2025, a year crowded with blessings, opened with profound grief. I lost a beloved sister, a philanthropist, a service woman, a force of quiet good. As summer waned, I received the news that my other sister, whose disarming sense of humour was a unique language of love, had died. One’s fierce four-year journey with cancer concluded; the other was gone just three weeks after diagnosis. Before I could wrap my mind around the loss, my daughter, after a pregnancy perfect in every sense, lost her child a few hours before his birth.
As my twelve-year-old daughter put it, we were engulfed in a bubble of sadness, unsure when, or if, the darkness above us would lift.
I am a woman of faith. Islam has always been my anchor, especially in moments of confusion and overwhelming emotions. Its teachings are particularly clear in grief: “We are from Allah, and to Him we return.” I accept that. I accept Allah as my Creator, and I accept His decree.
That acceptance did not cancel sadness. Nor should it.
Sadness, took a real toll. For years, I have spent more than seventy percent of my working hours advising change-makers and service transformers. Most of our encounters are critical by nature: last-minute calls, high-profile meetings, difficult trade-offs, problems that arrive fully formed and expect clarity in return. We discuss solutions. Occasionally, I see delivery by my own hands. More often, my team carries the work forward on the ground, returning only when something truly resists resolution.
Things were working beautifully, despite the sadness. What I did not expect was how quietly things began to change.
There was no breaking point. No single morning when I could not get out of bed. From the outside, I remained exactly as I had always been: responsive, composed, dependable. Inside, something subtler shifted, not deliberately, not dramatically, but quietly.
This is the problem with being reliable.
When you are known for steadiness, you still deliver. You still hold space for other people’s urgency.
In our type of work, we reward this. We admire those who never wobble, never slow down, never shake. Endurance become the unspoken job description. And because everything still functions, no one asks what it costs.
I am still figuring out what this season requires of me. What to hold closely. What to adjust. What it means to lead change without losing heart in the process. Some days I get it right. Some days I revert to old habits because reliability is a difficult identity to set down.
But I am paying closer attention now, to the quiet signals, to the spaces between meetings, to the difference between showing up and being present. I do not have conclusions yet. Only a growing suspicion that change-making is not sustained by those who give endlessly, but by those who learn, again and again, how to take care of themselves while being counted on.
And perhaps that, too, is a kind of work worth taking seriously.