So I had a sister reached out to me last week and what she said kind of stopped me in my tracks.

She was one of actually many sisters that this. She said, says, I feel like I'm living in two worlds.

I said, what do you mean? She said, well, I'm really successful. Al-aimdala, like I figure what she said, I'm a lawyer. Another sister said I'm like a pharmacist, I'm a doctor. Like a lot of these women are really really powerful strong women i'm super independent i can basically do everything on my own

but there's this one part of my life i can't get right it's like i'm super successful in this

part of my life. I can't get right. It's like I'm super successful in this part of my life. I went to uni, got great marks or whatever. But then I come to this part and I'm just stuck. And I feel like this strong person, but I also want to be able to have a husband and like let him be the man but not too much because they might control me like how do I be who I am but then also

let him leave the man but not too much because he might control me like how do I be who I am

but then also let him leave that feels really scary and I was like ooh and then she turns out she was

not the first one she's like the fifth or sixth woman that said that this month so as soon as I heard

that I knew I had to do a podcast on it so that's where I talk about how do you balance your femininity

when you're a hyper-independent

woman and successful? Let's go. Welcome to the mindful Muslim-speaks podcast, a safe space to learn and grow into the best version of yourself that you're always meant to be.

I'm your host, mindful Muslim, mom of five, big sister to the community and a licensed educator with 25 plus years and supporting tens of thousands of Muslim women worldwide. Now I'm excited to share a ton of solutions to your problems on love, relationships, life balance, reconnecting with a less dependent with Ae'a, getting back on track and more. So grab a cup of coffee and close out those tabs. These next 20 to 30 minutes are all about you. Let's get started. Hello, Sama alaikum, welcome back to the podcast. I'm excited to talk to you about this topic that I think has just growing in urgency as sisters are trying to get married and are trying to figure out like, how do I keep who I am and not have a man control me? But then Allah says, let him be in control and he has, Qaam, like, how does that

actually work? We're going to talk about it on the podcast today so we can stay within the realms of Islam, but not feel like we've lost ourselves. Because I know that's the thing. Like, sisters don't want to feel like they're bad for thinking that, but then I also know they're thinking that because they tell me on private calls. So let's talk about first what hyper independence is this is really important what is hyper independence and like how do we deal with that like

when i say hyper independence, I mean, like a woman who has gone to university, got career, she's successful. She's probably able to do things on her own. Does she want to? Maybe, maybe not, right? When it comes to lifting the heavy things and doing the crazy, like at some point we want them to be a man, but we'll get into that in a second. But what is

hyper-independence? Now, it's not just like being productive. It is not just being independent.

It's when your independence almost becomes a protective mechanism. It's when you've almost

learned that depending on others only leads to

disappointment. Ooh, you see where this is going? You've almost like built walls around yourself

because you've had to do it yourself or this is expectation that you must succeed. Sometimes it's

set on us by our parents. Sometimes it's just bad life experiences that we've had where people have let us down. But time and time again, we realized that I'm better off just doing that myself. I want to tell you about one sister I worked with name Amina. She grew up in a household where her family was not emotionally available, just being honest. Her mom was overwhelmed with five kids, right? And her dad had to run a business and he was just always busy out there doing that. So by the time she was 12, she was practically taking care of herself. She was making sure her younger siblings did the homework because the mom was always overwhelmed in the kitchen and cleaning and laundry. I mean, a lot of kids, a lot of laundry. It's hard, right? Or like where her mom was off doing something, sometimes she had to take over dinner. So this was this life that she lived. The thing that she learned was that her value came for what

she could do for people, what she could do, not from who she was. You see how that worked? She learned that

if she needed something, emotional support, maybe even someone to listen to her, that that was

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