Zaid Ismail
@zaidie@zaidismail.com
Author, life coach, and mental health activist. We need to change the narrative from disorders, illnesses, and survival to accountability, understanding, and thriving.
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Fearfully hopeful
Patience is only patience when it is the foundation of hope. Not when it is the pacifier of fear. Hope is the currency of growth, whereas fear is what breeds decay. To patiently await the decay of what we hold dear is not patience, it is surrender. To hope, despite the apparent futility that stares…
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Trading off the best of me
If kindness and compassion are a reflection of who we are, there can be no prerequisite for anyone to have to deserve it, or to earn it from us. How we express it towards them may take different forms, including tough love. But it is our intention behind that tough love, and how we follow…
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Understanding misunderstanding
When we find that, despite our sincerest efforts, we continue to be misunderstood, consider that perhaps we need to focus on understanding instead. Understanding becomes difficult when we’re gripped with the desperation of needing others to understand how important something is to us. That desperation is often driven by fear, or self pity, rather than…
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Silent Protest
A protest that cannot be articulated, is a protest spawned by futility, to feed futility. My contempt for what I am presented with is rarely expressed plainly. My reservations to express at all is grounded in years of…
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Ephemeral existence…
Life, more than anything else, is about perspective. In moments of struggle, we’re inclined to look back on the many times that we were weighed down in life. Sometimes we reminisce about the good times, but from a place of hopelessness believing that we may never experience it again. At such times, it feels like…
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Fear or hope? Choose wisely
Fear drives us towards protecting ourselves from a difficult past, while convincing us that we’re investing in a better future. If we were truly investing in the future, fear of the past repeating itself would not feature in our efforts towards growth and new beginnings. It is fear that manifests as illness or disease in…
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A bitter ache
Just as beauty is born of love, so too is bitterness born of loss. I wonder what of the troubles of this world is caused by broken hearts, rather than wilful greed? It is the sense of loss, or inadequacy in the eyes of those most cherished, that our worst behaviour comes to the fore.…