"I was alone with him when he died."

Hey, how are you? And if you say, fine, I'm gonna assume you mean, like, the acronym. Freaked out, insecure, neurotic, and emotional. That was doing the rounds when I was a kid. Back then, I would laugh because it sounds silly. Now that I'm in my 40s, I laugh because it's true. Have you heard of the term Life quake? Well, in this podcast we talk about life quakes, those unpredictable seismic shifts in time that lead to

profound growth and empowerment. You can expect heartfelt conversations throughout the season that reveal the joy and discomfort of unexpected change. And I think you're going to like it here. My name is Shawn, and this is something shifted. Today's story belongs to Zoraida. My mom died when I was 33. And even then, like, 20 years later, there was still no discussion around that day. That's next. I lead a demanding lifestyle and I'm

very guilty of wanting more for less. Especially when it comes to food. I want to feel like I'm eating restaurant food, but I don't want to leave my house and I really don't want to organize a babysitter. I want to try new flavors, but I also don't want to spend money on ingredients that I might never use again. And let's be honest, I don't want to eat the same thing over and over, but I really don't have time to think about what we're going to eat for dinner every night. You know what I mean?

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We'll never know exactly when our last day is, what I last meal will be, or who the last person is. We'll see the last person we speak to, the last person we touch. But for the person that does stay behind, the last time is never forgotten.

My dad was working a night shift that that evening, and I went to his room and he was lying. He was sitting up in bed and he had these chest pains and he was groaning. Zoraida was the last person to see her dad alive. She was the last person to speak to him. She was also the last person to comfort him. And as a teenager, she was in conflict with her mom. And I said to him, you know, come get up. Dad. And I could tell that something was wrong, but I didn't call for.

I didn't call for my mom. Um, and then I just sat with him. I think I was rubbing his back or touching his back, and then he just toppled over in front of me and was dead. And then I started screaming. I vividly remember getting onto the bed and just jumping up and down like screaming, and it felt like it took the longest time for my mom to actually come upstairs. I don't know why they took that long, but they took a really long time.

And, um, you know, they tried to give him mouth to mouth and I just, I then head away. I remember hiding away. It was still those days where the doctors would come to your home. And so a doctor came to our home, and he just walked down the stairs, and he looked at me and he shook his head, and I guess that was he's dead. Um, yeah. The next morning, rising to her feet filled with grief and confusion, Feelings of indescribable loss. Zoraida polished her school shoes and headed off to class.

No one said to me, Zoraida, would you like to stay home? There was no. What was that like? There was no therapy. I was alone with my dad when he died. No one spoke to me about it. It was certainly my first entry into the feeling of abandonment and profound loss, and also the start to my hypervigilance, my hyper independence, my hyper burnout. You know, I don't come from a family that communicated. There was no processing that happened when you passed away. And my dad, my dad was Muslim.

And Muslim people get buried, you know, kind of immediately when they die. My dad died on the 22nd of March and was buried on the 22nd of March, and I went to school the next day. There is an undeniable shift in the way you see the world when you watch a loved one take their last breath. And when you're dealing with regular teenage feelings of insecurity, peer pressure and pimples. Your brain is trying its utmost to make sense of the trauma,

the only way it knows how. And so all this coping led to a

lot of dysfunctional behavior. And when I say dysfunctional, I'm not talking about sex, drugs and rock and roll. I'm talking about just coping and trying to achieve more and more and more and becoming hyper independent, because I was so scared that no one was going to be able to take care of me. So I had to make sure that I could take care of myself. My mom didn't say to me, he's a writer, we've got no money. I mean, my mom didn't work, but my dad certainly didn't

leave you no money. My sister's 12 years older than me, and so she'd been working at the time. So she definitely helped us financially. But no one put pressure on me to go out and work. No one put pressure on me to achieve. I did that to myself. So my dad's loss was my what? I made sense of what abandonment was, and that was because no one spoke to me. No one spoke to me or helped me process stuff. I mean, the fact that I went into broadcasting is no surprise.

I've always been a communicator and, um, I've always loved and enjoyed and celebrated speaking about feelings. And I would speak to my mum about my feelings all the time, and she inevitably would make fun of me, and so would my aunts. In fact, that very day, the reason I went upstairs to go and be with my dad is because I was trying to speak to my mum about something and she wouldn't listen to me.

And so I walked away and my aunt actually said, oh, she's going to go and write a letter, because that's what I used to do. I used to write letters, you know, when I, when I didn't feel heard. And then I went upstairs to my dad and that's when all of that happened. But I used to write letters to my mum all the time because I

just did not feel heard. Grief has a way of forcing us into places and spaces we don't normally choose to go, a landscape that we never intended to visit and one that doesn't offer a break. It's kind of like walking into a dense forest on the outskirts. You can almost see some familiar paths of your old life, with friends and loved ones standing there at the edge, peeking in. There's a part of the wilderness that is yours to navigate alone.

This universal journey is distinctly different for each individual who walks it. I've stumbled through this forest a few times, but not the kind of forest that Zoraida has journeyed through. I think much of my teenage years and 20s were spent in fight or flight mode. It was spent in just trying to cope, trying to keep my head above water. I found a part time job when I was 13 years old. By the time I was in matric, I was paying for my own school fees for my own uniform.

And then when I was 27 years old, I was at 5 a.m. and I had just finished Strictly Come Dancing at one one, that reality TV show. I was so burnt out. I woke up one morning and I had a complete bald patch in the front of my head. I had alopecia areata and the doctor said to me, you are completely stressed out. And it had been like so many years. I resigned from five of em. I was one of the first people to resign. I mean, you know, in radio, no one ever resigns. You either get fired or your

contract doesn't get renewed. I resigned, and Josh and I went to America on a five year sabbatical, and it was one of the biggest, most beautiful gifts we could have given to ourselves. But yeah, that was a huge shift in my life.

No matter the time of day, there was always a radio on in the home Zoraida grew up in, from John Burke on 702 to Christiane Amanpour on CNN. Journalism and storytelling is what drew, Zoraida to broadcasting. And that at the time wasn't linked to fame and fortune. So it really was an honest attraction, using my voice to speak to lots of people. And I also know psychologically where it comes from. I saw it as something that I really wanted to do and a job.

When I came down to Cape Town and I auditioned at good Hope FM, I was working three other jobs whilst training at good Hope FM, um, and then went to five FM. And so and here's the interesting thing is that I was celebrated by the South African community, but I wasn't really celebrated by my family. So my mum never, ever made a big deal out of what I was doing. And nor did my sister.

Like they never went, oh my gosh, I can't believe you're a radio DJ or I can't believe you're on five FM or can't believe you're on TV like my mum. Never ever, ever ever spoke about what I did. Never. So there was I in many ways, just felt like I was doing a job that I enjoyed very much. And so when I went overseas, I've been doing some work for top billing. I used to do their movie and music junkets in the States, but I also became a waitress, so I was a waitress at the Chateau Marmont.

The one of the hotels in Los Angeles. And I would have moments where I would go to the Four Seasons Hotel to get an interview. Keanu Reeves or Ryan Gosling or, you know, any one of those figures, the Rock. And then that night, I'd see them at a catering function at the Chateau Marmont. So I would go from, you know, being all glammed up as a so-called journalist. And then that evening I'd be

their waitress. So I didn't ever feel, I don't know if importance the right word or celebrate as the right word, but I didn't feel special. Let me just remind you that Zoraida made media history as the first female to host a daytime slot on five FM. She also hosted the reality TV show Big Brother and won the very first season of Strictly Come Dancing SA. So while her family may not have celebrated her achievements with her, the South African public were paying very close attention.

There were times when I would feel like an object. You know, like you walk through a shopping center and then people are talking about you. And I remember hating that feeling like, why don't you just come up to me and say hello? Don't. I'm not. I'm not a vase, you know, like, speak to me. Mhm. And so that's always and in fact today it still doesn't sit well with me. If I walk past a group of people and they talk about me I get really uncomfortable.

I'm like, if you acknowledge me like come and say hello. Like let's talk, say hello. I've often wondered how someone that is really well known feels about the fame that they've acquired and endured his case. We know that she wanted to follow in the footsteps of established journalists.

That's why she got into broadcasting. So when the public who have watched you on TV and heard you on the radio, seeing you in magazines for years, when they have developed a picture of who you are and what you're about, how will they react when you emerge from the other side of this dense grief forest changed and ready to pursue a new dream. What I do know is that when I wanted to shift into health and wellness, I was so scared that I wouldn't be taken seriously by the South

African community. I was so scared that they were going to go, oh, who does she think she is to go from being a radio DJ or television host, you know, wanting to tell us now how we should breathe or how we should think or feel or act. And so getting a degree was, you know, was twofold. First of all, I came from an uneducated family. You know, both my parents hadn't finished school. Um, I didn't have, you know, good marks when I was in school.

And and even if I did, we certainly didn't have the funds for me to go to university. So there was a longing for formal education. And so I applied at Wits University to study psychology. And I, you know, I became a full time student. I was 40 years old with 18 year old, 19 year old students, and I wanted to break that generational narrative of my family not being educated and no one having a degree to me,

breaking that cycle. Um, and I'm now embarking on my PhD. I haven't stopped studying for the last ten years. At first, it became about having to get the credential so that I, you know, am taken seriously. And now it's more about my love of learning. I mean, if you if you had said to me ten years ago, you're going to love academia and research and data, I'd be like, no, the wrong person. And yet here I am, you know?

If you'd like more of that kind of motivation and inspiration, you might like my mailing list three, two, one shift. And if you're even the tiny bit curious and want to see how the podcast is made, find me on Instagram at Sean Lewis. What does it take to break free of Societal norms, do you think?

I think the fact that we want to break free means that we are in a bit of a mess. And so what does it take? It takes turning your mess into your life message. We are not inspired by people that have it all together. I did a talk and a breathwork session and this lady, two minutes into my breathwork session, she had a breakthrough. It was just her getting still that allowed a lot of emotions to come up because we often, like me up until my 20s, was just doing stuff to cope, cope, cope.

And when you give yourself permission to be still, so much comes up for you. And in the two minutes that she gave herself the gift of being still, she just had a breakthrough and started crying. And she said to me afterwards, I'm so embarrassed that that happened because, you know, I've got my my staff around me and I didn't want them to see me in that position. And they look at me for strength and blah, blah. And I just said to her, do you even realise how powerful

that moment was for your staff. They don't want to see you as someone that has it all together. They want to see their leader as someone that is human, and we need more of that. You can't go within if you don't get quiet. You can't because our brains are working all the time and they are functioning and taking up energy in this moment. There's so much that's happening. But if we shut our eyes and we just go within, we're going to have a totally different experience.

You have to give you you have to give yourself permission to do that. And daily it's it's vital we're all going through things that people, other people can't see. And if we don't take the moments to be okay, eventually I think we will turn to dysfunctional behavioral habits that will inevitably not serve us. And so taking those moments to be alone, to give yourself permission. It starts with you. The path you follow in a grief forest is often overgrown by thick underbrush and towering trees.

At first, the weight of sorrow feels suffocating, as if the branches are closing in around you. Each step forward seems almost pointless, with memories fading in and out, reminding you of what you lost. You may stumble and fall into clearings where the sunlight breaks through the canopy above. In these spaces, when you're on your knees, you start to see the beauty that remains even in the pain and getting back to your feet just as

quickly as the clearing appeared. It disappears behind you, and the journey continues with its twists and turns sometimes leading to even darker paths. The forest teaches us that this thing called grief is not a linear path, but a much more complex and vast tapestry of emotions each phase. Be it sorrow, anger, or acceptance, contributes to your growth. Wade through the forest long enough. Sit still long enough. Giving yourself permission to grieve deeply. Helps you develop a better sense

of yourself. We've got to stop attaching what we do to who we are because it is so detrimental. Like, who are you without being the DJ? Who are you without the degree? Who are you without being a mother? Like all these things that, you know, we put as titles on our on our profiles, you know, because that's really who you are, you know. And those titles can be taken

away in a nanosecond. And so it's, it's I really feel that a lot of this pressure, you know, the pressure that we talk about right now comes from us. I think we put it on ourselves first. We really do. I don't think it comes from other people. You know, I love the saying we don't see people as people are. We see people as we are. So this pressure is stuff that we putting on ourselves. And you don't have to be one thing for the rest of your life.

You can change at any time and you're here once no one gets out alive. So do your thing. Change, shift, pivot. You know you don't have to stick to your lane. Zoraida was 13 years old when her dad died of a heart attack. Growing up in a household that didn't communicate or share feelings meant that Sarita turned inward. Her immense loss was internalized and translated into a sense of abandonment.

And when you experience abandonment coupled with being othered, you quickly start believing that the only person you can rely on is you. I am a huge proponent of not being a victim. My dad's passing could easily have made me a victim, but it didn't because I chose for that not to happen. I've I've taken that cataclysmic Talismanic moment, and it's inspired me to be the best version of myself.

Zoraida has two teenagers, but unlike the home that she grew up in, Zoraida speaks with her children about everything. I have a 15 year old daughter. She challenges me a lot, and she reminds me a lot of the time that I have innate behaviors of my mom coming up. Um, you know, there are certain things that we adopt through learning environments, like. So, for example, my kids, whenever I call them, their response is always, are we in trouble? And they never in trouble because

we talk about everything. Just unlike my home where we spoke about nothing, in my home we talk about everything. But I have a voice that is clearly laden with trauma and pain. And when I call their names, it comes out. So she teaches me all the time to become aware that I am no longer in fighting flight mode. She teaches me that all the time. She's a wise little soul. My son is a completely different personality. You know, I have a really

special bond with my son. My husband's mother really was gaga over her two sons, and I used to find it so irritating. I remember when we got married, she was like, I'm going to walk you down the aisle, Joshua. And I was like, absolutely not. That is not what a mother does with her son. And then I had my son, and the first thing I said to him was, I'm going to be walking you down the aisle. Um, yeah. My son is, uh, he's Pisces, like me. So we very much connected in that we

both really, really sensitive souls. I'm very close to both my children. They very different. And, um. Uh, yeah, we've decided to keep them. Oh, good. I'm sure they're relieved. Your kids might never listen to this, but in the context of a podcast living online potentially forever, is there anything that you'd like for them to know about how you grew up and how you've developed and the mindset that you've developed? Say something about you that you hope they carry with them as they

continue to get older in years and have their own families? Yeah.

Wow, what a powerful question. Um. I think I'd like to say that I'm really grateful to have the kids that I do, because I speak to them very openly about where I come from, because I put a lot of where I come from onto them. And I know that sometimes it brings pressure. So, for example, I didn't have any material stuff growing up. And so when they lose something or they break something, they hear about my life story or, you know, my kids go to good schools and I didn't go to a good school.

And so I throw that in there. Phase two. You know, I didn't get that. Um, and through all of that, they know like, they know that when they compare me to their father. Um, I didn't come from privilege at all. And their honor me often with that. Um, the honor me often and say, I'm sorry that that didn't happen in your family. And it's really powerful because young teenagers are not supposed to do that, and they don't usually do that.

And so even though I am their parent, I feel so seen by my children. I feel I feel like I'm not their leader, that we are just all walking each other home. Mm. Wherever home may be. You know, I feel like they walk me home and I walk them home. Hand in hand. Yeah. That's a beautiful sentiment. Zoraida is an Arabic name and means one who is eloquent and holds positive qualities. Sirajuddin lives up to her name as she continues to breathe life into the best version of herself.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Something Shifted. And remember to use that code hash Shift 50 at checkout when you place your first order with Uk'otoa, that's the hash symbol, followed by the word shift shift and the numerals five zero, and

you'll get 50% off your first order. Go ahead and tap the three dots inside the app you're listening on, and give this show five stars on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And when you do, you can imagine me doing a happy dance and grinning from ear to ear. Thanks so much for listening. Follow something shifted on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player, and share this episode

with your friends and family. You can find me on Instagram at Sean Lewis and the mailing list is 321 shift, which gives you three things for your mind two things feel buddy and one thing for your soul, plus a few little fun surprises every second Sunday. I've made it really easy and included the links in this episode. Show notes. Thanks again for believing in possibility. My name is Sean and this is something shifted. See you in two weeks. Bye.