Naima B. Robert – Chatting Sr Farzana about the conference
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Guys. Welcome.
Well, I don't know if anybody will see
this, but basically,
I was on a live
conversation with, brother Gabriel Romani,
on Instagram.
Fantastic conversation. Masha'Allah. It was going really well
and
my battery died. So
that was the end of that.
And I had to, I had to abort
the mission. And then I had another live
that was booked. And I had to,
I had to just say to the sister,
listen, let's, let's just do it on zoom,
and let's go live in YouTube because obviously
this weekend, the conference is going to be
live streamed into YouTube. So we might as
well get practice with being in YouTube. YouTube.
Right. So I do believe that my guest
is here. So sister Farzana, are you ready
for me to make you a panelist and
promote you into being a panelist? I have
done that now.
So hopefully you'll be able to join me
and, yeah, people will be able to see
us both and we can have a little
chat. And,
listen, I just wanna thank all of you
guys for rocking with me over on the
IG lives. It's been really interesting. I've had
a chance to talk to so many of
you, masha'Allah.
Well, to talk and see
your responses and, and respond to some of
your comments and the questions, etcetera. So I'm
really, really pleased.
It's been fun. It's been fun.
Are you able to come off, are you
able to come off mute?
Yes. Wonderful. How are you doing, sis?
I'm okay.
Excellent. Well, we're just here in test mode,
sis. Just trying out the, the the the
the tech
of, you know, taking our Zoom conversation and
putting it out into YouTube. It seems to
be working okay.
So listen, sis, tell us a little bit
about you and the work that you do,
and what you're going to be talking about
at the conference on the weekend.
Okay.
And thanks for inviting me. It's an honor
to be here.
Yeah. So what I do is I work
with them, sisters who are facing marital conflict,
and they'll come to me. And
sadly, sometimes it's
towards the point where they're going through a
divorce, and now they're taking the steps to
come and get some coaching from me.
So and, I'm qualified as a complimentary therapist,
and that means I use a range of
therapies and tools
when I work with sisters.
So, yeah, that's a little bit about what
I do.
Yeah. I love that. And,
I wanna say as well that
well, I think the question that comes to
mind for me is,
are most of us waiting
until it's too late
before getting help with our marriages? What do
you what's your opinion? What do you think?
Sadly, in some most cases, yeah,
because we think we can deal with it
ourselves or we go to the wrong people.
We'll choose family members who we believe,
and there's nothing wrong with asking a family
member to intervene.
The thing is sometimes there's biases in that
where that family member will take your side
and then his family member will take his
side. So there's a danger of that.
If sisters decide to get help, they should
seek help from a professional or someone who's
trained. It could be someone that's a professional
within the family. It doesn't necessarily have to
be someone that's out of the family. It
can be someone
that like, for myself,
I'm qualified.
If I have a family member who's in
distress or needs me, I'll be there for
them if they want me to. Yeah. But
yeah. And so it's it's extremely
important that we take the steps earlier
rather than when it's it's it's never too
late, but there is a point when
some sisters have suffered so much
within a negative environment
that they could've they could've left that environment
easily, you know, before
rather than leaving it until the end and
then
make a sometimes it becomes a messy divorce
or a messy Right.
Right. SubhanAllah.
And do you think that in our communities
in particular, there is,
just a reluctance to get help or a
reluctance to be honest about what's actually going
on.
Yeah. I think that in in some cases,
there's a lot of,
a lack of trust
because
some sisters believe that, okay, if if it's
someone that's within my culture,
that person might share my details with others.
Wow. And what they don't realize is when
you're a qualified therapist or
a coach or, you know, within that field
Mhmm.
You're you're bound by a contract not to
share. And
I believe as a Muslim, our contract is
with Allah,
sisters and brothers feel that way, that they
cannot approach a Muslim,
brother or a sister
and share their,
challenges that they're facing
because of
slight,
lack of trust. SubhanAllah.
You know, that's that's really, really tough. And
it's it's difficult to be in a situation
where there's nobody that you can talk to
and nobody that you can trust. And,
you know, obviously, this weekend, we're gonna be
having the secrets of successful wives conference starting
on Friday.
Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
And, you know, we talk about the journey
to marriage. So before you're a wife, how
to prepare, what to expect, things like this.
And then we also talk about, you know,
within the marriage, how to get the most
out of the marriage. Right? But remember when
you and I were talking about what you
were specifically going to,
to address.
And
it was this situation where
for many people, and this I believe this
very strongly.
I believe this to be true that
any couple that have been together for more
than 5 years, right, definitely if they've been
together for more than 10 years,
they've been through some stuff. Okay? Like, they
have been through at least one major something.
Right?
So the ones that you see on the
other end of 10, 15, 20 years,
they've typically been through, you know, big upheavals,
but they've managed to make it to the
other side of that and continue. And I
have, you know, examples in my own family
of people who really like,
they were on the verge of just like
tearing each other apart.
And if anybody had
seen that, they would have been like, you
know what? Can you guys just leave each
other alone? Like, can you just break up
already? Okay. Because this is * for everyone.
Right? This is awful. It's not supposed to
be like this.
They chose to stick it out. They chose
to continue
to work on it. And, subhanAllah,
now a couple of years later,
I I believe they're reaping the benefits of
that. Because even though it was a terrible
situation,
they were able to get to the other
side of that and find themselves now in
a rather blissful situation, which is crazy. Right?
But you're gonna be talking about how to
heal a marriage. So
again, people who have been through something, whatever
it is, betrayal, loss of a child, you
know, loss of, you know, wealth, whatever it
is. And, you know, kind of are are
have just chosen to stay and work through
it. Tell us a little bit more about
what that state looks like.
Okay. So
if we go back to where you mentioned
how people get through,
you know, turmoil or challenges within their marriage,
I think the foundations are that
sometimes, like I mentioned before, we go out
and we seek help from others.
And like you said, in some cases, family
members will say to you, okay, it's time
to move on. It's time to let go.
This is enough. And
it's it's not about those family members, it's
actually about
the married couple. And I think when that
couple decide that they're not going to,
act upon what others believe is right for
them and they choose what's right for them
as as 2 individuals,
that's when the healing process starts. Because they
start to realize
that it's not about what other people think
I should be in my relationship.
Because
if the majority of people, they'll base their
relationships on, say, Bollywood or Hollywood or or
what the norm is in society.
So what we believe is is the,
you know, the right marriage or the best
marriage and things. So we have to be
extremely careful
which direction we're kind of
going towards Mhmm. Facing a conflict within our
relationship. So it's not just about, okay, my
mom or my dad or my brother kinda
gave me that advice, and they know best.
But you have to think, okay, they know
best for them. Yeah. Do they know best
for me? Yeah. Yeah. That's a such a
good point, SubhanAllah, because
it's so funny because, you know,
many of us come from cultures where
families feel
entitled
to to to
to influence you to make decisions this way
or that way. Right? Or even to make
decisions for you. Male and female. It's not
just women, it's men too. Right? And I
always because I'm not from a culture like
that. It's always interesting to me to observe
it from the outside because
I always ask myself.
So
if this person makes this decision because their
father said so, or their mother said so,
or the aunt or the great uncle or
the grandfather has said, this is how it
needs to be, or this is where you
need to go, or this is who you
need to marry or whatever the case may
be.
Those people who, have an opinion,
they don't live
the risk the consequences of the choice.
Right? Good or bad. If it works out,
they don't enjoy the fruits necessarily.
And if it doesn't work out, they're not
the ones paying the price for that. So
it's very interesting to me that people feel
so strongly
that, no, you must do it this way,
or you have to do that, or you
can't do this. When at the end of
the day,
if that person follows your advice and they,
you know, there is the consequence for that,
you can't take the consequence for them. They
are the ones who are gonna suffer the
consequence of that. SubhanAllah. I don't know. What
what are your thoughts on that? Because I
find it fascinating personally.
I think
it's
it's time we kinda step away from culture.
That's a big one. It's a big one.
Yeah. We respect culture, and there's positives about
culture, but that there's also negatives about it.
And I think
we can't just, at the same time, point
it towards culture and say, okay, culture. This
this is the press the pressure that culture
is putting on married couples because society as
a whole
has this perfect image of a marriage. So
we come under that pressure. We come under
that pressure of society, of what is right,
you know. We we look at each other
and think, okay,
You know, in some cases, I love sisters
where they say, oh,
one of my friends, her husband takes her
out to dinner all the time.
Or, you know, or they're going out together,
they're spending time together, but what that sister
doesn't know is behind closed doors.
Is is that husband with that sister all
the time, or is he busy in his
work life, or is that sister herself busy
in his work life? And they actually make
time to spend
together.
So The the other thing that that that
makes me think of is, you know, I've
I've seen it happening here in Egypt where,
you know, young couples coming up who have
friends around the same age, you know, one
will compare her husband in terms of, you
know, how much he spends on her, for
example, you know, in terms of gifts, in
terms of holidays, in terms of that kind
of thing. And if it doesn't match
what her friend's husband is is doing,
it's a problem. And it it's a problem
that comes into their home and it becomes
something between them and their relationship. Right? And
I remember a friend of mine sat her
down once, set this young lady down.
And she just said to her, firstly,
if you can embrace gratitude
and truly
love your husband for who he is and
all that he is and all that he
does bring and literally let go of the
stuff that he doesn't do, he doesn't bring
or whatever. You'll be happier, but also
understand that that other person who has the
means to buy these gifts, etcetera,
there's a price for that. You know, he's
paying the price for that. And his wife
is probably paying the price for that because
he's probably working very, very hard, Right? If
he's an extremely driven individual, very successful,
he doesn't have time to chill and, you
know, Netflix and chill and all of this
kind of thing that people do. He's got,
you know, he's got his stuff to do.
So, yes, she may have the bags.
Yes. She may have the, you know, the
the allowance or whatever.
But what is the price that they're paying
in their relationship for her to be able
to have those things? If
you can
find it in yourself to kind of look
at it on balance and say, you know
what, they've chosen what they've chosen
and they're paying the price for whatever they've
chosen.
I've chosen what I've chosen and I'm happy
to pay the price for what it is
that I've chosen. You know, I wanted a
man who was down to earth, who would
be able to be an active dad, whatever
the case may be. And I have that.
Well, you can't have the active dad and
the man who's really down to earth, who
has time for you and time for family
and compare him with the super driven businessman
who doesn't have time for anything and say,
why are you not more like him? It's
like, well,
because I'm not,
I guess.
Yeah. I think I think, yeah, a lot
of a lot of sisters and brothers don't
understand that because,
a lot of comparing goes on. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's
it's not healthy. It's not healthy at all.
It's not. It's not.
Well, you know what? I'm not we're not
going to go into it too much because
I know that you have a talk that
you're doing on the weekend.
So for those of you who haven't booked
your tickets yet well, not booked your tickets.
If you haven't claimed
your free ticket, then you know what to
do. Go to the link in the description
bit.lee/successfulwives
and grab your free ticket. Now,
I think by the end, by the time
you watch this,
they will have been 6,000 tickets claimed and
only 4,000 left.
So you know what you need to do,
you need to claim your tickets and you
need to claim and make sure your family
claim all their tickets so that you don't
miss out inshallah. And if you want to
join us inside the room, inside the zoom
room and get priority Q and a, as
well as access to exclusive workshops and sessions
that are not available to the public, make
sure that you upgrade for the VIP ticket.
Sister,
do you have anything else Farzana that you
want to say to people to encourage them
to come this weekend and benefit inshallah?
I think it's extra. I know we're going
to talk about wives, the secret of successful
lives, but I think brothers can also benefit.
So
I think just join and
definitely you'll get something from it. There's so
many amazing speakers on there. So Yeah. Yeah.
Definitely.
Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time,
sister Farzana. We'll let you get back to
things in the home, and we'll see you
guys on the weekend.
Don't listen, as they used to say back
in the day, be there or be square.
All right.