud yourself, acknowledging that you are well enough to read this letter and sit comfortably in your own home even though the season is in transition and the sun now has a curfew. Recall your favourite moments from these past 7 months and write them down. See how far you have come; you are becoming.

Write yourself a letter to declutter your mind and empty out the emotional turmoil that you as a human are guaranteed to feel; grieving during adversity and energized happiness when success is achieved. Life is a combination of the binary; known and the unknown. The two knowns of our life is that we are BORN & we have an EXPIRY date.
Two parts of our lives that we know very little about.

In this compassion-filled entry, I wanted to share the common mistakes I have made, which may help ease your addiction in being a perfectionist or living life with expectation. If you have an addiction of working or being a perfectionist, learn to let obstacles pass you and not dampen or weigh your spirit down. Stress and anxiety are real; our mental health is real and with it comes many remedies and time to heal.


And so I begin..

What I am writing here is only a shard of the glass that protects my vision from becoming a blur. 
There is much to be said in this time and I will continue to write an entry here weekly in continuing to better my mental state and share my learned gifts, which were always inside me.

These gifts are inside your vessel.

It took me months to confirm that I too had a being inside, layered beautifully beneath my skin and soul. At first, I felt as if nothing has changed and the uncertainty of the world was a passing storm, but I know now that with every month came another challenge; a deeper cut into the flesh of me to unveil the greater wounds of the Inner Child. Right below these wounds is my essence, trapped but willing to grow outward and fight these layers of codependency on society (family, past relationships, work, social media, pain and trauma). This is where my essence lives; my being of choice and reasoning behind reality and my dream world. We all have days of celebrating ourselves with higher dosages of SELF-WORTH & other days where we are fuelled off of negative eating patterns.

We are HUMAN.
The Pandemic is not!

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           As I connected with more womxn than ever before, I realized that I was establishing a union with magical womxn who were so ahead of me and many others behind. It wasn't a competition but a healthy conversation built from vulnerability and learning to actively engage with one another's stories or simply listen. We just needed someone to listen; to give colour to our patterns of black and white. We were already stripped of long over-due embraces with loved ones, we couldn't go on without the engagement with strangers. Have you ever smiled at someone on the street? How has that made you feel?

This is what I'm referring to - the kindness and gentle human that ceases to amaze you in that one moment with a gesture of a smile. WHAT A FEELING THAT IS!

With compassion...
we are now building conversations in initiating the pathways in our brains to break down barriers that were once built by society to protect us.
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It wasn't until the pandemic hit home, here in North America that I felt an involuntary surge of electricity go through my entire body. No, this was not an orgasm. This was a very real and powerful force that was associated with my mental health. I needed to find the answers in bettering my mental, emotional and physical health because the society I was once raised in, had for the first time in years become unstable to live in. This was the alarm that I needed to hear that would change my life for the better.

It made me realize the following:

With compassion ...
we now lead the world with resiliency and open-ended questions to challenge the very state our minds had once so comfortably, moulded into our beds. Comfort bores us and so we begin a new blueprint of divine logic and emotional well-being.

With compassion...
we long to travel into great thought and discussions, which lead us to the greater paths beyond the unknown. This will build us stronger in allowing room for the storm and to be placed in the bare ridden field. In isolation, we have connected to our gifts. 

The boundaries that were placed to repel our intuition created allowance for fear. We have been comfortable with practicing segregation, following the misguidance of knowledge on social media and the battle between our radicalized emotions and recognizing factual information. We never allowed ourselves to see that facts and feelings hold two separate spaces in the acknowledgement of reasoning and the reality and cause of events.

For example, you could be in a longterm friendship of trust that you feel is unjust because your feelings and thoughts go unnoticed. But in doing the work in personal therapy, self-awareness, you find the missing known. That you were tightly knotted in a codependent relationship with that individual. What do you then share with the person you trusted most? What emotions do you feel, relay to that friend? Why does it feel like it's not meant to last?

Because you are growing. You are learning to fight for yourself. Be on your own. And you now have the power to mend your own wounds and heal from within. As love has its many transitional periods in life (it changes just like the season) from youth to adulthood, so does friendship or any relationship.

"...The very differences that painted our vessels were the gifts that the creator himself, embedded into our skin so that we too would take out time to practice gratitude & kindness for ourselves..."

We were made with solutions for every problem and now we have the awareness that will lead us to living our greatest adventure yet. You are not alone in heartbreak, your soul is there to guide you and your essence is there to question your present state. She will also question your future self, so build resilience to have the patience to gain awareness to self-worth. You have always had yourself.

​To those that are reading this message..

Never stop believing in yourself.
Guidance will come.
Trust your intuition & lead with love.


It has been over a month since I have blogged about a prayer. 
Today marks 7 months since I began my becoming.

Till we meet again.
With gratitude,

SAIRA HUSSAIN

​Founder, Breath of Henna & Love Letter Community