Farah Hussain

The novelist George Sand once wrote, ‘there is only one happiness in life… to love and be loved’ and while arguably, there may well be more than one happiness, if your heart’s deepest desire is to experience a fabulously healthy, loving and fulfilling relationship, then you will probably agree with her… and you’d be in very good company. 😉

But if your lived experience of relationships so far has been nothing short of chaos and dysfunction, it’s easy to start wondering if perhaps what you desire is not meant for you.🥹

You must understand that if you desire a thing, and that includes a loving relationship or marriage, it's not enough to have the desire and then sit back and do nothing. Or to moan and lament your ‘lot in life’ because your relational encounters have been less than satisfactory; toxic or even abusive. 😣

It’s important to understand what is happening and to recognise that our present moment experiences are sometimes fundamentally affected by our past via the creative adjustments (ways of thinking and internalised stories or beliefs), that we’ve made to cope with or manage the situation.

👉 These adjustments are affecting your way of being and how you show up in your relationships…covertly, overtly, subtly and not-so-subtly.

👉 Understanding these historical experiences and how they influence your personality and functioning in relationship, is an important aspect of the healing process.

👉 You cannot be held responsible for your childhood experiences or the wounding this creates but your healing is 100% your responsibility.

For example, my client who was raised by a highly narcissistic mother who was unable to show her love or meet her basic emotional needs. Over the years, this client repeatedly found herself in abusive and controlling relationships with men. I remember her facial expression and the question she asked in our initial session so vividly, “What the f**k is wrong with me, Farah? It’s like I have a neon sign over my head that says, ‘abuse me’. “

There was nothing wrong with her. It’s just you can’t change a pattern that you can’t see, and you can’t have a new relational experience without doing the healing work to release/change the pattern.

It's so common for women to say, "well, if I'm meant to meet someone, it will happen," or "if it's in my destiny, it will happen."

I'm utterly baffled by this thinking. NO, it really won't. Not unless you do the inner work and release the old stories and lies that are holding you back. Not until you heal the wounds and clear old patterns.

So, the desire for love, commitment and marriage is praiseworthy. 😍

But your desire must be accompanied by an expectation... an active form of attention towards the fulfilment of what you desire... and then followed through with inspired action to bring your heart’s desire of a loving relationship with a wonderful man, into your lived experience here, today.

If you’re ready to heal old wounds, release toxic patterns and reveal the best, most authentic and loveable version of you so that you can attract and maintain the relationship of your dreams, I have something very special for you.

DM me ‘heal’ and I’ll send you the details ♥️

When relationships thrive, families thrive and when families thrive, communities thrive.

I said: what about my eyes?
He said: Keep them on the road.

I said: What about my passion?
He said: Keep it burning.

I said: What about my heart?
He said: Tell me what you hold inside it?

I said: Pain and sorrow.
He said: Stay with it.
The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

Rumi

“Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing. We cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying. In essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.”

~ Alain de Botton - On Love

Fear is allowed a seat in the car but it’s not allowed to touch the radio... and above all else, it’s forbidden to drive.

Big Magic ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

The heart does not think or speak.
It feels and knows

The longest journey you will make in your life is from your head to your heart

~ Sioux Indian saying

Sometimes people walk away from love because it is so beautiful that it terrifies them.

Sometimes they leave because the connection shines a bright light on their dark places and they are not ready to work them through.

Sometimes they run away because they are not developmentally prepared to merge with another - they have more individuation work to do first.

Sometimes they take off because love is not a priority in their lives - they have another path and purpose to walk first.

Sometimes they end it because they prefer a relationship that is more practical than conscious, one that does not threaten the ways that they organize reality.

Because so many of us carry shame, we have a tendency to personalize love's leavings, triggered by the rejection and feelings of abandonment. But this is not always true.

Sometimes it has nothing to do with us. Sometimes the one who leaves is just not ready to hold it safe.

Sometimes they know something we don't - they know their limits at that moment in time. Real love is no easy path - readiness is everything. May we grieve loss without personalizing it. May we learn to love ourselves in the absence of the lover.

~ Jeff Brown

Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilisation in a culture.

The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.

But instead, Mead shared that the first sign of civilisation in an ancient culture was a femur (thigh bone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.

A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery.

“Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilisation starts,” Mead explained.

We are at our best when we can be there for others and offer them our empathy and support. Not just physical support but mental and emotional too. If that’s not something you can do, then at least ensure that you don’t add to a person’s pain or difficulty.

Be civilised.

Love is an ideal thing
Marriage is a real thing
A confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

💜

Regret is the soul-destroying emotion of wishing one had made a different decision in the past because the consequences of that decision (or non-decision) seem unfavourable or regrettable.

When we live in regret, we spend chunks of our precious life, dwelling on the past and often punishing a past version of ourselves for not being better, knowing better, doing better.

People can hang onto regret for years and years, using it to create and dwell in an alternate version of their life in which things would have or could have been different. And better.

Regret can briefly serve a functional purpose if it helps you learn something or gain insight into your true self. As such, you can consider how you might have handled things differently and move forward having integrated any learnings.

However, when you uncontrollably dwell in the past, regrets can hijack your thinking, have an ill effect on your mood and at worse, lead to severe depression.

The solution is not to repress the thoughts of regret or to take on some kind of delusional ‘no regrets’ bravado but rather to face up to them. We’re far better off taking the time to dig into our oldest woes and to become acquainted with both their nature, and the nature of our response to them.

Some types of regrets have incredible staying power, namely those about what we could have done differently as opposed to what we did do… but did wrong. Although we experience both sorts, studies have found that across cultures and demographics, it’s regrets about what we didn’t do that haunt more of us for longer periods.

So you’re more likely to feel the pain of regret about never attempting or trying something than you are to regret a bad move or perceived mistake with a choice you made, for example.

This makes sense since action-related regrets spur reparative work, which allows us to deal with them and let them go. If you forgot your partner’s birthday, you can apologise and arrange an alternate celebration. If you took on a nightmare job even though you’d be warned about a company’s ethics/ work culture, you can put your energy into getting a new job.

But there’s usually little to be done about the opportunities or goals you didn’t act on to begin with. Or the moments when you didn’t speak up or take any action at all. For example, the one ‘who got away’ may now be married to someone else.

This comes back to how we process these two types of regrets. A perceived ‘mistake’ or ‘wrong action’ elicits a hot emotional response and can become a lesson learned… something that ultimately reveals a silver lining.

By contrast, failing to take self-aligned action or action that could have made us happier by bringing us closer to our true-self related goals leads to feelings of sadness and disappointment. These are ‘cool’ emotions that we believe we can pause, shelve or even disguise with a chocolate muffin - and deal with later.

We simply don’t feel the same pressure to reflect and process regrets for the path not taken, largely because the absence of action doesn’t immediately elicit a ‘hot’ emotional response, like for example. anger or guilt… the way making a mistake does. We tell ourselves that we’ll deal with it later.

Except later never shows up and those festering ‘cool’ emotions eventually transmute into raging regret. So, that action or inaction which is very small in the beginning, actually grows and becomes bigger and bigger… and really painful… if it’s not felt, acknowledged and processed.

So, how do you avoid living in regret?

Take the time to reflect and ask yourself the right questions.

‘What are your most important values right now? Do you have aspirations that for some reason you are not pursuing? Are you ‘choosing yourself’ or are you the kind of person who thinks that the most important thing is your responsibility towards other people or your duties as a family member?’

There is no right or wrong answer here. The questions are exploratory and your answers won’t immediately banish all regrets but they will certainly create an opening… a portal towards a solution that works for you.

Passively pining for those ‘what ifs’, is destructive for your mental health. Instead, do what you can to remove their sting. If you can’t take action to ameliorate the regret, you can certainly do the psychological work, either through therapy or with yourself to process it.

In a variety of ways, you can begin to let go of regret and its grasp. But suppressing your emotions and/or dwelling in the past is not one of those ways 🖤

What makes a relationship healthy, happy and fulfilling? 😍

Does a dysfunctional or challenging relationship history mean that you’re destined to be locked in a pattern of painful and disappointing relationships? 🥹

Do you know and trust that a magnificent love that supports and nourishes you is available and possible for you? 🙌

If you don’t know or aren’t sure, then it’s time to shift out of resignation and apathy…

☄️ to understand your power

💫 to evolve beyond the relational traumas and dramas of your past

⚡️to be the person you need to be to create the love life you long for

🔥 to be a great lover so you can have great love

The world of relationships has changed. A simple role based relationship that worked in the past doesn’t cut the mustard anymore. And that’s perfectly perfect… you’re not asking for or expecting too much.

It’s great to set a bold and inspired intention for love… to desire a loyal and supportive friend, a thoughtful and generous lover, someone who supports your dreams and aspirations… enlivens your heart and mind with theirs. Someone who understands your moods and insecurities… who sees all your quirks and flaws but loves you deeply anyway. Just as you are 😍
⁠
It’s great that you refuse to settle and that you remain true to your desire for

🥰 emotional and sexual fulfilment

🥰 deep connection and stimulating conversation

🥰 deep intimacy and a lasting bond

🥰 someone who loves, cherishes and protects you

To call in the love you truly desire and deserve, you must be willing to move past your fears, doubts, stories, conditioning and blocks… and grow yourself into the person for whom great love is possible.

♥️ My uniquely designed coaching program for single women looking to let true love into their lives is radically transformative

♥️ Developed over thousands and thousands of client sessions, working with many hundreds of women… and my own lived experience… it will help you gain mental clarity, make peace with your past, heal old wounds, become a great lover… and open your heart to love and be loved

♥️ I combine my background in counselling, psychotherapy and relationship coaching with a deep knowledge of psychological, spiritual and energetic principles, to support you in forming an entirely new relationship reality.

DM me for more information on my 1:1 coaching package ♥️

This resonates so deeply.

And yet if and when this happens, remember to ask yourself…

💘 What patterns of thinking or ways of being, had me end up in this situation?
💘 How was I showing up or not showing up for myself?
💘 Did I ignore red flags?
💘 Did I fail to ask enough questions or the right questions?
💘 Was I blindly trusting?

Remember to mine the gold from these reflections after you’ve left 💛💛💛

🖤

Absolutely 🖤

Dear Men…
We miss you.
Deeply.
When women gather together in circles…
we tell stories of how much we long for you. Crave you.
Pray for you to rise and meet us here.
We mourn your missing presence.
In our childhoods.
In the homes we’ve built without you.
In our beds.
We hold hands and beg God to set you free from whatever keeps you from standing at our sides.
Right here.
Here In intimacy.
In integrity.
In wholeness.
In freedom.
The places where you are caught in dishonesty…
shame…
fear…
addiction…
we grieve and rage over.
We see your pain and we see your power.
We miss you.
We love you.
We can’t wait for you to come home
For the men who have…
thank you so much.
Please call your brothers…
start men’s circles…
show them the manuals.
Tell them of what you gave up.
Of your brokenness and acceptance.
Of what it truly means to take up the mantle of protector.
Please.
There aren’t enough fathers…
resources and leaders for men to sit at the feet of.
The women have tried.
We can’t do it.
The restoration must come from within the Masculine.
The Feminine cannot mother grown men into wholeness.
We cannot strap men to our backs and walk.
We tried.
We bow out.
Not gracefully.
But in mournful acceptance nonetheless.
And we will wait for you to burst free from the shackles patriarchy has placed on you.
We pray.
We pray.
We pray.
For the Great Remembrance.

- Shade Ashani from Sacred Dreams

Art by Dorina Costras

🤍

😁

Why do we do the things we do?

The following story is in many ways, a classic therapy parable:

A young boy watches his mother chop off the end of a lamb joint that she’s about to roast and asks her why she’s doing that.

“I have no idea,” she replies, “My mother always prepared lamb like this, so I do it too.”

So the boy goes to his grandmother and asks her the same question. He gets a similar response, “It’s something my mother always did, so I do it too.”

Eventually, he asks his great grandmother, who hasn’t cooked in years, the same question, “Why did you always chop off the end of a lamb joint before you cooked it?”

His great grandmother replies, “Well, ovens were so much smaller back then!”

Isn’t it amazing how often we follow customs, traditions, rituals, patterns without stopping to question, why am I doing this? What was the context in which this custom was followed? Does it make sense for me to continue doing it and do I even want to? Or would I prefer to do things differently?

Just because things have always been done a certain way or because you’ve always been a certain way, it doesn’t mean that you can’t change or things can’t change.

You can change… and you can change things.

No one’s permission is required.

But then you already know this. The better question is perhaps, how do you change an unhelpful or potentially destructive pattern of thinking or behaviour that you can’t even see?

You do it by making the unconscious conscious.

This is the gift of therapy. 🎁

If you’re ready to upgrade your love life and would like to find out more about working with me, DM me for more info ♥️

“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”
Mignon McLaughlin