I work in the field of life coaching and training.
I’m not from Cairo.
I’m from Upper Egypt,
From Minya specifically.
I came here alone.
Meaning I left behind my family—
And I come from a big family—
And my job, life, and friends.
And I’m a sociable person,
And I like maintaining close relationships with people.
So, my family and friends mean the world to me.

I left all this behind,
And came here to get married.
I’m all alone now.
My husband’s family lives in Alexandria.
I have no one here.
It was a challenge for me,
To leave everything behind and come here by myself.
I left my family, friends and my job,
And came here.

Things are more liberal here,
For someone from Upper Egypt.
I don’t really fit in.
It was a completely different kind of culture for me.

This affected my relationship with my husband.
My husband is close to those open-minded people,
Who see things differently,
And never give up.

It wasn’t like that for me.
There was one path for me to follow.
The only one I knew.
That’s what I learned from my family.

This shook me.
It shook my self-confidence.

I got pregnant right away.
My relationship with my husband changed,
Because having a baby in a relatively new community wasn’t easy.
It’s as if he wanted to be with someone else.
Someone who shared the same beliefs.

I was completely alone.
What could I do?
I decided to focus on myself.
But where would I start?
I loved to work,
So I decided to find a job.
I found things to do with flexible hours,
Considering that I have a baby.
I started to work on myself in the process.

I began taking personal development and coaching courses.
They were more like psychology courses.

Those courses had a great impact on me when I started to work.
When the reality I was living in shook me,
I had to take a moment with myself.
“You came here from Upper Egypt.
You’ve lived in a closed community your entire life,
And now you’re living in a society that’s a lot more liberal.”

You have to keep in mind that Cairo consists of social classes.
Not all people are the same.
I was living among the A Class,
Which mainly consisted of people who live in Europe,
And have a different mindset.
Perhaps if I had lived somewhere else in Cairo,
It would’ve been easier.
That’s what I told myself.
I had to think realistically.
I come from an Upper Egyptian society,
That had its own way of thinking.
It’s a very conservative society.
I left my family, my friends and my job.
I left my entire life there,
So it’s normal that things are like this here.

Confronting myself with that reality made me accept it.
I became confident and grounded.
I then had another girl.
Confronting myself made all the difference.
Yes, I loved to work,
But my children needed me.

I decided to stop working,
But I attend workshops every now and then.
My children are my priority now.
I’ll live my life when they grow up.