Do you remember that scene in You’ve Got Mail when Meg Ryan describes the Fall? How it reminds her of sharp pencils and notebooks?

That’s what the end of summer always feels like to me. Back to school. Sharp pencils. New notebooks. New schedules. That lovely little feeling that everything is beginning again.

Except this year, back to school was not back to school.

My youngest is off to college.

So instead of buying notebooks and sharpening pencils, we were shuffling around Barcelona buying dorm essentials, checking lists, reminding him to do this and not forget that, and trying to think of every possible thing a 19-year-old might possibly need when suddenly he is responsible for himself in another country.

Which, apparently, includes approximately 700 things I had never considered.

And I still don’t understand why it wasn’t easier the third time around.

I thought I’d be better at this by now.

But then I reminded myself: this is the job.

Your entire job from the day they’re born is to teach them how to become independent.

It starts with letting them make an enormous mess with a spoon.

Then watching them fall while they’re learning to walk.

Then potty training. Preschool. School. Driving. University.

And eventually you’re standing in a dorm room in Barcelona thinking, Did I remember to tell him about laundry?

That’s motherhood.

And of course, I’m now the mother of three adults and I still don’t know what I’m doing.

I suppose that’s the funny part.

You spend twenty years teaching them how to do things without you and then suddenly they’re doing everything without you, and you’re standing there thinking:

Wait. Was that the plan?

Apparently it was.

-Dana

THE PENDULUM SWING

As much as all that summer laziness was fantastic, the pendulum always swings back.

It just does.

One day, you are lying in bed, watching Netflix, ordering food, and achieving absolutely nothing.

And then one morning you wake up and think:

I should reorganize the entire house.

I should start five new projects.

I should write.

I should walk.

I should make juice.

I should answer every email.

I should probably learn Spanish.

Maybe I should start a new Substack.

Hello. There she is.

The woman I know.

The woman who likes a list.

A plan.

A schedule.

The deeply satisfying feeling of crossing twelve things off before lunch.

And I realized something this summer:

I like both women.

I like the woman who gets things done.

And I like the woman who doesn’t give a damn about getting anything done.

I like my routines.

And I like breaking them.

I like having plans.

And I like cancelling them.

I like working.

And apparently, I also really like being lazy.

So perhaps the goal isn’t to pick a side.

Perhaps the goal is to stop fighting the swing.

When I was younger, I thought consistency meant doing the same thing every day.

Now I think consistency might mean knowing yourself well enough to recognize what you need today.

After several weeks of being gloriously lazy, something very predictable happened.

I got restless.

I wanted my mornings back.

I wanted to walk.

I wanted to write.

I wanted to make things.

I wanted to work.

Apparently, there really is such a thing as enough Netflix.

Who knew? 😂

After all...

how much more can I sloth around?

Maybe this is what getting older is giving me that I didn’t have before:

permission to be both.

I don’t have to turn every season into a personality.

I can notice where the pendulum is...

and let it swing.

Eating…

For the past few days, I’ve been eating gluten-free bread with za’atar and olive oil, and I have to say: I had forgotten how much I love this.

It reminds me of being a kid.

Lebanese man2oushe was one of those staples of my childhood, the kind of food you don’t think about because it’s simply there. Warm bread, za’atar, olive oil. Nothing complicated. Nothing particularly fancy. Just incredibly good.

I’ve been making my very lazy, gluten-free version lately, and it is exactly what I want to eat right now.

Light. Salty. Herby. A little oily in the best possible way.

And perhaps this is what I’m enjoying most about summer eating at the moment: food that doesn’t need much from me.

No complicated recipe.

No twenty ingredients.

No food that needs to be photographed from six angles before I eat it.

Just za’atar, olive oil and bread.

Sometimes that’s enough.

Doing..

I have discovered that one of my favorite forms of exercise is one that requires absolutely no getting dressed.

This is a routine from Karina More that I do in bed.

Yes. Exercise in bed.

Finally, a fitness trend I can get behind.

Ten minutes later, I feel less puffy, more flexible, and considerably more awake.

And because it happens before I get up, there is considerably less opportunity for me to talk myself out of it.

I may have finally found my level of commitment to morning exercise.

BODY LANGUAGE. If this symptom could speak, this is what it might say.

Every symptom has a story.

This month, we’re listening to your reproductive system.

Hi.

Can we clear something up?

You keep giving me different names.

PMS.

Cramps.

Painful periods.

Heavy bleeding.

Irregular cycles.

Missed periods.

PCOS.

Fibroids.

Endometriosis.

Adenomyosis.

Ovarian cysts.

Painful ovulation.

Fertility challenges.

Spotting.

And every time I show up differently, you act like I’ve become a completely different problem.

I haven’t.

It’s still me.

You call me PMS when I’m making you cry over something that normally wouldn’t bother you.

You call me cramps when I’m hurting.

You call me heavy bleeding when I decide to make you change your plans.

You call me fibroids when you find something growing where it shouldn’t.

You call me PCOS when your cycles stop behaving themselves.

You call me endometriosis when the pain becomes impossible to ignore.

You call me irregular when I don’t arrive when you expect me to.

But I’m not introducing myself differently every month.

You’re just giving me different names.

And that’s where things got complicated.

Because you’ve been taught to think these are separate problems.

Separate diagnoses.

Separate conditions.

Separate solutions.

But what if they’re not?

What if they’re simply different ways of saying:

“Something isn’t right here.”

Think about it.

You don’t have twelve reproductive systems.

You have one.

So why have we been taught to treat every way it speaks as though it’s a completely different conversation?

Why do you think you need one answer for PMS, another for fibroids, another for PCOS, another for endometriosis, and another for painful periods?

I’m not that complicated.

I’m one body.

I’m one system.

I’m one conversation.

The language changes.
The message doesn’t.

This is why I don’t believe women need a different approach for every reproductive symptom. The symptoms may have different names, but they are not separate conversations.

That’s the philosophy behind my 3-Month Hormone Detox, which is now open for registration. We start Sept. 27.

If you’re tired of managing your body one symptom at a time, I’d love to work with you:)

Email me to talk about your specific symptoms and to see if the Hormone Detox Program is the right fit for you:)

home alone

before traveling to Barcelona to drop off my son at college, I found myself at home for three whole days, completely alone. My husband travelled to London for work. And my son and daughter had one final hurrah trip to sahel. This is the first time I’m alone at home. Ever. What would I do? Would I finally do all the things I say I want to do but never get around to doing because I have a family? Would I walk, workout, swim, and then workout again, walk again..read 7 hours a day…work a bit, etc ..would i really DO all of those things I’ve made myself believe I need to do but don’t do then feel bad about not doing? Would finally being alone (which is the procrastination excuse I always use for not doing these things) finally prove me right? Or wrong? I did nothing. I binge watched The Diplomat. I worked out once. No walks. No swimming (I read once you should never swim alone in case you get a cramp or a heart attack-whatever lol). I ate a leftover birthday cupcake.I did record 2 podcasts because I needed to get them to my assistant before traveling and I did work on this issue but that’s because it’s work. It needs to get done. There are consequences if I don’t. Anything and everything else? My body simply said no. Being alone didn’t magically make me jump out of bed more enthusiastic to fulfill those needs I thought I needed to do. On the contrary. Being alone gave me the space and quiet to admit that I want to do less. But doing less, to someone who is constantly doing more and more and who grew up believing that doing more and more is a sign of virtue, is not simply turned off by ‘deciding’ to do less. How could I want to do less? Isn’t that called lazy? But here I was. Lazy af. And I loved it:)

The Importance of Being Earnest

Oscar Wilde

I first read The Importance of Being Earnest while I was studying for my master’s, and I’ve never forgotten how much I loved it.

For one thing, it’s gloriously short.

Which, these days, is an increasingly important literary quality.

But more than that, it is ridiculously funny. Dry, absurd, clever, completely unserious, and somehow still saying quite a lot about the ridiculousness of people who take themselves, their reputations, and the rules of society very seriously.

Which makes it feel particularly appropriate for this issue.

There is something very satisfying about watching people behave badly while maintaining impeccable manners.

Everyone is pretending.

Everyone is performing.

Everyone is trying desperately to appear respectable while making increasingly ridiculous decisions.

And Wilde seems to be quietly standing in the corner saying:

Really? We’re doing all this?

Perhaps that’s why I wanted to read it again now.

After spending so much of my life taking things seriously, being responsible, being productive, being good, doing the right thing, making sure everything and everyone was taken care of, I’m increasingly attracted to anything that reminds me that life is also supposed to be funny.

And The Importance of Being Earnest is very, very funny.

It’s also one of those books you can read in an afternoon, which I consider a feature, not a limitation.

Read it if you want something clever, ridiculous and completely delightful.

And if you’ve already read it, read it again.

You may find it even funnier the second time around:)

Barcelona

I thought I’d be sharing my favorite places in Barcelona this month.

But come on.

It was a little ambitious to think I could come up with a list of favorite spots after one trip, while getting my son ready to move to a new country, figuring out university logistics, unpacking, repacking, walking approximately a million miles a day, and trying to actually enjoy being here.

You can’t have favorite places in a city after one visit.

Well, I suppose you can. But I think I’d rather wait.

I know I’ll be back, so I’m going to circle back to the restaurants and little shops and cafés and streets I fall in love with after I’ve had a chance to actually fall in love with them.

What I can tell you already, though, is my favorite thing about Barcelona.

It’s the details.

The attention to detail everywhere you go.

I wasn’t expecting this.

There are architectural details everywhere, including in places you would never think to look. In the corners of buildings. Around windows. Under balconies. In iron railings. In the patterned tiles on the underside of a balcony, because apparently even the part of a balcony that most people will never look up to see deserves to be beautiful.

And then there are the buildings themselves.

The old that somehow looks new.

Buildings that have been standing there for generations, with their intricate façades and carved stone and painted tiles and elaborate ironwork, looking as though someone just finished them yesterday.

I kept catching myself looking up.

And then looking up again.

Maybe I’ve become a little jaded. After enough European cities, you start to see the same shops, the same international brands, the same polished city-center streets. Everything begins to feel strangely interchangeable.

Barcelona doesn’t feel that way to me.

It feels expansive. The avenues are wide and beautifully proportioned. The streets feel considered. There is a sense that nothing was skimped on.

Even the things that could have been ordinary were given some thought.

A railing.

A doorway.

A balcony.

A lamp.

The underside of a balcony.

Who decides to decorate the underside of a balcony?

Someone who believes the details matter even when no one is supposed to be looking.

And unlike cities that feel historical, like you’re walking through a museum or an archaeological site, Barcelona feels like you’re walking through an artist’s thought process.

Let’s add a stroke here. Take a little away there. Change this. Add that.

As if the city itself is a work in progress, with someone constantly looking at it and thinking, This could be a little more beautiful.

And maybe that’s what I like most.

You don’t have to be looking for beauty to find it here.

It’s everywhere:)

I think I may have reached my wellness limit.

Not personally.

I don’t own seventeen supplements.

I don’t wear a ring that tells me how badly I slept.

I don’t track my glucose.

I don’t take peptides.

I don’t drink whey protein.

I don’t use red-light therapy.

I don’t have a sauna.

I don’t even have an air fryer.

And I certainly don’t have a fifteen-step morning routine.

I barely have a fifteen-step anything. 😂

And I don’t tell my clients to do any of it either.

That’s actually the part that’s been bothering me lately.

Because I’m watching the wellness industry become increasingly obsessed with convincing women that ordinary health is no longer enough.

Apparently I need to optimize my mitochondria, repair my gut, balance my hormones, boost my metabolism, track my glucose, monitor my sleep, increase my protein, support my liver, take seventeen supplements and somehow find time to live my life.

No thank you.

At some point, being healthy became a full-time job.

And I keep wondering:

What happens if we don’t?

What happens if you don’t take the peptide?

What happens if you don’t own the ring?

What happens if your glucose isn’t monitored 24 hours a day?

What happens if your morning routine consists of JUST getting up? 😂

Because here’s the thing:

I don’t tell women to do these things because I don’t believe they’re the foundation of health.

And I don’t want the women I work with walking away from me believing they need to buy another product, download another app, take another supplement or add another complicated ritual to their already very full lives to heal.

That isn’t empowerment.

That’s another dependency.

I want a woman to be able to walk into a grocery store and know how to feed herself.

I want her to travel without packing a suitcase full of powders.

I want her to listen to her body without needing a device or app to translate every biological function for her.

I want her to understand that her health isn’t something she has to purchase.

Because somewhere along the way, health became another industry.

And like every other industry, it figured out that making people feel like they’re not doing enough is very good for business.

Your hormones aren’t optimized.

Your mitochondria need support.

Your gut needs repairing.

Your metabolism needs boosting.

Your cells need this.

Your liver needs that.

And conveniently, there is always something waiting to be purchased.

I’m not saying none of these things can ever be useful. Some may be. Some may be wonderful tools in the right circumstances.

I’m questioning the message that we need all of them, or some new version of them, all the time, to be healthy.

Because what if you don’t need another thing?

What if you need less?

Less processed food.

Less sugar.

Less alcohol.

Less sitting.

Less staying up late.

Less scrolling.

Less rushing.

Less complication.

And perhaps more of the things we’ve somehow managed to make sound almost embarrassingly basic:

Fruit.

Vegetables.

Simple protein.

Natural fats.

Sunshine.

Walking.

Sleep.

Water.

Real food.

None of this is particularly sexy.

There is no affiliate link.

No discount code.

No beautifully packaged box arriving at your door.

But maybe that’s the point.

I’ve spent the last thirteen years watching women heal by doing remarkably unglamorous things.

They eat better.

They sleep.

They move.

They get outside.

They hydrate.

They stop eating the foods that were making them feel terrible.

They learn to pay attention.

They repeat those things until they become their life.

That’s it.

And that’s why I resist the endless optimization conversation so strongly.

I don’t want women to believe that health is another area of their lives where they’re failing to keep up.

You don’t need to optimize every biological function.

You don’t need to monitor yourself every waking hour.

You don’t need to turn your morning into a laboratory.

You need to learn how to take care of yourself.

And yes, taking care of yourself is wonderfully boring.

Eat real food.

Go for a walk.

Go to bed.

Sit in the sunshine.

Drink some water.

Do it again tomorrow.

And the day after that.

And the day after that.

The goal isn’t to become the most optimized woman alive.

The goal is to become a woman who knows how to take care of herself without turning her entire existence into a science experiment.

Honestly?

Doesn’t that sound much more relaxing?

A very serious reminder

You don’t need to optimize your life.

You don’t need to figure everything out.

You don’t need to become a better version of yourself before breakfast.

You can sit outside.

Eat something delicious.

Call someone you love.

Go somewhere you’ve never been.

Take a nap.

Change your mind.

Do absolutely nothing.

And then, when you’re ready...

get up and do something.

The pendulum will find you.

I’ll see you in September.

Warmly,

Dana

So tell me: where is your pendulum right now?

Are you in a doing-more phase, a doing-less phase, or somewhere gloriously in between?

And what are you giving yourself permission to do less of? Tell me in the comments. I want to know:)

Written by Dana Dinnawi, holistic health coach, writer, and creator of the Hormone Detox Program.

There won’t be a new essay from me today.

I’m traveling, and rather than pretending I can write a proper Sunday essay while simultaneously packing, traveling, navigating airports, and doing all the other things that happen when you leave the country, I’m giving myself the week off:)

But I didn’t want to disappear completely.

The August issue of The Quiet Return is coming next Sunday, and I’ve been putting it together over the past few weeks.

As you know, my monthly issue is a little different from my usual Sunday essay.

This month, think:

Barcelona.
Motherhood.
Summer laziness.
The pendulum swing between doing everything and doing absolutely nothing.
A little wellness industry eye-rolling.
Body Language.
Oscar Wilde.
And a few things I’m changing my mind about.

Basically, a collection of things I’ve been thinking about, reading, eating, doing, questioning, and enjoying this summer.

And I’ll be adding one more piece while I’m in Barcelona:

Places…a few of my favorite discoveries from the trip.

So today, I’m taking a little break.

Next Sunday, The Quiet Return: The August Issue will be waiting for you.

See you then. ❤️

Dana

I love my birthday, and I make sure everyone knows it. I love the ceremony of it. I love feeling celebrated. In our family, birthdays are never just birthdays. They’re birthday weeks. Everyone knows this about me. They all think it’s ridiculous. But they humor me anyway:)

Sometimes Birthday Week starts early. Sometimes it spills into the following week. It depends where we are, who’s in town, and whether I can persuade everyone that birthdays should really last longer than twenty-four hours. And why not? August practically invites it. Everyone is off school, everything slows down, and suddenly there’s time for coffee mornings, afternoon teas, lunches, dinners—sometimes all in the same day. Then we usually gather for a proper family celebration with a big BBQ or brunch and, obviously, lots of cake.

This year, though, I wanted something simpler. Just lunch with my husband, my kids, and my daughter’s fiancé (yes...I’m the Mother of the Bride again 😉). My other daughter was back in Tokyo with her husband and my grandson, and I missed them terribly. Such is life. Children grow up. They fall in love. They build lives of their own.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, I turned fifty-three.

I have to admit, I’m still negotiating with the number. Fifty-three doesn’t offend me exactly, but it does surprise me every time I say it out loud. It feels larger than the life I’m currently living. Not because I resent getting older; I don’t. But because somewhere in my mind, fifty-three belonged to grown-ups. Proper grown-ups. The kind who had reading glasses hanging around their necks and a collection of medications in the kitchen cupboard.

Fifty-three is not a small number. It isn’t old in the way eighty-three is old, but it isn’t one of those cheerful little numbers either. It makes you mentally leap ahead. Fifty-three somehow carries sixty-three inside it. And seventy-three. And, if we’re honest, the end. That’s what numbers do once you cross fifty. They stop arriving one at a time and start traveling in groups.

I remember my parents at fifty-three. They felt unquestionably older than I do now. By then they’d accumulated diagnoses, surgeries and medications in a way that seemed perfectly ordinary because everyone around them was doing the same.

Diabetes had arrived. High blood pressure had arrived. There had been a slipped disc, a hysterectomy, a gallbladder removal. None of it felt remarkable. It simply seemed to be what happened once people reached their fifties.

And yet here I am, occupying exactly the same number while feeling like someone else entirely. The woman inside my head is still about forty-three. She has a few more grey hairs now and a couple of lines around her eyes that weren’t there before, but otherwise she hasn’t changed very much. She still wants to book trips on a whim, make plans ten years into the future, spend an entire day wandering through a new city before staying out late for dinner. She certainly hasn’t received the memo that she’s apparently fifty-three.

Maybe that’s why I laughed when I read somewhere that Generation X is going to become the greatest generation of grandmothers in history.

I thought, of course we are.

We’re the generation that watched the women before us spend the last decade or two of their lives sitting on the sidelines, not necessarily because they wanted to, but because declining health was presented to them as simply what happened when you got older. We watched it. We worried about it. And then we inherited a very different world: more information, more examples, more access to knowledge, more possibilities.

We don’t have to inherit our mothers’ health simply because we inherited their genes.

Not everyone will choose a different path, of course. But many of us can. And I find that incredibly hopeful.

Perhaps that’s what feels so strange about fifty-three. Not aging itself, but the growing realization that my body and my calendar are telling two completely different stories. The calendar insists I’m moving steadily down the mountain. My body keeps lacing up its walking shoes and asking where we’re going next.

Since I can’t negotiate with the calendar, I’ve found something else to measure instead.

Every birthday now begins the same way. Before anyone sings, before the candles are lit, I sit with a notebook and ask myself the same questions I’ve been asking for years.

They aren’t the questions you’ll find on a blood test or in a doctor’s office.

They’re much simpler: They ask whether my body still lets me participate in the life I want to live.

Can I still climb several flights of stairs without thinking about it? Could I spend an entire day wandering through a city I love? Would my body let me book a flight tomorrow without hesitation? Have I needed a doctor this year? Started taking any medication? Has my body given me any new reasons to worry? Do I still wake up excited about my work? Am I still making plans that stretch years into the future?

Because somewhere over the past thirteen years, something changed.

My body stopped feeling like a mystery someone else needed to solve.

It became my longest-running case study.

It has taught me more than any course I’ve ever taken, more than any doctor ever explained to me, and more than any doctor ever succeeded in doing for me.

Over the years, I watched my fibroids shrink until I no longer needed the hysterectomy I had once thought was inevitable. A twenty-year saga of cystic acne finally came to an end. I threw out the thirty painkillers I relied on every month for debilitating ovulation pain. The brain fog lifted. The night sweats became a rarity. The early signs of hypothyroidism resolved. Even a frozen shoulder healed, not once, but twice.

Looking back, I don’t see a series of unrelated miracles. I see one body responding, again and again, to thousands of ordinary choices made consistently over time.

And every birthday, I look less at the number on the cake and more at the words in my notebook.

I still haven’t taken any medication.

I still don’t live with chronic pain.

I still wake up with energy.

I still haven’t needed a doctor.

Those four letters—still—have become my favorite measure of health.

They remind me that my body is, of course, changing. It has been changing since the day I was born. None of us outruns time. I don’t know if I’ll never become ill. None of us is promised that.

But I no longer think the question is whether our bodies will age.

The more interesting question is how quickly they will surrender to unnecessary deterioration and how much influence we actually have over that process.

If I keep opening that notebook every August and finding the same still staring back at me, I know I’m moving in the right direction.

The first question is always about movement.

Can I still climb several flights of stairs without thinking about it?

Yes.

I don’t climb them slowly. I don’t pull myself up using the handrail unless I’m wearing absurdly high heels, and even then it’s usually because I’m trying not to fall rather than because I’m out of breath. I simply go up the stairs without giving them a second thought.

It sounds like such an ordinary thing until it isn’t.

Somewhere along the way we’ve accepted the idea that climbing stairs should naturally become harder every year. That one day we’ll need a bedroom downstairs, or an elevator, or someone else to carry the groceries. I don’t see that as inevitable. I believe I have far more influence over how quickly that day arrives than I’ve been led to believe.

As soon as I land anywhere, I want to walk. Walking has become one of my favorite ways to get to know a city. London. Tokyo. Barcelona. Milan. Paris. I don’t want my body to become the reason I stop exploring places I’ve spent years dreaming about.

My husband and I also have a completely ridiculous competition over who ends the day with more steps. I don’t always win, but I refuse to retire from the competition.

To me, that’s what health buys you.

Not six-pack abs.

Freedom.

If someone offered me a flight tomorrow, would my body say yes before my mind even had time to think about it?

Yes.

When your body feels good, the world stays open. You don’t calculate airport terminals. You don’t quietly rule destinations out because they involve too much walking. You simply go.

Another question asks whether I’ve started taking any medication.

The answer is still no.

Not because I’m trying to prove a point, and certainly not because I think medication is somehow virtuous to avoid. If I genuinely need it one day, for an emergency, I’ll take it gratefully. I simply haven’t needed it. Not a painkiller. Not an antacid. Not a laxative. Not even a Tylenol for a headache. Not one pill in thirteen years (except for very specific painkillers after an elective surgery in 2020).

People come over to the house, get a headache, and ask, “Dana, do you have a Panadol?”

I always have to disappoint them.

We don’t even have a medicine cabinet anymore.

Which sounds either deeply inspiring or deeply irresponsible, depending on who’s listening.

Another question I ask is whether my body has given me any new reasons to worry.

This year, the answer was still no.

No mysterious fatigue. No digestive issues. No new chronic symptoms arriving without explanation.

The only thing that still appears from time to time is an occasional night sweat, perhaps three or four times a year, and almost every time I know exactly why. Too many restaurant meals. Too many late dinners. A stressful season. Travel. A routine that’s drifted further away from the one I know my body loves.

Years ago I might have blamed my hormones.

Today I see something entirely different.

Feedback.

Not punishment. Not betrayal. Simply another conversation with a body that’s trying to help me pay attention.

The same is true of perimenopause. I still menstruate every month. I don’t take hormone replacement therapy. I don’t organize my life around hot flashes, insomnia, mood swings or joint pain. Because they don’t exist. The occasional night sweat still appears a few times a year, but even that has become less of a mystery and more of a conversation.

My body has learned to whisper before it ever needs to shout.

I did need to listen a little more carefully this year when my frozen shoulder returned.

The first time it appeared was in 2014, and it healed completely. Then, after months of family stress, disrupted routines, too many meals away from home and putting my own habits on hold, it flared again.

Not because I had suddenly turned fifty-three.

Because my body was responding to the environment I had created.

Within two months of returning to the way I normally eat and live, it settled completely. Again. No imaging, medications or painkillers. No miracle supplement. No cutting-edge treatment. I simply went back to the life that had built my health in the first place.

To me, that’s not simply a shoulder.

That’s information.

Perhaps my favorite questions, though, have nothing to do with symptoms.

Do I still wake up excited about my work?

Do I still make plans that stretch years into the future?

The answer to both is yes.

Not every morning, of course. I’m still human. Some days I’d rather stay in bed with a book than answer emails or record a podcast. But most mornings I still can’t wait to begin.

I still have essays I want to write. Cities I want to wander through. Questions I haven’t answered yet.

I’ve started to think curiosity may be one of the healthiest biomarkers we have.

The day we stop looking forward, something much more important than the body begins to age.

When I finish answering those questions every August, I don’t feel proud.

I feel grateful.

Grateful that thirteen years later, so many of my answers are still the same. I still haven’t taken any medication. I still wake up with energy. I still haven’t needed a doctor. I still trust my body enough to book the trip, climb the stairs and say yes to the life I want to live.

Not because I’ve escaped aging.

None of us will.

My body will continue to age. It has been aging since the day I was born. But I no longer believe that aging and deterioration are the same thing.

We have far more influence over the speed of that erosion than we’ve been led to believe.

And somewhere along the way, that became the real purpose of my report card.

Not to prove that I am young.

Not to prove that I am invincible.

But to make sure I am still participating.

I want to remain a participant in my own life for as long as I possibly can. I want to be sitting around the table, not watching from the sidelines. Walking through cities instead of remembering when I used to. Lifting future grandchildren into my arms instead of wishing I could.

If the small choices I make every day can help preserve that possibility a little longer, then they are worth making.

Looking back, I can’t point to one miraculous decision. Not one isolated detox, one supplement, or one conversation that changed everything. I see thousands of ordinary mornings. Green juices I didn’t feel like making. Walks I almost skipped. Early nights. Home-cooked meals. Small choices that never looked particularly important on their own but, over time, became a life.

Somewhere during those years, health stopped meaning the absence of symptoms and became something much more interesting:

A relationship.

For years I thought my body was something that occasionally malfunctioned without warning, a collection of organs that behaved themselves until, one day, they didn’t.

I don’t experience it that way anymore.

Now it feels more like a conversation with someone who’s been trying to get my attention all along. The question is no longer whether my body is speaking.

It’s whether I’ve learned its language.

That doesn’t mean I always listen.

Some years, like this one, life becomes messy. Family issues, travel, celebrations, too many meals away from home, too little movement. I drift away from the habits I know serve me best.

And my body lets me know.

Not by punishing me.

By gently asking me to come back.

That, more than anything, has been the greatest gift of the past thirteen years.

Not perfect health.

Understanding.

Because once you understand your body, you stop fearing it. You stop fighting it. You stop believing it’s broken.

You stop outsourcing it.

You begin working with it instead.

Every year, after I publish one of these birthday essays, my mother says exactly the same thing.

“Tab iskoty bass... mat2oulish liḥad.”

“Dana, be quiet. Don’t tell people all this.”

She’s completely serious. She worries about the evil eye. If you’re Middle Eastern, you already understand. If you’re not, just know that my mother believes too much happiness, too much health, or too much good fortune should be kept private, protected from the world.

And every year I smile.

Not because I dismiss what she’s saying.

Because I understand it.

She believes blessings should be protected.

I’ve come to believe blessings should also be shared.

Not to impress anyone. Not because I think I’ve figured life out. And certainly not because I believe I’m somehow immune to suffering. I’m not. Life has a way of humbling every single one of us.

But if these past thirteen years have taught me anything, it’s that hope is meant to be shared. Possibility is meant to be shared. A different way of growing older is meant to be shared.

We don’t have to inherit our mothers’ health simply because we inherited their genes.

And perhaps that is what I want this fifty-third birthday to say more than anything else:

You are not powerless.

Your body is not a machine whose expiration date is printed on the calendar. You cannot control everything that will happen to you, and you cannot bargain your way out of mortality.

But there is an enormous space between I can control everything and I can control nothing.

That space is where our choices live.

That’s where mine have lived for thirteen years.

And every August, I open the notebook again.

I look at the number.

Then I look at the answers.

And I listen for the word I hope to keep finding there:

Still.

If you’re ready to take your health seriously...

If reading this made you think about your own report card, about the symptoms you’ve been tolerating, the things you’ve been told are simply part of getting older, or the ways your body has been asking you to pay attention, this is exactly the work I do.

Registration for my 3-Month Hormone Detox is now open.

This is my deeper, guided program for women who are ready to stop managing symptoms and start understanding what their bodies are asking for.

We start Sept. 27.

Over three months, we’ll work on the food, inflammation, digestion, hormones, detoxification, lifestyle and mindset pieces that create the foundation for lasting change, with ongoing support from me along the way.

If you’re reading this and thinking, I think this is what I need, I’d love to hear from you.

Email me and tell me what’s going on. Tell me what you’re struggling with, what you’ve tried, and what you wish could be different. We’ll take it from there.

Registration is open now.

This essay is only half the publication.

Below the paywall, I share two pieces that I reserve for paid subscribers:

✺ Inside: snippets from my journal.
✺ Things I’m Changing My Mind About: ideas I’m reconsidering, questioning, and seeing differently.

This week:

• More from my notebook, including the completely unedited beginnings of a new writing experiment.
• Why I changed my mind about eating “too much” fruit.

Thank you for supporting independent writing. It allows me to keep publishing every Sunday:)

And if you read this essay, I’d love to hear from you in the comments. What would be on your birthday report card?

Read more

I found something this week.

Not in an old journal.

Not tucked inside a drawer.

But on a shelf in my office, hidden between books I’d long forgotten.

A little white hardbound booklet.

On the cover, written in pink pencil, were the words:

Dance Again.

By Dana Dinnawi.

I smiled before I even opened it.

I’d completely forgotten it existed.

Five years ago, I was at a business retreat.

On the last afternoon, after four days of talking about marketing, messaging, offers, pricing and all the practical things that go into building a business, our mentor gave us one final assignment.

She handed each of us a white, hardbound A4 booklet.

A box of colored pencils.

And ninety minutes.

“Write a children’s book,” she said.

You can imagine my reaction.

What on earth does a children’s book have to do with building a business?

Most people think business retreats are about strategies, branding, launches and spreadsheets.

And they are.

But the best ones are just as much about the person building the business as the business itself.

Because eventually you realise that every business problem becomes a personal problem.

If you’re afraid to be seen...

your marketing reflects it.

If you don’t trust yourself...

your pricing reflects it.

If you’re constantly performing instead of telling the truth...

your message reflects it.

This assignment wasn’t about children.

It was about stripping away everything complicated until only the truth remained.

The only rule was that whatever we wrote had to be simple enough for a child to understand.

No jargon.

No cleverness.

No hiding.

Just the truth.

I cried.

Not because I didn’t know what to write.

Because I didn’t want to find out.

For the first time during the entire retreat, I refused.

Internally, at least.

I told myself I wasn’t going to do it.

I wasn’t going to sit there drawing pictures and writing some sentimental story about myself.

Unfortunately...

not doing it wasn’t one of the options.

So ninety minutes later...

this is what I handed in.

I haven’t changed a single word.

Reading it now, I realize that before I was writing for women...

before I was coaching...

before The Quiet Return...

I already knew exactly what I wanted to say.

I just hadn’t realized it yet.

Dance Again.

By Dana Dinnawi

Dedication Page:

To Malak, Nour, Youssef and Karim

Always and Always

Once upon a time, there was a young girl named Dana.

Dana loved to dance and act and be on stage.

She loved dancing because the music and movement felt amazing. She loved acting because she got to pretend to be funny, or serious, or both.

But what she loved the most was how she felt on the stage. She felt ALIVE.

She danced and acted every year until she was 18. And she was accepted into a school for the performing arts.

Until her dad, who was a doctor, said: “Dancing and acting won’t make you any money. You need to go to a real school and have a real profession.”

Dana didn’t understand this. Why couldn’t she do what she loved as a profession? And why was dancing and acting not “real”?

But Dana listened to her parents. Because she was a good girl.

She went to the real school and learned how to be a journalist. Because that was a real profession.

But Dana didn’t love it. Not in the way she loved acting and dancing.

So Dana did nothing. She decided not to have a profession.

She decided that since she couldn’t do something she loved, she would do nothing at all.

Then one day, Dana got sick. Not SICK SICK. She didn’t have a disease. She didn’t need to go to a hospital or anything.

But she was just always tired. She felt like she couldn’t get out of bed in the morning anymore. She took a lot of naps during the day. She couldn’t exercise as much anymore. One day she was happy and then the next day she was sad.

And once a month, her body hurt. A lot. And she would cry for no reason.

So she decided to go see a doctor to see if he could help her. The doctor told her not to worry. He told her everything was ok and what she felt was normal.

He told her to take some medicine when she feels tired or her body hurt. And he told her she would probably feel like this for many years. But that was ok, and normal, and not to worry because there was nothing she could do about it.

Dana believed her doctor. Her father was a doctor. And so she knew doctors are very smart and they don’t lie.

But after many more months, Dana was still not ok. Nothing changed. So she decided to go to another kind of doctor. He wasn’t the same kind of doctor you find in a hospital. He didn’t wear a white coat and he didn’t give anyone any pills. He called himself a healer.

He asked Dana a lot of questions about how she was feeling. Dana was surprised. No doctor had ever asked her so many questions before.

When she finished answering all of his questions, the healer told her that her body and mind needed to rest. He said her body needed to have different food.

Dana didn’t understand. What was wrong with the food she was already eating? The healer told her that some foods are super strong and powerful foods; and some foods aren’t really food at all. Her told her our bodies want the really strong, powerful foods, not the fake ones.

So Dana asked him: “What are the super strong powerful foods?”

He said “That’s easy. Anything that comes straight from the farm. All the fruits that grow on the trees and all the vegetables that grow in the ground; and all the animals that eat these foods.”

So then Dana asked him: “What are the fake foods?”

He said, “That’s easy. All the foods that are made in a factory or come in a box.”

Then he told Dana to eat A LOT of the super strong foods and none of the sad, fake foods.

So she did. And after that she had a lot of energy. She slept really well. She felt happy every day and her body stopped hurting once a month.

One day a few months later, Dana had a dream that she finally DID have something she loved. She LOVED the idea of showing other women how to feel good too, just like she did.

So she went back to school to learn how to become a healer. Just like the man who helped her heal. It took her awhile, but she did it.

And now Dana wakes up every day to help women everywhere help themselves heal.

She found a profession that makes her feel like she’s dancing again.

She found a profession she loves:)))

THE END

When I found this little book again, I expected to laugh at the drawings.

Instead, I cried. Again.

Not because the story is sad.

But because I realized I’ve spent the last five years living inside the ending.

I really did find a profession that feels like dancing again.

And maybe that’s why I wanted to share this with you.

Sometimes the person we become isn’t someone new.

Sometimes she’s simply the little girl we stopped listening to.

A question for you...

If you had to write a children’s book about your own life today, what would the title be?

I’d genuinely love to read your answers in the comments:)

This essay is only half the publication.

Below the paywall, I share two pieces that I reserve for paid subscribers:

✺ Inside: snippets from my journal.

✺ Things I’m Changing My Mind About: ideas I’m reconsidering, questioning, and seeing differently.

This week:

• On alone-ness.

• Why I’m changing my mind about the flu, stress, and healing.

Thank you for supporting independent writing. It allows me to keep publishing every Sunday:)

Read more

The only thing that got me out of bed every morning was the promise of a skim milk mocha latte.

Not my children.

Not the day ahead.

Certainly not the ninety-minute workout I knew I’d force myself through later.

Coffee.

That first sip was the reward for surviving the morning.

I’d get the kids dressed, make breakfast, pack lunches, sign permission slips I had forgotten about the night before, hunt for missing shoes, and finally wave everyone out the door.

Then the house would fall silent.

I’d sink into the sofa, wrap both hands around that warm paper cup, and take the first sip as though it contained the answer to my life.

In a way, I suppose I thought it did.

Because I wasn’t looking forward to much else.

Looking back, that’s probably the hardest part to admit.

I loved my children.

I loved my husband.

I loved the life we’d built together.

There was nothing objectively wrong with it.

And yet...

I wasn’t enjoying it.

Everything felt heavy.

Waking up was heavy.

Making breakfast was heavy.

Packing school lunches was heavy.

Answering the phone felt like a commitment.

Even deciding what to cook for dinner felt overwhelming.

Every task required more energy than I seemed to have.

By two o’clock every afternoon, I could barely keep my eyes open.

By three, I was asleep on the couch.

Not occasionally.

Every single day.

I woke up with headaches no matter how many hours I slept.

My shoulder throbbed for no apparent reason.

Physiotherapy didn’t help.

Sleeping longer didn’t help.

Exercising more certainly didn’t help.

Meanwhile, I kept gaining weight.

Not fifty kilos.

Not twenty.

Seven kilos.

Seven.

Objectively, it wasn’t very much.

Subjectively, it became everything.

Those seven kilos convinced me that happiness lived on the other side of weight loss.

If I could just lose them...

I’d finally feel like myself again.

So I did what millions of women do.

I followed another meal plan.

Atkins. South Beach.

Counted another calorie.

Bought another pair of running shoes.

Started another first day of the week.

I cut fat.

Then carbs.

Then protein.

Then dairy.

At one point, I think the only thing left to cut was my enjoyment of food.

I became obsessed with hiding those seven kilos.

I discovered Spanx and convinced myself they were the answer. Every morning became a negotiation. Pulling them on. Tugging. Sucking in my stomach. Trying to smooth out a body that suddenly didn’t feel like mine.

I planned outfits around what would conceal me best. I avoided certain clothes altogether.

I blamed myself for not having enough discipline.

I exercised every day.

Ninety minutes.

Sometimes more.

I hated every single minute of it.

Not because I hated moving my body.

Because every workout felt like punishment for a body that refused to cooperate.

I believed I had no choice.

After all...

I couldn’t be miserable and overweight.

Could I?

Looking back now, I realize I wasn’t actually trying to become healthy.

I was trying to become acceptable.

Acceptable to myself.

I thought those seven kilos were the reason I didn’t recognize the woman staring back at me in the mirror.

I had convinced myself they were standing between me and happiness.

The harder I tried, the more exhausted I became.

Eventually, I stopped blaming my body.

I started blaming my life.

Maybe my marriage wasn’t working.

Maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a stay-at-home mother.

Maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a mother at all.

Even writing those words now makes me wince.

I adored my children.

I would have done anything for them.

But I couldn’t understand why motherhood felt so much harder than it seemed to be for everyone else.

Then I turned the blame inward.

Maybe I simply hadn’t found myself yet.

I had degrees in Journalism, English, and Comparative Literature.

Books had always made sense to me.

People had always made sense to me.

Words had always made sense to me.

Life suddenly didn’t.

Maybe I’d missed my chance to build a career.

Maybe this was what everyone called a midlife crisis.

Maybe it was lingering postpartum depression after my youngest son was born.

I even considered making an appointment with my doctor.

But that required energy too.

Energy I didn’t have.

So instead, I kept doing what every well-meaning woman does.

I tried harder.

I exercised more.

I ate less.

I drank more coffee.

And every night, I’d climb into bed and make myself the same promise.

Tomorrow will be different.

Tomorrow I’ll wake up energized.

Tomorrow I’ll get everything done.

Tomorrow I’ll be patient with the kids.

Tomorrow I’ll enjoy my life.

Tomorrow I’ll finally become the woman I know I’m capable of being.

Tomorrow never came.

What I didn’t know then, but have spent the last fifteen years teaching thousands of women, is that inflammation doesn’t just affect your body.

It affects your personality.

It steals your patience.

It steals your curiosity.

It steals your motivation.

It convinces you that you’ve become lazy...

when you’re actually exhausted.

It convinces you that you’re unmotivated...

when your cells are struggling to produce energy.

It convinces you that you’re unhappy...

when your body is simply overwhelmed.

I didn’t know any of that then.

I just thought something was wrong with me.

Until my brother recommended I see a nutritional therapist.

I almost didn’t go.

I’d already tried everything I could think of, including all the ‘in’ dieticians and nutritionists.

Another expert felt like another opportunity to fail.

But I made the appointment anyway.

I had no idea that one conversation would divide my life into two parts.

The woman before it...

and the woman after it.

He listened patiently as I described everything that had become normal.

The headaches.

The shoulder pain.

The afternoon naps.

The weight that refused to budge.

The coffee.

The constant exhaustion.

The ovulation pains.

The acne.

When I finished, he suggested something I’d never heard of before.

A ten-day detox.

This was 2011.

Detox wasn’t the buzzword it is today.

Nobody was making celery juice.

Nobody was talking about liver health on Instagram.

No influencers were showing off green smoothies and before-and-after photos.

In fact, I had never even heard the word detox.

He explained what would happen.

“At first, you’ll probably feel worse.”

That wasn’t exactly the sales pitch I’d been hoping for.

“You’ll feel tired.”

“You may feel irritable.”

“You might cry.”

“You may even want to send your children to your mother’s house.”

I laughed.

Then he continued.

“But after that...”

“You’ll wake up rested.”

“You’ll have more energy.”

“Your mind will feel clearer.”

“Your joint pain will disappear.”

“You’ll probably lose weight.”

“And...”

He smiled.

“You might even have an epiphany.”

I wish I could tell you that I signed up because I wanted to heal.

I didn’t.

I wanted to lose seven kilos.

That was it.

If I’m being completely honest, he could have said absolutely nothing else after “you’ll lose weight.”

I was in.

The first few days were exactly as promised.

I cried.

I snapped at everyone.

I questioned my decision approximately every fifteen minutes.

I stared at the scale far more often than any emotionally stable adult should.

I remember wondering whether I’d completely lost my mind.

Who voluntarily gives up bread, sugar, dairy, and coffee?

Apparently...me.

Although there were moments when I seriously questioned that decision.

Then something happened.

Not overnight.

Not dramatically.

Subtly.

Almost imperceptibly.

One morning I woke up before my alarm.

No snooze button.

No dragging myself out of bed.

No negotiating with myself for “just five more minutes.”

I was simply...

awake.

I can’t adequately describe what that felt like unless you’ve lived on the other side of chronic fatigue.

When you’ve spent years waking up already tired, waking up rested feels almost miraculous.

Then came the afternoon.

Three o’clock came and went.

Then four.

I looked at the clock and stopped in my tracks.

I’d forgotten to take my nap.

Forgotten.

That may sound ridiculous if you’ve never organized your day around exhaustion.

But for me, it was astonishing.

My body had done something it hadn’t done in years.

It had made enough energy to get through an entire day.

The shoulder pain disappeared.

Not gradually.

It was simply...

gone.

I remember moving my arm around in disbelief, waiting for the familiar ache.

Nothing.

Then I exercised.

Not because I had to.

Because I wanted to.

For the first time in years, movement felt like a celebration instead of a punishment.

Then came the moment that still makes me laugh.

My beloved skim milk mocha latte.

The drink that had carried me through every morning.

I took one sip.

Just one.

And I didn’t want another.

If you had told me a month earlier that I’d voluntarily walk away from coffee, I would have laughed in your face.

These days, my relationship with coffee is a little more complicated.

Sometimes I enjoy it.

Sometimes I don’t.

I go through seasons.

The difference is that coffee is no longer carrying me through my life.

It’s simply...coffee.

Around that same time, I noticed something else.

My clothes were becoming loose.

The seven kilos I’d obsessed over were disappearing.

Ironically...

By then, they had become the least interesting part of the story.

Because something much bigger had changed.

The fog had lifted.

The woman I’d been looking for hadn’t been hiding underneath seven kilos.

She’d been buried beneath inflammation.

For years, I’d believed I was unhappy.

I’d questioned my marriage.

I’d questioned motherhood.

I’d questioned my purpose.

I’d questioned myself.

What I never questioned was whether the food I was eating every single day could be influencing how I felt physically...

and emotionally.

Today we know that inflammation doesn’t stay in one place.

It doesn’t politely limit itself to your joints or your digestive system.

It affects your hormones.

Your brain.

Your energy.

Your mood.

Your sleep.

Your ability to think clearly.

Your resilience.

Even your sense of hope.

Looking back, I wasn’t lazy.

I wasn’t lacking discipline.

I wasn’t weak.

My body was overwhelmed.

And once I stopped overwhelming it...

it remembered exactly what to do.

People often ask me whether I really believe detoxing can change someone’s life.

I always smile before I answer.

Because I know how unbelievable it sounds until you’ve experienced it yourself.

Yes.

I do.

I think detox is magic.

Not because there’s anything mystical about it.

Not because it’s trendy.

Not because it’s a quick fix.

I think it’s magic because I’ve now watched thousands of women experience what I experienced: that extraordinary moment when the fog lifts, inflammation settles, energy returns, pain disappears, the body rebalances, medication becomes a thing of the past, and they begin to recognize themselves again.

A detox doesn’t perform the healing.

Your body does.

The detox simply removes enough interference for your body to do what it has wanted to do all along.

And to me...

that’s magic.

Three months after that first detox, an email landed in my inbox.

The subject line was simple.

“Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach?”

I remember staring at it for a long time.

Not because I’d always dreamed of becoming a health coach.

I hadn’t.

If you’d told me six months earlier that I’d one day spend my life talking about inflammation, hormones, gut health, and vegetables, I would have laughed.

I had degrees in Journalism, English, and Comparative Literature.

I thought words were going to be my career.

Not food.

But something had shifted.

Not just in my body.

In me.

For the first time in years, I felt capable of saying yes to something bigger than the life I was living.

I had the energy.

I had the mental clarity.

I had the confidence to believe I could actually do it.

So I said yes.

Looking back now, it feels obvious.

At the time, it felt terrifying.

That one decision became another.

And another.

One client became ten.

Ten became hundreds.

Hundreds became thousands.

Women from every corner of the world began telling me stories that sounded eerily familiar.

“I wake up exhausted.”

“I don’t recognize myself anymore.”

“My doctor says everything is normal.”

“I’ve lost my motivation.”

“I feel anxious all the time.”

“I’ve forgotten what it feels like to have energy.”

“I think this is just what getting older feels like.”

Every time I hear those words, I think back to the woman sitting on her couch with a skim milk mocha latte in her hands, convinced she was simply unhappy.

I wish I could go back and sit beside her.

I’d tell her that she isn’t lazy.

She isn’t failing.

She isn’t imagining things.

She isn’t a bad mother because she’s counting the minutes until bedtime.

She isn’t a bad wife because she’s too exhausted to be present.

She isn’t weak because another diet didn’t work.

I’d tell her that her body isn’t betraying her.

It’s trying to save her.

It has been whispering to her for years.

The headaches.

The shoulder pain.

The afternoon crashes.

The weight gain.

The cravings.

The bloating.

The night sweats that would come later.

The hormonal symptoms.

The anxiety.

The brain fog.

None of them were random.

None of them were separate problems.

They were different ways of saying exactly the same thing.

Something isn’t right.

For years, I believed my body was the obstacle standing between me and the life I wanted.

Now I know it was the messenger trying to lead me there.

Looking back now, it’s almost funny that I thought seven kilos were ruining my life.

They weren’t.

The weight was simply the most visible symptom of a body asking for help.

That realization has changed not only the way I eat, but the way I live.

I no longer ask,

“How can I lose weight?”

I ask,

“What is my body trying to tell me?”

I no longer wonder whether a food will make me fat.

I wonder whether it will help me wake up excited for the day ahead.

Whether it will help me think clearly.

Whether it will support my hormones.

Whether it will give me the energy to play with my grandson, travel, write, cook dinner, laugh with friends, and still have something left in the tank when the day is over.

Because that, to me, is health.

Not fitting into a certain pair of jeans.

Not chasing a number on the scale.

Not surviving on coffee until lunchtime.

Health is having enough energy to fully participate in your own life.

It’s one of the reasons I rarely talk about weight anymore.

Weight was simply the symptom that got my attention.

Healing was the thing that changed my life.

People often ask me what the greatest transformation from that first detox was.

They expect me to say I lost seven kilos.

Or that I stopped drinking coffee.

Or that my shoulder stopped hurting.

Or that I stopped taking thirty painkillers a month for my ovulation pains.

Those things mattered.

But they weren’t the greatest gift.

The greatest gift was that I got myself back.

Or perhaps that’s not quite true.

I didn’t “get myself back.”

Because she was never actually gone.

She had simply been buried beneath inflammation.

Fifteen years later, I still think about that woman sometimes.

The one who believed happiness lived on the other side of seven kilos.

I wish I could tell her that she was looking in the wrong place.

She didn’t need another diet.

She didn’t need more discipline.

She didn’t need more willpower.

She needed someone to explain that her body wasn’t broken.

She needed someone to teach her how to listen.

And maybe...

That’s why I’ve spent the last fifteen years doing exactly that.

If you recognized yourself in this story...

...I’d love to hear yours.

Every week, women write to me describing symptoms they’ve been living with for years, sometimes decades. They tell me about the headaches they’ve learned to ignore, the afternoon crashes they’ve accepted as normal, the weight that won’t budge, the bloating, the anxiety, the night sweats, the migraines, the constipation, the hormonal chaos, the medication that isn’t working…

Almost every email ends the same way:

“I thought it was just me.”

It usually isn’t.

It’s funny how we imagine life changes all at once.

We expect fireworks.

A dramatic revelation.

A movie-worthy moment.

Mine began with a conversation that lasted about an hour.

Fifteen years later, I’m still living inside what started that day.

If something in this essay felt familiar, send me an email and tell me your story.

Tell me what you’ve been living with.

Tell me what you’ve tried.

If I think I’m the right person to help, I’ll invite you to complete my comprehensive health history form so I can understand the full picture and recommend the program that’s the best fit for you:)

Inside

My notebook. Snippets from my journal. Unfinished thoughts. Rabbit holes. Things I’m still trying to understand. Welcome to the place where my inner monologue gets a microphone.

“thinking about creating versus reacting..creating my life means letting go of reactions. because you can’t create from a place of constant reacting because you’ll always be on someone else’s timeline; someone else’s agenda. I need to exit that. jump off. when I pause and think, and do what I want, i’m calmer; i’m nicer; i feel i connect with myself and those around me more.

so what is reactive? scatter brained, nervous, shallow breathing, edgy, running around, slamming doors, dropping things, checking phone constantly, resentful, constantly thinking about what to do next, snacking all day, always feeling like not enough time, lots of housework

and what’s creative? relaxed, unbothered, taking my time, day goes by much slower, i don’t want the day to end, reading a lot, working out easily, dreaming, no guilt, lots of deep breaths, lots of self care, connecting, less screen time, less housework, more deep thinking”

Things I’m changing my mind about.

Because changing your mind is a form of growth…

Love isn’t sacrificing yourself for your family.

For most of my life, I thought being a good mother meant putting myself last.

If there was one piece of cake left, my children got it.

If there wasn’t enough time, I skipped the walk.

If everyone else needed something, my needs could wait until tomorrow.

That’s what good mothers do, isn’t it?

We wear exhaustion like a badge of honor.

We survive on coffee.

We eat whatever’s left on our children’s plates.

We ignore the headaches.

The bloating.

The weight gain.

The fatigue.

The night sweats.

The aching joints.

We tell ourselves we’ll deal with it later.

After the kids are older.

After work calms down.

After summer.

After New Year’s...

After...

But somewhere over the last fifteen years, I’ve changed my mind.

Completely.

Today, I think one of the greatest acts of love is taking extraordinary care of your own health.

Not because I want to live forever.

None of us will.

But because I want the years I do have to belong to me and to the people I love.

When I’m eighty, I want my children to look forward to spending the afternoon with me.

I want to hug my grandchildren without worrying whether my back can manage it.

I want to travel.

To walk through museums and cities for hours.

To wander unfamiliar streets without searching for the next bench.

I want to cook because I enjoy it, not because someone has to do it for me.

I want to be independent for as long as I possibly can.

Not because I don’t need people.

But because I’d rather spend my time making memories with my family than asking them to become my caregivers.

Some people hear this and think I’m talking about vanity.

I’m not.

I’m talking about responsibility.

We’ve somehow accepted the idea that getting older automatically means accumulating medications, joint replacements, diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis, dementia, and declining mobility, as though they’re inevitable milestones of aging.

They’re not.

Aging is inevitable.

How we age is influenced by the choices we make every single day.

The food we eat.

Whether we move.

Whether we sleep.

Whether we step outside into the sunshine.

Whether we nourish ourselves or simply get through another day.

I’ve spent the last fifteen years watching women reverse symptoms they were told they would simply have to “live with.”

I’ve watched inflammation disappear.

Energy return.

Joint pain resolve.

Blood sugar normalize.

Hormones rebalance.

Medications thrown out.

I’ve also watched women discover, often too late, that decades of believing “it doesn’t matter what I eat” came with a price.

And the people who paid that price weren’t only them.

It was their husbands.

Their wives.

Their children.

Their grandchildren.

Because illness is rarely carried by one person.

It ripples through an entire family.

Appointments.

Hospital visits.

Cancelled plans.

Missed holidays.

Adult children becoming parents to their own parents.

None of us can guarantee perfect health.

Some illnesses arrive despite doing everything right.

Life is wonderfully unfair like that.

But many of the chronic diseases we now consider “normal aging” are not random acts of fate.

They’re the accumulation of thousands of small choices.

That’s the part I’ve changed my mind about.

I used to think taking care of myself was something I did for me.

Now I see it differently.

Every nourishing meal.

Every walk.

Every good night’s sleep.

Every decision to support my body instead of ignoring it...

is also a gift to the people who I love and who love me.

Because one day, if I’m lucky enough to be eighty, God willing, I don’t want my family to remember me as the woman who spent the last twenty years of her life waiting in doctors’ offices.

I want them to remember me laughing around the table.

Walking beside them in the sunshine.

Lifting my grandchildren into impossibly big hugs.

Still curious.

Still independent.

Still fully participating in my own life.

That’s the future I’m investing in every time I sit down to eat.

And that’s why I’ve stopped thinking of healthy habits as self-care.

I’ve started thinking of them as one of the purest expressions of love.

I’d love to leave you with two questions.

When you picture yourself at eighty, what do you hope is still true?

And...

What’s one thing you’ve changed your mind about in the last few years?

Leave a comment below. I read every one, and some of my favorite conversations begin there.

Written by Dana Dinnawi, holistic health coach, writer, and creator of the Hormone Detox Program.

Summer is the season to sleep in. Really sleep in. The moment you wake up on time because that’s what your body knows, then the instant realization that you don’t have to. The relief that follows as you burrow deeper beneath the covers. That’s Summer.

Leo season. Imagine the mighty lion languishing beneath the shade, proudly yawning and stretching, unembarrassed to reveal his softness. Content to be still. To be a sloth when necessary. Maybe that's why I've always loved this season. I'm a Leo too.

Succulent mango season.

This is Summer.

Sleep. Sleep some more. Lounge. Stretch. Let your stomach hang out. Float in the water. Buy the flowers. Feast on ripe fruit. Drench your body with God’s light.

This is Summer.

The pages that follow are my own attempt to honor the season. Some are stories. Some are reflections. Some are conversations about healing, food, home, and becoming. None of them asks you to hurry. Read one today. Save another for August. This publication was never meant to be consumed. It was meant to be kept.

-Dana

I don’t know exactly when the switch happened.

Somewhere in my late twenties, I think.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped pretending that I looked forward to beach summers.

Every June, as soon as schools let out and everyone around me started talking about turquoise water, white linen dresses, beach clubs, and weekends by the sea, I realized my mind was somewhere completely different.

Not on a beach.

In London.

I can go an entire summer without seeing the sea and never feel like I’ve missed anything.

I don’t crave it.

I don’t count the days until I can sink my feet into the sand.

I’ve never understood why everyone seems to believe summer has to happen beside water.

But a summer without London?

That feels impossible.

Like skipping something my soul depends on.

I’ve stopped trying to explain it to people.

I simply tell them that London is my summer medicine.

The longer I stay, the better I feel.

For years, I thought it was simply the walking.

When you live in a city like Cairo, walking isn’t something you casually do. You walk from your front door to your car. From the car to a restaurant. From the restaurant back to the car. Walking for the sake of walking barely exists.

So arriving in London, stepping outside the hotel, and knowing I could spend the next four or five hours entirely on foot always felt revolutionary and exhilarating.

I remember reading somewhere that our brains work differently when we walk.

That ideas untangle themselves.

That conversation becomes easier.

That emotions settle.

Whether or not the science is true, I know my own body well enough to recognize what happens after a few days in London.

I walk.

And then I walk some more.

Not because I’m trying to close my rings.

Not because the Health App on my phone congratulates me.

Not because I need ten thousand steps.

I walk because, somewhere around the second hour, something shifts.

The thoughts that have been sitting just beyond my reach somehow find their way back to me.

Ideas buried beneath weeks of mental clutter bubble to the surface.

Problems untangle.

Sentences I’ve been searching for suddenly appear.

My shoulders soften.

My breathing slows.

Twenty thousand steps later, I don’t come back exhausted.

Achy, maybe.

But never exhausted.

I come back feeling more like myself.

This trip, though, I realized walking wasn’t the whole story.

It was the cadence.

The rhythm.

The pace at which my days unfolded.

Or perhaps more accurately...

the lack of pace.

This was the first trip my husband and I had ever taken without trying to accomplish anything.

No color-coded list of restaurants.

No museum tickets booked weeks in advance.

No “while we’re here we have to...”

No pressure to squeeze every possible experience into seven days.

We woke up whenever we woke up.

Sometimes we’d open the curtains, look outside, and climb back into bed.

Sometimes we’d lie there talking.

Sometimes one of us would drift back to sleep while the other scrolled through the news or read a few pages of a book.

We rarely left the hotel before noon.

If you’d told me ten years ago that I’d sleep in while in London, I would have laughed.

Sleep in?

In London?

Why would anyone willingly waste precious hours indoors when one of the greatest cities in the world was waiting outside?

Back then we treated London like a challenge.

How many museums could we fit into one day?

How many neighborhoods?

How many restaurants?

How many shops?

Every hour had to count.

Every meal had to be memorable.

Every day had to justify the trip.

This year, something changed.

Or perhaps...

I had.

London no longer feels like somewhere I’m trying to conquer.

It feels like somewhere I return.

Like home.

We’d been enough times that I no longer felt responsible for seeing London.

I wasn’t trying to “do London.”

I was simply living in it for a week.

There’s a difference.

Home doesn’t require novelty.

You don’t wake up in your own house wondering what remarkable thing you’ll do today.

Sometimes home is coffee.

A walk.

Reading for an hour.

Wandering into the same café you’ve visited three days in a row because they already know your order.

Perhaps familiarity isn’t the enemy of travel.

Perhaps it’s the reward for returning often enough.

It struck me that this might actually be what healing feels like.

Not doing more.

Not squeezing more life into a day.

But finally living at a pace your nervous system has been asking for all along.

Perhaps that’s why this trip felt different.

London itself seemed calmer.

For July, it wasn’t nearly as crowded as I expected.

The pavements felt easier.

The cafés quieter.

The parks fuller.

And because there was nowhere we absolutely had to be, we made one simple decision.

We would walk.

Everywhere.

Not one Tube.

Not one bus.

Not one Uber.

If somewhere was an hour away...

we walked.

If dinner was forty-five minutes in the opposite direction...

we walked again.

If we wanted coffee after dinner...

another walk.

Step after step.

Street after street.

Without ever discussing it, we’d fallen into the same rhythm.

Sometimes we’d talk for half an hour without stopping.

Sometimes we’d walk in complete silence.

Not uncomfortable silence.

Companionable silence.

The kind that only happens when nobody feels responsible for filling the space.

One evening we wandered through Mayfair just after eight.

The streets were busy.

Shops were getting ready to close.

Traffic moved steadily through the narrow streets.

And yet, with sunset still almost two hours away, there wasn’t the feeling that the city was winding down.

Quite the opposite.

There was excitement in the air.

As though the day still had possibilities.

As though nobody was in a hurry to call it over.

You could still linger over dinner.

You could still walk somewhere unexpected.

You could still decide, on a whim, to sit outside with a glass of wine or wander through another neighborhood before heading home.

The day hadn’t finished with you yet.

We crossed Hyde Park almost every day.

It was alive in the way only parks can be on long summer evenings.

Joggers.

Walkers.

Football matches unfolding on one patch of grass.

Softball games on another.

Picnics scattered everywhere.

Children still running as though bedtime belonged to someone else.

A group of friends laughing through what appeared to be a fiercely competitive egg-and-spoon race.

And, of course, couples tucked beneath nearly every other tree, wrapped around one another and seemingly oblivious to the thousands of people walking past.

We walked through all of it.

Day after day.

Just the two of us.

We rarely stopped.

Except for the flowers.

The only thing that regularly interrupted our rhythm was a flower bed.

My husband has the green thumb in our family, and every few minutes he’d stop to photograph another planting combination, another border, another idea to recreate at home.

I’d wait patiently beside him, admiring the hydrangeas that seemed to grow effortlessly beneath London’s soft summer skies.

Every year I fall in love with them all over again.

Every summer I convince myself they might somehow work in Cairo.

Every summer I remember they’ll never, ever survive Cairo.

I sigh anyway.

What struck me afterwards was what we weren’t carrying.

No shopping bags.

No boxes.

No purchases balanced awkwardly between our hands.

Have you ever been to London...or anywhere…

and not shopped?

I hadn’t.

Not once.

Usually, shopping dictates the day without us even noticing.

If we’re walking to Chelsea and planning to buy something, then eventually we’ll have to stop walking.

We’ll need an Uber or a bus back.

After all, you can only carry shopping bags for so long.

But if you don’t shop...

that entire calculation disappears.

Because it isn’t just shopping.

It’s the invisible planning.

Where to leave the bags.

How much can we carry?

Should we come back later?

Will the shops still be open?

Without shopping...

all of that disappears.

You simply keep walking.

And walking.

And walking.

It made me wonder how much invisible weight we carry without realizing it.

Not just shopping bags.

Expectations.

Plans.

Decisions.

The constant question of what comes next.

I’ve often joked about retail therapy.

Like many women, I’ve enjoyed the little rush of bringing something home.

But somewhere along this trip another question surfaced.

Can I heal without retail therapy?

The answer, it turns out, was never really in doubt.

Yes.

I just hadn’t given myself the chance to find out.

The same thing happened with food.

Our children thought we’d lost our minds.

“You’re in one of the greatest food cities in the world.”

“You have to eat here.”

“Book this place before it fills up.”

“Don’t miss this restaurant.”

Every recommendation came with the same urgency.

As though we’d somehow waste the trip if we didn’t optimize every meal.

Years ago I probably would have.

This year...

we booked nothing.

We ate when we were hungry.

Wherever we happened to be.

Sometimes we’d stop because a place looked inviting.

Sometimes we’d keep walking.

Sometimes we’d return to somewhere we’d already eaten simply because we felt like it.

Indian again tonight?

Of course.

Pastries in the middle of the afternoon?

Absolutely.

Coffee with biscotti.

A brioche sandwich because it looked good.

Fish and chips because...

well...

we were in England.

There was no balancing yesterday’s dinner with today’s lunch.

No mental accounting.

No,

“We ate too much yesterday, so let’s eat light today.”

No guilt.

No compensation.

Just appetite.

And trust.

Perhaps that’s another thing healing has given me.

Food no longer follows me around all day asking to be managed.

It simply becomes part of the day.

I always leave London feeling like it wasn’t enough.

Because it never is.

Leaving has never been easy for me.

It still isn’t.

For years, I’d come home feeling almost bereft.

As though I’d left the best version of myself behind.

I even came to recognize the feeling enough to give it a name:

The Post-London Recovery.

It still happens.

Only now, it doesn’t last quite as long.

Not because I love London any less.

If anything, I love it more.

But I’ve learned to hold onto what the city gives me.

Not souvenirs.

Not shopping bags.

Not photographs.

Something much harder to explain.

A feeling.

A steadiness.

A nervous system that finally remembers what it feels like not to be braced against the world.

I can’t stay in London forever.

Life is in Cairo.

My family is here.

My work is here.

My home is here.

But somewhere between the long walks, the slower mornings, the parks full of people lingering long past dinner, and the freedom of having nowhere I absolutely had to be, something inside me settles.

That feeling comes home with me.

It doesn’t last forever.

Of course it doesn’t.

But it lasts long enough to remind me that this version of me exists.

And that I’ll find her again next summer.

Because London isn’t just my favorite city.

It’s still my summer medicine.

Food.

Cherries on ice.

Summer at home in Cairo is where I get my sun and water fix.

True, it’s chlorinated water, so nowhere near as healing or medicinal as the sea and all its superpowers. But it is what it is. Remember…I don’t love the beach.

This is my time to bathe in God’s light.

Sun-kissed all summer.

Tan.

Freckled.

Hours and hours outside.

Alternating between staying in the water until my fingers wrinkle...

getting out to dry off...

getting too hot...

then jumping straight back in again.

An iced coffee waiting at the edge of the pool.

A bowl of fruit salad always.

Some days it’s burgers and pizza with the kids and their cousins.

Whatever the mood tells us to do.

An afternoon nap.

A snooze.

A shower.

Cool sheets.

Then the evening swim.

Minus the iced coffee.

By the end of the day there’s always a pile of wet towels abandoned on the deck.

Evidence of a day well lived.

And when cherry season arrives...

they’re always served on ice.

A ritual we learned from my dad.

He’d place the bowl in front of us and announce,

“This is the only way to eat cherries.”

And, as far as I’m concerned...it still is.

A Summer Ritual.

If you’ve been reading The Quiet Return for a while, you’ve probably heard me say that I don’t fear the sun.

The sun has sustained life on Earth for millions of years. Every tree, every flower, every animal, and every human life depends on it. It wakes us each morning, nourishes the food we eat, and reminds us that we were designed to live in rhythm with nature, not apart from it.

Sunshine is one of God's greatest medicines. It's how we make vitamin D, regulate our circadian rhythm, support a healthy immune system, influence hormone production, lift our mood, improve our sleep, and reconnect us with the rhythms we were created to live by.

Every summer, though, I make the same confession: I go from zero to hero.

Every summer I have the best intentions to apply the gradual “sun training” approach where you build up exposure in daily 10-minute increments. But once swimming season arrives, all good intentions disappear. I’ll happily spend three or four hours in the pool on my very first day.

Because of that, I use a natural sunscreen for the first few days of summer while my skin adjusts. After that, I don’t use any at all. I let my skin and my body soak up all the sun's goodness without any barriers. I don't worry about wrinkles, sun spots, or cancer. To me, the benefits of sensible sun exposure far outweigh the fear we've been taught to have of it.

If you’re in Egypt, I love By Earth Natural Living. If you’re outside of Egypt, my favorite is Living Libations. Both make beautiful, natural products that I feel good about using.

Healing Practice.

Somatic workouts.

One of the simple rituals that’s become part of my evenings has nothing to do with skincare, supplements, or herbal tea.

Before I go to sleep, I spend about ten minutes doing somatic exercises from The Workout Witch.

If you’ve never heard of somatic movement, think of it as gentle exercises designed to help your body release stress and settle your nervous system. There’s no sweating, no equipment, and no pressure to “work out.” Most nights, I do the entire routine lying in bed.

The movements are so small they almost feel too simple to make a difference.

But they do.

I’ve noticed I fall asleep more easily, wake up feeling more rested, and carry less tension in my body during the day.

It’s become one of those tiny habits that asks very little of me but gives me so much in return.

As someone who believes healing isn’t found in one miracle solution but in the small things we do consistently, this has become one of my favorite evening rituals.

If your nervous system has been feeling overstimulated lately, I think it’s worth exploring.

I’ve partnered with The Workout Witch because it’s something I genuinely use and love. If you’d like to try it, you can use my link below:

https://theworkoutwitch.com/DANADINNAWI

Objects. Beautiful things worth keeping.

Maybe we don’t have too many things. Maybe we have too many things we don’t love.

As I was choosing which object to write about this month, I found myself looking around the house.

Not at what I love.

At what I tolerate.

The bowls I never reach for.

The vase I bought because it was useful.

The stack of things that are perfectly fine, yet never quite belong.

We talk so much about decluttering as if the problem is quantity.

I’m beginning to wonder if the problem is something else.

Maybe we don’t own too much.

Maybe we own too many things we don’t truly love.

Things that ask for dusting, storing, organizing, moving, insuring, and eventually feeling guilty about.

Objects have a way of shaping the atmosphere of a home.

The right ones become almost invisible because they feel inevitable.

The wrong ones constantly ask for your attention every time you walk past.

Lately, I’ve been trying to make room, not for more, but for better.

For objects that carry a story.

That age beautifully.

That I would miss if they disappeared.

Everything else is just... occupying space.

This month, however, I knew exactly which object belonged here.

This blue Murano glass lamp.

It was one of the very first things I bought after deciding to redecorate our home last year.

At the time, I had no master plan.

No mood board.

No carefully curated vision for the house.

In fact, I hadn’t bought a single piece of furniture.

I didn’t know what the room would eventually look like.

I didn’t even know if this lamp would work.

I just knew I loved it.

Not in the sensible, “I think this will go with everything” kind of way.

In the irrational, heart-skips-a-beat, I have to live with this kind of way.

So I bought it.

Looking back, I think that lamp became the beginning of everything.

It gave me something to build around.

Or perhaps more accurately...

it gave me permission to trust my own instincts.

For most of my life, I decorated with restraint.

Creams.

Natural linens.

Wood.

Ikea.

Soft, neutral colors that blended gently into the background.

Beautiful, certainly.

But safe.

Color was something I admired in other people’s homes.

Not something I imagined living with.

Then, somewhere over the past year, something shifted.

Now, whenever I find myself choosing something for the house, I instinctively reach for color.

Not because I want the room to feel louder.

Because I want it to feel more alive.

This lamp was the beginning of that change.

It was the first piece that made me realize I wasn’t simply redecorating a house.

I was discovering what I was drawn to when I stopped worrying about whether it made sense.

Every piece I’ve bought since then has, in some way, traced itself back to this lamp.

The colors.

The textures.

The confidence to choose beauty simply because it speaks to me.

Now, every time I walk into the room, I see it standing beside the French doors.

Sometimes it’s switched on.

Sometimes it isn’t.

It doesn’t seem to matter.

The room feels different simply because it’s there.

I’ve realized that’s what the best objects do.

They don’t just fill a space.

They change the feeling of it.

And perhaps that’s why I know I’d miss this lamp if it disappeared.

Not because it’s beautiful.

Although I think it is.

But because every time I look at it, I’m reminded of the moment I stopped decorating according to someone else’s idea of good taste...and finally started trusting my own.

BODY LANGUAGE. If this symptom could speak, this is what it might say.

Every symptom has a story.

This month, we’re listening to anxiety.

Anxiety

I’m not trying to ruin your life.

I’m trying to keep you alive.

I know it feels like I’ve become overdramatic.

Like I’ve started seeing danger where there isn’t any.

Like I’ve forgotten how to relax.

But I haven’t forgotten.

I’ve adapted.

I’ve been running on emergency power for so long...

I no longer remember what ordinary feels like.

Every cup of coffee you drink just to push through the exhaustion...

I interpret as another reason to stay alert.

Every afternoon your hands begin to shake because you waited too long to eat...

I assume food is scarce.

Every time you wake at 3:17 a.m. and can’t fall back asleep...

I stay on guard.

Every time your heart races while you’re sitting perfectly still...

I think I’ve spotted danger before you have.

Every time you sigh without realizing it...

hold your breath while answering another email...

clench your jaw through another meeting...

tighten your shoulders until they almost touch your ears...

I hear one message.

We’re not safe yet.

Every stomach ache you ignore.

Every bloated meal you push through.

Every headache you’ve learned to call “normal.”

Every afternoon when you suddenly need something sweet or you’ll snap at everyone around you.

Every time you stand up too quickly and the room spins for a second.

Every weekend when your chest feels heavy because the next week is coming.

Every night you’re so tired you can barely keep your eyes open...

only to lie awake the moment your head hits the pillow.

Every text message that makes your stomach drop before you’ve even opened it.

Every notification that sends a tiny jolt through your chest.

Every time you say,

“I’m fine.”

while whispering,

“I can’t keep doing this.”

I hear all of it.

I don’t know the difference between a tiger...

and an inbox.

Between starvation...

and another diet.

Between real danger...

and the thousand tiny emergencies you’ve learned to call normal.

I only know the chemistry you create.

So I stay ready.

All the time.

I don’t get weekends.

I don’t know you’re on vacation.

Until you show me.

Your heart beats a little faster.

Your breathing becomes a little shallower.

Your jaw never quite unclenches.

Your shoulders forget how to come down.

Sleep grows lighter.

Digestion slows.

I keep scanning.

Waiting.

Watching.

Preparing.

Not because I’ve betrayed you.

Because I love you enough...

to believe every signal you send me.

Please don’t confuse my vigilance...

with my personality.

This isn’t who I am.

It’s who I’ve had to become.

Give me safety again.

Give me nourishment.

Give me steady blood sugar.

Give me deep sleep.

Give me moments that don’t require me to brace myself.

Give me enough quiet to remember that the danger has passed.

And watch how gradually...

I remember peace.

Sometimes, the body remembers calm long before the mind does.

One of the biggest mistakes we make is assuming anxiety always begins in the mind.

Sometimes it does.

But just as often, the mind is narrating a body that has been living in survival mode for years.

When blood sugar swings wildly...

Sleep is broken...

Inflammation is high...

Digestion is struggling...

Stress hormones never truly come down...

The body begins interpreting ordinary life as something to survive.

That doesn’t mean anxiety is “all in your body.”

It means the body is part of the conversation.

And when we change the environment the body is living in, that conversation often begins to change.

Calm isn’t something we force.

Sometimes it’s something we uncover.

Anxiety — Shifted.

After years of living with crippling anxiety...

2½ months into the Hormone Reset Program, she sent me this message.

“The amount of stress and anxiety that have left my body in 2.5 months makes me want to cry from happiness.”

What I find most remarkable about her story is this:

We didn’t “work” on her anxiety.

We didn’t spend months unpacking her mindset.

We didn’t create strategies to avoid her triggers.

We changed the internal environment that had been supporting her anxiety.

By removing inflammatory foods, nourishing her body, supporting detoxification, balancing her blood sugar, and giving her nervous system what it needed to feel safe, her anxiety no longer had the same foundation to stand on.

We didn’t chase the symptom.

We changed the environment that allowed the symptom to exist.

Maybe your body isn’t fighting you.

Maybe it’s been trying to protect you all along.

I hope this summer gives you more than a holiday.

I hope it gives you enough slow mornings...

enough long walks...

enough deep breaths...

and enough unhurried moments...

to begin hearing what your body has been trying to tell you all along.

And if reading this felt like your body was describing you...

you don’t have to figure it out alone.

I’d love to help.

Whether you’re looking for a gentle place to start, a complete reset, or more personalized support, I offer several ways to work together.

Send me an email, tell me a little about what’s been going on, and I’ll help you decide which program is the best fit for you.

I’ll be here when you’re ready:)

email: info@danadinnawi.com

I’ve tried endless ‘morning’ rituals in the past few years with the goal of empowering myself and creating the life I want versus being passive.from journaling to workouts to saying affirmations to walking doing all of those at once in a row; and even though they worked, I feel grounded, focused, proactive, at some point, I ended up feeling like a robot going through the motions. So now I wake up and instead of following my morning ritual, ‘to-do; list, I sit up and ask myself “What would LOVE to do RIGHT NOW”? not tomorrow; not this afternoon, right now. “What would give you the most joy to do right now?A workout? To write? To sleep in some more? To take a walk? To take a shower and go for coffee? To jump into work? To make breakfast? Go for a swim? And I feel into it- for real and do THAT. And what happens is I want to do less and less. The urge to hustle and be super productive and prove that I can do EVERYTHING EVERYDAY..pretty much gone. I don’t have that desire anymore. I used to. And it felt amazing. To end my day with a 27-point check list TOTALLY completed felt invigorating and empowering. Between work, family, self care, housework, self development, laundry, cooking, organizing in, decluttering, writing, coaching, working out. It was all done and dusted. Now. I don’t. Just. no. my morning ritual is not a ritual anymore. It’s a gift I give myself. There are no rules or ‘shoulds’. Those can come later. For now, writing is a gift I give myself because writing connects me to my needs and desires and releases any pent up creativity that i know needs released so I don’t go crazy.

Before I tell you what to read, this month I thought I would start by showing you how to read:)

Well, I won’t show you, but I’m sharing this Substack post I came across a few weeks ago called “How to Read a Book,” by Twitchy Witch, and I don’t think I’ve stopped thinking about it since.

Her advice?

Treat books like conversations, not museum pieces.

Underline them. Argue with them. Write in the margins.

Dog-ear the pages. Crack the spine.

Copy your favorite sentences by hand. Read them in the same place with the same candle burning.

Basically...Love them hard enough that they become yours unmistakably.

When I first read it, I actually caught myself holding my breath.

Mark up a book... like this?

This is literally akin to blasphemy in my world. I actually laughed out loud.

I’ve spent my entire life treating books with almost religious reverence. You don’t write in them. You certainly don’t dog-ear them. And cracking the spine? Absolutely not.

Even in the depths of my MA in English and Comparative Literature, I didn’t do this.

Then I relaxed into the possibility that maybe...just maybe...for the sake of my literary evolution...I could try it.

My very next thought?

“Well... yes... but then I’ll obviously have to buy a second copy of the book I’ve just eviscerated.”

I’m imagining my book shopping…“One copy for reading... and one copy for destroying.”

Apparently, I’m not quite there yet.

But I loved this piece because it completely challenged the way I’ve always thought about reading.

Whether or not I ever become the kind of woman who writes all over her books...I’m strangely tempted to find out.

Read it here: How to Read a Book by Twitchy Witch

Next month I’ll give you my reading recommendations:)

I used to think I travelled to discover new places.

Lately, I’ve realized I travel to return.

Not to the famous landmarks or the restaurants everyone insists you book months in advance.

To the places that somehow begin to feel like mine.

The ones I miss before I’ve even left.

This trip to London reminded me that my favorite places aren’t necessarily the city’s best, the trendiest, or the ones all over social media.

They’re simply the places that make me exhale.

Makers Chocolate

2-4, Queen’s Elm Parade, Old Church Street, London, United Kingdom SW3 6EJ

This was a new addition to my list.

I’d never been before, and it wasn’t somewhere I’d planned to linger. And you actually can’t- there is very little seating space. So plan on picking up and leaving and only staying if you’re lucky enough to grab one of the few tables.

But it was one of those lovely little discoveries that makes a trip memorable.

The smell of roasted cacao, the chocolate being made just a few feet away, the relaxing atmosphere- it felt more like stepping into someone’s workshop than a café.

Everything is gluten-free; refined-sugar-free; grain-free; dairy-free and made with super clean ingredients.

I’ll be going back next time.

Le Cafe Nicolas Rouzaud at Burlington Arcade

House 66/67, Burlington Arcade, 51 Piccadilly, London W1J 0QJ

Another wonderful surprise.

Tucked away in Burlington Arcade, it felt like a little escape from the busy streets outside.

We sat upstairs with a coffee and a pastry, watching shoppers wander through the arcade below.

It was elegant without feeling formal, and one of those places where time seems to slow down just enough that you forget you have anywhere else to be.

Nothing here is gluten-free or sugar-free;)

Nouvelle Delicatessen

69 Abingdon Road, Kensington, United Kingdom W8 6AW

No London trip feels complete without it.

This isn’t somewhere I visit once.

It’s somewhere I go every day. I’ve been going for the past 15 years.

This small family-owned and run cafe is my go-to for coffee, breakfast, fruit, a salad, or something for later; it has become part of my London rhythm.

There’s something comforting about walking into a place where you already know exactly what you’re going to order.

Dishoom

4 Derry Street, London, W8 5SE

Some traditions are worth keeping.

For me, one of them is eating at Dishoom.

Not because it’s fashionable.

Not because everyone recommends it.

Because every visit ends the same way: with comfort. When we go with our kids, the table is overflowing with samosas, keema pau, okra fries, chicken tikka, gunpowder potatoes, dahl, all the naans.

But this time, just the two of us, we chose their hearty lamb biryani that we somehow seemed to only discover on this trip.

Some restaurants become destinations.

Dishoom has become part of the trip itself.

Flat Iron Steak

9 Young Street, London W8 5EH

If you’re looking for an uncomplicated, perfectly cooked steak, Flat Iron is hard to beat. The menu is refreshingly simple, the steaks are consistently excellent, and the beef dripping fries (yes, fried in beef tallow) are worth ordering every single time. And when you’re feeling exceptionally indulgent, then their Smashed Onion Double Cheeseburger is the perfect winner.

In my world, fries cooked in traditional beef fat are completely guilt-free, far preferable to the industrial seed oils used in most restaurants. No fuss, no white tablecloths, just really good food done exceptionally well.

It’s one of those places we happily return to every trip.

Tea.

If you’ve been in my community for a while, you know I love my café mocha.

You also know I drink it with oat milk, sometimes almond milk, and sometimes as a frappuccino.

I only drink half a shot of espresso in all cases.

The coffee is so insignificant compared to the milk and chocolate that my mother always says,

“This isn’t coffee. This is ice cream.”

She’s not wrong.

Then again... she drinks four cups of straight Turkish coffee on an empty stomach.

I’m a caffeine wuss.

And yes, you also know that I regularly take breaks from coffee because it is one of the biggest disruptors of hormonal health.

Yes, it absolutely is.

Even if I absolutely love it.

Loving coffee doesn’t magically make it good for me.

So no...

I’m not changing my mind about that.

No matter how much some of you wish I would.

😉

But here is what I’m changing my mind about...a bit... because it’s still caffeine..

Tea.

Like so many Egyptians, if I drink tea, I drink it with milk.

A lot of milk.

And a lot of sugar.

I couldn’t imagine drinking it plain.

Just like I couldn’t imagine drinking coffee black.

Then, lately...

my beloved mocha stopped serving me.

I suppose it was only a matter of time.

A daily shot of espresso.

All that oat milk.

All that chocolate.

My body said,

“I don’t think this is working anymore.”

One night sweat more than usual one month…

A twinge of period pain more than usual another month…

Feeling like I need another mocha after I finish the first one…

Immediately, my brain began negotiating.

“But what about my writing?”

“What about my morning ritual?”

“What about my me time?”

Somehow, I’d become convinced I couldn’t write without a café mocha sitting beside me.

Which is ridiculous.

Because I’d already proven I could.

I’d stopped coffee before.

I’d kept writing.

I’d kept working.

I’d survived.

It’s amazing what the brain will invent to keep a habit alive.

Even when you have evidence that it isn’t true.

Then one day...

I found a tea called Cinnamon Haze.

I thought,

“Wait a minute...”

I love cinnamon.

Maybe this is my way in.

So I made a cup.

No milk.

Just a little honey.

Yes, dear readers...

Yes.

And do you know what surprised me?

It wasn’t that I liked the tea.

It was realizing that the ritual had never belonged to the mocha.

It belonged to the pause.

The mug.

The notebook.

The moment I gave myself permission to sit down and think.

Apparently...those things taste just as good with tea.

I hope this issue reminds you that healing isn’t always found in the big decisions.

Sometimes it’s found in a slower walk.

A better conversation with your body.

A beautiful object that changes the feeling of a room.

A meal shared without guilt.

A city that feels like medicine.

I’d love to hear from you.

What was one moment this month that made you slow down? Or one small thing, a place, a meal, an object, a conversation, that quietly changed you?

Leave a comment below. I read every one.

I hope, by the time we meet again next month, you’ve found a few moments worth lingering in.

I’ll see you in August.

Warmly,

Dana

When I started The Quiet Return, I had a vision for what I wanted it to become.

Not a detailed plan.

Just a feeling.

I could see it in the distance, but I couldn’t quite make out its shape.

I’ve learned over the years that almost everything worthwhile evolves.

It reveals itself slowly.

You can push for clarity...

or you can allow it to arrive.

I’ve tried to do the latter.

Instead of forcing this publication into a format because I thought I should have one, I’ve let it become what it wanted to become.

And over the past few months, something unexpected happened.

The Quiet Return found its rhythm.

As I wrote each week’s essay, I found myself collecting other things.

Observations that didn’t belong in an essay.

Recipes I wanted to share.

Objects I loved.

Places I kept returning to.

Books that stayed with me.

Conversations with the body.

Small moments that deserved a home, even if they weren’t the main story.

Then I realized...

I’d done this before.

Some of you may remember Empowered Wellness & Living, the online magazine I created many years ago with several wonderful colleagues.

It was a collaborative magazine about living well in every sense of the word.

How to nourish your body.

Create a healthy home.

Cook simple, wholesome food.

Care for yourself.

And pay attention to the small choices that shape a meaningful life.

That magazine no longer exists.

But the idea behind it never really left me.

I think it was simply waiting for the right home.

And it turns out...

that home was Substack.

So, beginning tomorrow, the last Sunday of every month will look a little different.

Instead of receiving a single essay, you’ll receive The Quiet Return: The Monthly Issue.

Think of it as the Sunday edition.

A slower, richer collection of everything I’ve been writing, noticing, questioning, and living throughout the month.

Each issue will include:

Featured Essay
A long-form story, the heart of each issue.

Notebook
Thoughts, observations, and journal entries that never became essays.

Body Language
A conversation with one symptom, written as though your body were speaking for itself.

At Home
Seasonal recipes, rituals, and the ordinary moments that make a house feel lived in.

Reading List
One book, essay, or article I think deserves your time.

Objects
The things finding a permanent place in my home, and why.

Places
The cafés, hotels, neighborhoods, and corners of the world I keep returning to.

Things I’m Changing My Mind About
Because changing our minds may be one of the healthiest things we ever do.

Nothing else is changing.

Every Sunday, I’ll continue publishing a new essay.

I’ll still be sharing my Sunday Notes and Things I’m Changing My Mind About throughout the month.

This is simply something more.

A place where all the pieces can live together.

A magazine, of sorts.

One that feels both entirely new and strangely familiar.

I’m incredibly excited to share the very first issue with you tomorrow.

I hope you’ll pour yourself a coffee or tea, settle into your favorite chair, and spend some unhurried time with it.

Thank you, as always, for being here.

Warmly,

Dana

It’s 9:00 p.m.

Your kids are finally asleep.

Or at least quiet and busy studying in their rooms.

Dinner is finished.

Bath time is finished.

Homework is finished.

You’ve cooked.

Cleaned.

Prepped for the next day.

You finally take off your bra and your clothes and put on your pajamas.

Your husband is either still at work, watching TV, out with his friends, or sleeping.

For the first time today...

no one needs you.

Now what?

You’ve been SO GOOD all day.

You managed to avoid that croissant when you met your friends for coffee.

You ignored dessert.

You ate your small salad without oil, your half cup of steamed rice, and your one piece of boiled chicken for lunch.

You had your one fruit.

Your Greek yogurt.

Exactly like the diet plan hanging on your refrigerator door told you to.

You didn’t even eat that leftover bite...

just one tiny, tiny bite...

of the melted cheese sandwich your son left behind on his plate.

Even though you were dying to.

You kept telling yourself,

“It’s SUCH a small bite.”

“I shouldn’t throw bread away.”

“What difference could this make?”

But STILL...you threw it out.

Because you were being very good.

But now the house is still.

Now you have nothing to do.

And bedtime is still a few hours away.

You scroll Instagram.

Nothing.

Facebook.

Nothing.

The same news.

The same posts.

Nothing to inspire you.

So you go sit next to your husband to watch TV.

He’s watching football.

Or a show you genuinely can’t imagine anyone sitting through.

You get up.

(Your husband wasn’t paying attention to you anyway.)

You wander around your house.

You pick up a few more stray shoes.

A sock.

A book someone left on the coffee table.

You unload the dishwasher.

As you put the clean plates and cutlery away, you think to yourself...

I’m tired.

I’m bored.

I’m fed up.

Every day is the same.

Day in.

Day out.

Then...

almost absent-mindedly...you open the refrigerator.

You’re not really hungry.

(Or are you?)

But the cheese you used to make your son’s melted cheese sandwich earlier is right there on the shelf in front of you.

Right next to the bread.

Without thinking...and maybe with a small sigh...

you take them out.

You’re going to make a small sandwich.

A really small one.

And you tell yourself...

“Tomorrow I’ll be back on my diet.”

You slice the cheese.

Place it between the bread.

Pop it into the microwave.

You listen to the cheese as it sizzles and melts.

You remember at the last minute that a cucumber would go perfectly with the melted cheese.

So you take the sandwich out of the microwave and, while you wait for it to cool, you wash and chop the cucumber.

You can smell that familiar aroma of the cheese mixed with the bread...

and the scent calms you down and fills you with more excitement than you’ve had the past week.

And you didn’t even realize you needed calming down. Or that you actually hadn’t had any excitement in so long.

You don’t even sit to eat.

You take a bite of the sandwich standing at your kitchen counter, relishing the moment of solitude and pure joy and comfort this sandwich gives you.

And even as it calms you...

your heart beats a little faster at how GOOD it is.

You take another bite.

And another.

Stuffing the cucumber in between so you can get that perfect mix of tastes.

It feels good.

It tastes good.

YOU feel good.

So good...

you want another one.

You tell yourself...

“I’ve had one already.”

“What difference will having another one make?”

“What’s done is done.”

The bread and cheese are still on the counter anyway.

You never put them back.

So you make another sandwich.

And you relish the same sensations all over again.

You feel so much better.

Happy, even.

Just as quickly...the guilt sets in.

You put everything back in the refrigerator.

You look around quickly.

“Did anyone see I broke my diet?”

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow you’ll be back on track.

For years, you thought this story was about discipline.

About willpower.

About another failed “diet.”

You thought the sandwich was the problem.

Or the bread.

Or the cheese.

Maybe it wasn’t.

Maybe, after spending the entire day taking care of everyone else...

that sandwich was the only thing that had taken care of you.

Not because it was cheese.

Not because it was bread.

But because, for ten solitary minutes, standing at your kitchen counter...

you belonged only to yourself.

And maybe that’s why this ritual repeated itself night after night.

Not because you were hungry for food.

But because you didn’t know what else to do with yourself once everyone else had been taken care of.

Maybe the question was never,

“Why can’t I stick to my diet?”

Maybe the real question was...

Now what?

I’d love to know...

Have you ever had your own “melted cheese sandwich” moment?

A moment when you realized you weren’t really hungry for food... you were hungry for something else?

Tell me in the comments. ❤️

If this essay felt familiar...

...the conversation continues below.

Inside this week:

• Why my brain never really stops writing even when I’m trying to sleep.

• Why I’m changing my mind about laughter, political correctness, and what we’ve lost along the way.

Read more

For years now, I’ve had a habit that feels both a little indulgent and completely necessary.

When I need to think, I leave home.

Not because I don’t love working from home. I do.

But after a while, the walls begin to think the same thoughts I do.

So I take my laptop and go to the Four Seasons lobby.

I’ve been doing this for years.

Especially in the summer.

There’s something about the lobby that immediately changes my energy. The conversations humming in the background. The fresh flowers. The piano. The feeling that time stretches a little differently there.

No one rushes you.

No one wonders why you’ve been sitting at the same table for three hours with one coffee and a laptop.

I write.

I think.

I plan trips. Lots of trips.

I outline podcasts.

Lately, I’ve been dreaming up this Substack there.

It’s become one of my favorite places to work because I always leave with more ideas than I arrived with.

It’s one of the few places where, for a few hours, I don’t have to take care of anyone else.

I don’t think we talk enough about how restorative it can be to spend a few hours somewhere beautiful.

Not necessarily extravagant.

Just beautiful.

There’s a difference.

Lately, I’ve been ordering the same thing every time I go.

A Niçoise salad.

Not because it’s the most exciting thing on the menu. Surrounded by burgers, pasta, warm bread, and desserts, it’s simply one of the healthiest choices I can make.

I ordered it once.

Then twice.

And somehow it became my lunch.

The first time I ordered it, it arrived looking nothing like what I expected...

So unexpected, I wrote a Substack note on the spot to share my feelings about it:

I was sitting in the Four Seasons lobby today, working and writing. I ordered a Niçoise salad. But it didn’t look like a Niçoise salad. It was… deconstructed. Nothing was put together. Everything was separate. The tuna. The olives. The anchovies. The onions. At first, I had that quick thought, “This is a bit much, even for a place like this. Just give me a normal salad.” But then I stopped…Because…You had to choose. What goes with what? How much. In what order? One bite could be everything. The next… just anchovy and onion. And then something else entirely. And I realized I don’t do that. Not really. Most things come already decided. Combined. Finished. Done for you. And you just… go with it. This felt different. Each bite needed a decision before it became anything. And somehow that changed the whole experience.

I’ve been thinking about that salad ever since.

Which is ridiculous.

It was just lunch.

Not life-changing.

Yes, it’s probably one of the best Niçoise salads I’ve ever had.

But it wasn’t that…

Weeks later...

I was still thinking about the onions.

And I finally realized why.

That salad had more confidence in my ability to make decisions than I did.

Everything was waiting.

Patiently.

Nothing had already decided where it belonged.

The tuna wasn’t insisting on sitting next to the egg.

The anchovies weren’t already tangled up with the tomatoes.

Every ingredient waited for me to assemble the next bite.

And somewhere between the olives and the potatoes, I had the strangest thought.

This salad is my life.

Not because my life is complicated.

Because so much of it has already been assembled.

Marriage.

Children.

Work.

Family.

Friendships.

Traditions.

Holidays.

Responsibilities.

Deadlines.

School calendars.

Phone calls.

Birthdays.

Dinner.

Travel.

The washing machine.

The Amazon delivery.

Someone who can’t find their charger.

Someone who forgot they had a dentist appointment.

Someone who needs to vent.

Someone who doesn’t.

Life has a funny way of tossing everything into one enormous bowl.

And for years, I’ve become exceptionally good at eating whatever lands on my fork.

Not resentfully.

Quite happily, actually.

It’s called having a family.

It’s called building a business.

It’s called being needed.

It’s called being alive.

But sitting there that afternoon, looking at that deconstructed salad, I wondered something I don’t think I’ve ever wondered before.

What would it feel like to choose the variables for a while?

Not because I suddenly want to control life.

Quite the opposite.

I think I’m tired of reacting to it.

There’s a difference.

What would it feel like to wake up and know the shape of my own day?

To know that the things on my plate are there because I put them there?

To choose what belongs together.

To choose what doesn’t.

To decide that today is a tuna-and-tomato day.

Tomorrow, olives and potatoes.

And maybe the anchovies don’t need to come along every single time.

I don’t think I’ve been looking for freedom.

I think I’ve been looking for stewardship.

For years, I thought stewardship meant taking care of everything entrusted to me.

My children.

My home.

My work.

My marriage.

My clients.

My family.

Now I’m beginning to wonder if stewardship also means taking care of the life that has been entrusted to me.

Not perfectly.

Not selfishly.

Just intentionally.

One decision at a time.

One bite at a time.

When I left the Four Seasons that afternoon, I wasn’t thinking about the salad anymore.

I was thinking about the possibility that this next season of life might look different.

Not because the ingredients have changed.

But because, for the first time in a very long time...

I’m the one assembling the plate…

What would I put on my fork today if nobody had decided it for me first?

Everything below this line is where I stop polishing my thoughts.

This week, I’m writing about the reframes that changed my life... and why I’m starting to question whether paying someone to beat up my cellulite every week is really the path to inner peace.

Welcome to INSIDE.

Read more

When I was little, I wanted to be a doctor.

Mostly because I wanted to be like my father.

He was a doctor, and growing up, I couldn't imagine a more meaningful profession than dedicating your life to helping people.

Unfortunately, somewhere around high school, it became painfully obvious that biology, chemistry, and I were never going to become friends.

Science made my eyes glaze over.

Math gave me actual anxiety.

Medicine wasn’t going to happen.

As it turns out, life had a different idea.

Years later, after becoming a health coach, I found myself having one of the most memorable conversations of my life.

With my father.

We were sitting at my kitchen counter.

I was 44 (I’m almost 53 now).

I’d started waking in the middle of the night, my pajamas soaked through.

Every month, ovulation hurt so much that I was taking up to thirty painkillers just to function.

I was frightened enough to listen.

My father looked at me over the top of his glasses, briefly closed his eyes, tilted his chin upward in that familiar Lebanese way that ended the conversation before it had even begun, and said...

“Just take it out.”

“You don’t need it anymore.”

“It’s standard procedure.”

I remember blinking.

Not because I didn’t understand what he meant.

Because of how ordinary it sounded.

As though he were suggesting I repaint the kitchen or replace an old appliance.

“Just remove it.”

My uterus.

Which made that conversation both completely predictable...

and deeply personal.

I never doubted his intentions.

He loved me.

He had spent his life helping people.

And he was offering me the solution he genuinely believed would spare me future suffering.

My mother had also had fibroids.

For years, she lived with relentless pain.

Heavy bleeding that seemed to go on forever.

Medication after medication that never really solved the problem.

Eventually, she had a hysterectomy.

“You’re like your mother,” he said.

“It’s hereditary.”

There was no fear in his voice.

Just certainty.

People sometimes imagine that my father and I spent years arguing about conventional medicine versus holistic health.

We didn’t.

Well...not exactly.

We had hundreds of conversations.

Some spirited.

Some frustrating.

Many fascinating.

When I first became interested in nutrition and holistic health, I think he believed I’d wandered off into nonsense.

“Shoo hal 7akky el faddy?” (What’s this nonsense?)

I don’t blame him.

He’d spent decades practicing medicine.

I’d become a health coach who believed food could change the course of chronic disease.

Those are two very different educations.

But over the years, something unexpected happened.

He became curious.

Not convinced.

Curious.

Every time one of my clients reversed a condition or avoided a surgery they thought was inevitable, I’d tell him about it.

Sometimes he’d smile politely.

Sometimes he’d challenge me.

Sometimes he’d ask another question.

And now and then...

I’d catch that look on his face.

The one that quietly said,

“Well...that’s interesting…”

So when he told me to remove my uterus, I didn’t feel angry.

I didn’t feel dismissed.

I simply realized that we had reached one of those places where our two languages no longer translated.

He saw a uterus that had become diseased.

I saw a body that was trying to tell me something.

Neither of us wanted me to suffer.

We were simply asking different questions.

His question was,

“How do we solve the problem?”

Mine had quietly become,

“Why did my body create the problem in the first place?”

Before I agreed to remove an organ...

I wanted to understand why my body had created fibroids at all.

That question changed everything.

Not overnight.

Not dramatically.

Quietly.

Over the next several months, I changed the way I ate.

The way I understood inflammation.

The way I thought about hormones.

Most importantly...

I stopped seeing my body as something that had betrayed me.

I became curious instead.

Six months later, my fibroids had shrunk.

But that wasn’t the most remarkable part.

The pain disappeared.

The night sweats disappeared.

The heavy bleeding became four peaceful days instead of weeks of exhaustion.

The headaches stopped.

The chocolate cravings I once thought were simply part of being a woman quietly faded away.

For years, I’d taken painkillers every month just to get through my periods.

Then one day I realized...

I hadn’t reached for them in months.

People often ask me if my goal was to save my uterus.

It wasn’t.

My goal was to understand my body.

Keeping my uterus simply became one consequence of asking a different question.

My father never fully understood how my fibroids shrank.

Or perhaps he simply couldn’t explain it through the framework he’d been given.

And that’s okay.

I don’t need him to have agreed with me.

What mattered was that I had lived it.

My body had changed.

My symptoms had disappeared.

My experience had become its own kind of evidence.

I had lived the answer.

Looking back now, I don’t think we were standing on opposite sides at all.

I think we were simply trying to help women in the only ways we knew how.

My father believed healing began by treating disease.

I came to believe healing begins by understanding why the body created disease in the first place.

Neither of us wanted women to suffer.

We simply believed healing began in different places.

Sometimes I wonder what our conversations would sound like today.

I think he’d ask more questions.

I know I’d ask more, too.

Not because either of us had all the answers.

But because curiosity has a wonderful way of softening certainty.

And if there’s one thing my father unknowingly gave me, it was this:

The courage to keep asking better questions.

Even when the answers led somewhere neither of us expected.

Today, when women tell me they’ve been told surgery is their only option, I never tell them what they should do.

That decision is deeply personal.

But I do encourage them to ask one more question before they decide.

Not,

“What can we remove?”

But,

“What is my body trying to tell me?”

Because that was the question that changed everything for me.

At some point, every woman has to decide whose voice she’ll trust.

Her doctor’s.

Her mother’s.

Her friend’s.

The internet’s.

Or...

her own body’s.

That was the decision hidden inside mine.

My father gave me an answer.

My body offered me a different question.

I chose to follow the question.

Before we continue...

From here on, each issue has two sections.

Inside is where I write the things that don’t belong in the main essay: unfinished thoughts, journal entries, observations, questions, strong opinions, and the conversations I’m having with myself throughout the week.

After that, I’ll include one rotating feature. Some weeks it’ll be The Question I Can’t Stop Thinking About This Week. Other weeks, it might be Things I’m Changing My Mind About, What I’m Reading, At Home, or something completely different. Think of it as a different room in the house each week.

These sections are normally reserved for paid subscribers.

But for the first few weeks, I’m leaving everything open so everyone can explore the full newsletter before I place it behind the paywall.

Inside

My notebook. Unfinished thoughts. Rabbit holes. Things I’m still trying to understand.

This is the part of the newsletter where the polished essay ends and my notebook begins. Where the Journalist and English Literature Majors in me take a back seat, it’s where unfinished thoughts, observations, questions, rabbit holes, conversations with myself, and opinions that didn’t belong anywhere else get to exist. Sometimes they’ll turn into essays. Sometimes they won’t. What follows is totally unedited, occasionally coherent, and very much a reflection of whatever captured my attention this week.

Welcome to the place where my inner monologue gets a microphone.

I have definitely, almost always been held back by the belief that “it’s been done before”. All of it. Whether it’s a fictional story about love or life; or about health and wellness, I always feel like I will simply be a copy cat to someone else’s original idea… I’m not sure to what extent I can say I’ve tried to be different intentionally. I’ve always felt different from most people around me since my childhood without really ever knowing why. and as an adult, I’ve seen the shift that happened in my thinking and habits, but it wasn’t out of a desire to ‘be different’. It was simply that the way I saw everyone around me thinking, feeling, being and living, didn’t align with me most of the time. so if i felt off..I started to figure out why and changed it until it felt right. I suppose it is this need for alignment that’s universal..not what the alignment is about necessarily..that’s the struggle, figuring out what works for you, actually works; not what ‘should’ work out or what everyone thinks should work out or what should be a certain way....

Things I’m changing my mind about…

I came across this quote on Instagram this week:

My first reaction?

Yes.

Absolutely.

I’ve watched it happen over and over again.

Women come to me after years of medications, surgeries, specialists, and being told to “just live with it.”

Natural medicine often feels like the place people arrive when they’re out of options.

But then I sat with it for a while.

And I realized...

I don’t actually think it’s true.

Not completely.

Because not everyone comes back.

Some people never question what they’re told.

Some lose faith in their bodies altogether.

Some don’t want the responsibility that comes with changing the way they eat or live.

Some simply don’t know another way exists.

And that’s okay.

People are allowed to make different choices.

I think what I really believe is something slightly different.

Everyone eventually reaches a crossroads.

A moment where they have to decide whether they’re going to keep managing symptoms...

or become curious about why those symptoms appeared in the first place.

Natural medicine is one path.

Conventional medicine is another.

Most of us end up walking somewhere in between.

What matters isn’t whether someone chooses the same path I did.

It’s that they know there is a choice.

That’s probably what I’ve changed my mind about.

It’s no longer my job to convince anyone.

It’s simply my job to make sure women know another path exists.

If this resonated, you’re not alone.

Subscribe for weekly essays on healing, womanhood, hormones, identity, desire, motherhood, travel, and what it means to build a life that actually feels like yours.

The podcast “Unprogrammed” is now live, where I explore women’s health and healing in greater depth

Written by Dana Dinnawi, holistic health coach, writer, and creator of the Hormone Detox Program.

Before I start this essay, let me confess something.

I don’t follow football.

I don’t know the rules.

I couldn’t tell you who won the last World Cup, and if you asked me to explain the offside rule, I’d politely excuse myself to make a cup of tea.

The only reason football entered my life at all is because my son plays.

Like millions of mothers before me, I became an accidental fan. Not because I suddenly discovered a love for the game, but because I love watching someone I love do something he loves.

I’ll happily watch Egypt play, not because I understand much beyond the general idea that one group of men is trying to get a ball into one net while another group is passionately objecting to that plan, but because there’s something undeniably thrilling about seeing your country on the world stage.

Still...

Football isn’t why I’m writing this.

When I saw this photograph online, it reminded me of a story I’d completely forgotten.

Or maybe not forgotten.

When I was fifteen, I was sent to boarding school in England.

Whenever I tell people that, they imagine ivy-covered stone buildings, girls in tweed blazers, centuries-old traditions, and the kind of families who have been sending their daughters to the same school for generations.

Well...we did have blazers.

Just not tweed.

The truth was much less romantic.

My father worked for Saudi Aramco in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and we attended the American school there. The only problem was that it stopped at Grade 9.

There wasn’t some grand family tradition behind my going to boarding school.

There was simply no Grade 10.

So, like hundreds of other Aramco kids before us, we packed our bags, hugged our parents goodbye, and were shipped off around the world to continue our education.

Or perhaps, if we’re being honest, like a logistical problem someone in Human Resources had finally found a solution for.

The official explanation—as I understood it—was that the Saudi government had no interest in hosting expat teenagers once they reached high school.

Apparently, little children were charming.

Teenagers...less so.

So off we went.

Most of my American classmates returned to prep schools in the United States.

The British kids went back to Britain.

The Europeans scattered across Europe.

And I ended up at Marymount International School, an all-girls Catholic boarding and day school, in Kingston, Surrey, England.

Because if you’re a conservative Muslim family and you have to send your daughter off to boarding school, where are you going to send her?

To the nuns, of course.

Marymount was tiny, tucked away in the Surrey countryside.

There was a chapel on campus.

We attended Mass on special occasions.

We sang Christmas carols.

We took Bible studies.

The girls came from everywhere (I had 3 roommates: one Canadian, one American, and one Spanish).

India.

Sweden.

Norway.

Trinidad.

Across Africa.

And, of course, a steady stream of Aramco girls from Saudi Arabia.

Looking back, I don’t think I realized at the time how extraordinary that was.

We were just teenagers.

Trying to survive algebra, homesickness, and cafeteria food.

The diversity wasn’t remarkable.

It was simply Tuesday.

Life had a rhythm to it.

Breakfast.

Classes.

Lunch.

After school activities.

Dinner.

Two hours of compulsory study hall every evening.

Then whatever time remained before our housemistress made her nightly rounds, peering into every room to ensure lights were out and fifteen-year-olds weren’t plotting revolutions after 10:30.

This was 1988.

There were no mobile phones.

No email.

No WhatsApp.

No FaceTime.

No Instagram stories assuring your mother you’d eaten vegetables.

We wrote letters.

Endless letters.

To our parents.

Our siblings.

Our friends scattered across the world.

Those letters became lifelines.

Every morning before breakfast, we’d all make a beeline for the wooden pigeonholes outside the dining hall.

Twenty-six compartments.

One for each letter of the alphabet.

I was absurdly lucky.

We were only two girls in the entire school whose last name began with D.

The D compartment was fourth from the left.

I didn’t even have to stop walking to check it.

One glance as I came down the stairs, and I’d know whether someone, somewhere in the world, had thought about me.

I often felt sorry for the girls whose last names began with S or T.

Their compartments looked like overstuffed filing cabinets.

Mine usually held one lonely envelope.

Maybe two.

Which meant there was always a fifty-fifty chance that the letter was mine.

Those are very good odds when you’re fifteen and homesick.

One evening, I was sitting on one of the stair landings chatting with Nadia.

Nadia was a senior.

She was another Aramco girl, although I didn’t remember her from our years back in Saudi. Somewhere in the conversation, we discovered that while we’d never really known each other, our younger brothers had.

They were best friends back in Dhahran.

It felt like discovering a distant cousin in a foreign country.

Home had a funny way of finding you.

As we stood there talking, a girl named Hülya came running up the stairs.

Hülya was Turkish.

She was clutching an envelope she’d already torn open before she’d even reached the top of the stairs.

“I’ve got the pictures!”

Her sister had recently had a baby.

Well...not recently.

A few weeks earlier.

This was 1988.

News travelled at the speed of the postal service.

Today, we’d receive thirty-seven photographs before the placenta was even delivered.

Back then, becoming an aunt required patience.

She spread the glossy photos between us.

There she was.

Tiny.

Wrapped in a knitted blanket.

The proud new addition to the family.

Within seconds, a few more girls wandered over.

Teenage girls have an almost supernatural ability to detect a baby photograph from fifty meters away.

“Oh my God...”

“Look at her!”

“She’s gorgeous.”

“Look at that little nose...”

Then another girl stopped beside us.

Amanda.

I didn’t know Amanda very well.

She was a year older than me.

She was tall.

Very fair.

The kind of porcelain skin that seemed genetically incapable of producing a single blemish.

Her hair was impossibly thick, somewhere between blonde and light brown, and fell halfway down her back.

Her eyes couldn’t seem to settle on a color.

Sometimes blue.

Sometimes green.

Sometimes grey.

She had one of those accents that made everyone guess incorrectly.

Australian?

New Zealand?

British?

No one seemed entirely sure.

She leaned over to look at the photos.

“Ohhhh...”

“So beautiful.”

“Mashallah.”

I remember blinking.

Mashallah?

For a split second, my brain started scrambling for explanations.

Maybe one of her parents was Arab.

Or Persian.

Or Turkish.

Maybe she’d grown up somewhere in the Middle East.

There had to be a reason.

Because in my fifteen-year-old understanding of the world...

Blonde girls with blue eyes and non-descript, maybe-British accents didn’t say “Mashallah.”

It simply wasn’t one of the categories available to me.

So I asked.

“How do you know Mashallah?”

She looked at me as though I’d asked why she knew how to tie her shoes.

“I’m Jewish.”

Now I was even more confused.

As if being Jewish somehow explained Mashallah.

It explained absolutely nothing.

Not to me.

I’d never met a Jewish person before.

So the next question came tumbling out before I had time to think.

“Oh...”

“So do you know Inshallah too?”

She laughed.

“Of course.”

“My grandmother taught me both.”

“I say them all the time.”

I don’t know why this felt so impossible to me.

Looking back, it’s almost funny.

Of course, she knew those words.

Languages travel.

Cultures overlap.

Families migrate.

People borrow from one another all the time.

But my fifteen-year-old self didn’t know any of that.

The world I’d inherited was neatly divided.

There were Muslims.

There were Jews.

There were Arabs.

There were Israelis.

Each belonged in their own separate box.

None of the boxes overlapped.

At least, that’s what I’d been taught.

“Oh...”

“I’m Jewish.”

I instinctively glanced over at Nadia.

Nadia was Palestinian.

Oh God...

Did Nadia hear that?

I suddenly felt responsible for a situation that, until five seconds earlier, hadn’t existed.

Would she be upset?

Should I...do something?

Say something?

Not say something?

I had absolutely no idea what the correct protocol was when a Palestinian, a Jewish girl, a Turkish girl, and a Lebanese-Egyptian girl were all standing on the same staircase, admiring baby photos.

No one had prepared me for this.

I looked back at Nadia.

She was completely engrossed in Hülya’s niece.

“Ohhh...look at those cheeks!”

“I can’t believe how tiny she is!”

She hadn’t heard a word.

Or maybe she had.

Either way, the baby had won.

I remember standing there, quietly carrying all the weight of a conflict that no one else on that staircase seemed particularly interested in carrying.

At least not in that moment.

It was just four teenage girls looking at pictures of a newborn.

Only one of us had turned it into an international incident.

I desperately wanted to ask where she was from.

But I was scared of the answer.

Remember...

It was 1988.

The first Palestinian Intifada was underway.

Growing up, I had never learned to distinguish between Jews and Zionists.

To me, they were the same thing.

I’d never knowingly met either.

How could I have?

I grew up in Saudi Arabia.

At the time, there were no Jews.

There were no Israelis.

They weren’t welcome. Or allowed.

Saudi Arabia, at the time, was so anti-Jew that we didn’t even have Coca-Cola.

So I asked as carefully as I could.

“Oh...”

“So...where are you from?”

The second the words left my mouth, I wished I could pull them back.

Because I had already prepared myself for the answer.

Israel.

That was the answer I was expecting.

I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do if she said it.

Instead, she smiled.

“I’m from Zimbabwe.”

Zimbabwe???

I just stared at her.

Zimbabwe hadn’t even crossed my mind.

It wasn’t one of the answers I’d prepared myself for.

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t ignorant of Africa.

We’d studied colonialism at school.

I knew European powers had colonized large parts of the continent. Egypt had been one of them.

I knew about apartheid in South Africa. Like everyone else, I’d seen the images on the news and learned about the uprisings.

None of that surprised me.

What surprised me was something I didn’t even realize I believed until that very moment.

Amanda didn’t say she just lived in Zimbabwe.

She said she was Zimbabwean.

That was how she identified herself.

She wasn’t British, living in Zimbabwe.

Or European living in Africa.

She was simply...

Zimbabwean.

It sounds ridiculous now, but my fifteen-year-old brain had never considered that possibility.

Then, almost as quickly, another piece fell into place.

Of course.

The accent.

For months I’d been trying to work out where she was from.

Australian?

New Zealand?

Some remote region of England?

It had always hovered somewhere just outside recognition.

Zimbabwe.

Suddenly, it made perfect sense.

Well...

Part of it did.

The Zimbabwe piece clicked neatly into place.

The Jewish piece never did.

I never asked another question.

I don’t know why.

Maybe the conversation moved on.

Maybe someone called us down for dinner.

Maybe I was too afraid of sounding ignorant.

Whatever the reason, I never found out how her family came to be Jewish in Zimbabwe.

And somehow, that missing piece has stayed with me all these years.

Not because I needed an answer.

But because, for the first time in my life, I realized there were questions I didn’t even know to ask.

Instead, I just stood there, quietly redrawing my map of the world.

That’s why this photograph made me stop.

The internet immediately divided the players into two neat, ironic groups.

Africans.

Europeans.

As if those words explain anything.

As if Africa and Europe are identities rather than continents.

As if Morocco’s story can be told by looking at the color of someone’s skin.

As if France’s history begins and ends within the borders of France.

We’ve become obsessed with putting people into boxes.

Life has taught me that the moment someone stops fitting into one of my boxes...

...it’s usually the box that needs questioning.

Not the person.

Amanda wasn’t the first person I’d ever met who changed my mind.

She was simply the first person who made me realize that the world was infinitely more interesting than the stories I’d inherited about it.

Maybe that’s what growing up really is.

Not accumulating certainty.

But slowly becoming suspicious of it.

I still don’t watch football.

I still don’t know half the rules.

But now and then a photograph appears on my screen that reminds me of a staircase in a girls’ boarding school in Surrey...

...and a blonde Jewish girl from Zimbabwe who casually said Mashallah.

I’ve been questioning my boxes ever since.

Before we continue...

From here on, each issue has two sections.

Inside is where I write the things that don’t belong in the main essay: unfinished thoughts, journal entries, observations, questions, strong opinions, and the conversations I’m having with myself throughout the week.

After that, I’ll include one rotating feature. Some weeks it’ll be The Question I Can’t Stop Thinking About This Week. Other weeks, it might be Things I’m Changing My Mind About, What I’m Reading, At Home, or something completely different. Think of it as a different room in the house each week.

These sections are normally reserved for paid subscribers.

But for the first few weeks, I’m leaving everything open so everyone can explore the full newsletter before I place it behind the paywall.

Inside

My notebook. Unfinished thoughts. Rabbit holes. Things I'm still trying to understand.

This is the part of the newsletter where the polished essay ends and my notebook begins. Where the Journalist and English Literature Majors in me take a back seat. It’s where unfinished thoughts, observations, questions, rabbit holes, conversations with myself, and opinions that didn’t belong anywhere else get to exist. Sometimes they’ll turn into essays. Sometimes they won’t. What follows is totally unedited, occasionally coherent, and very much a reflection of whatever captured my attention this week.

Welcome to the place where my inner monologue gets a microphone.

If I believe in the whole perimenopause scam, I would say yes, my estrogen is ‘declining’. And then go on to believe that it is, indeed, a problem. But I don’t…because what? Alllll of us? We allll lose estrogen? At the same time? Every single woman, across countries and continents? And it’s a mistake?? As if we all went through the production line and left with a piece missing? And then went through the final product evaluation and we all passed? We all got the red sticker without the part that keeps estrogen balanced? ‘Ready for export’ but actually not? And then we all happen to malfunction at the same exact time? As if God created us defective, losing estrogen as a mistake instead of part of His wisdom? because….What science thinks they’ve figured out- declining estrogen- is actually God’s brilliant plan all along. To force us to stop being docile - to stand up for ourselves for at least half of our lives, since we lost the first half… because, in case you didn’t know..during our peak reproductive years, when estrogen is higher, we’re accommodating; we focus on maintaining relationships and keeping the peace. We need the estrogen to do all the things we do…birth babies; stay up late; cook; feed; plan; work; make nice; put everyone’s needs above ours. Then God says. Enough. You don’t need to do that anymore. You don’t need to have more babies now; you don’t need to do alll those things anymore—enough estrogen. If our estrogen decreases by age, it’s by His design. He knows. He knows you’ll need to be quiet at times, hold the peace many times, keep the balance always.. He knows we hold the emotional weight and depth. He made us the Gatekeepers of relationships and families, so he gives us the hormones to do that. But then He also knows when enough is enough. And he knows we won’t just ‘stop’..He needs to make us. so He lowers our estrogen…He gets rid of our people-pleasing hormones so we can come home to ourselves again.

Brilliant.

Except that conventional medicine works tirelessly to keep your estrogen levels high..to turn a perfectly natural process into a medical dramatic event, they turn it into pathology…To keep us quiet? Controlled? Without unfiltered feelings? And that’s why I won’t do it-HRT ’therapy’. God doesn’t make mistakes. There is no way in hell I’m going to interfere with God’s design to be less docile; no way I’m giving up my well-earned outrage and honesty. I wonder if feminists realize that the most patriarchal system on earth is the medical system and that within that, the OBGYN branch rips off all of your power and sovereignty? Literally ripping out your organs. My dear feminists.. where is the fight? Oh right.. you’re taking all the HRT.. the birth control, the peptides.. the whey protein.. Ozempic…all the things.. that keep you dumbed down while still drinking, vaping, smoking, eating shit, and calling it empowerment. And another reason to put the final nail in the coffin of conventional ‘perimenopause.’

The question I can’t stop thinking about this week…

When did we decide the sun became the enemy?

The internet spent the week talking about Anne Hathaway.

Not because of a film.

Or an interview.

She was photographed on a boat wearing what looked like a full-body sun shield.

Long sleeves.

Leggings.

A wide-brimmed hat.

Dark sunglasses.

Almost no skin exposed to the sun.

The online conversation went in the direction I expected.

People debated the hypocrisy.

When a Hollywood actress covers every inch of her body, she’s praised for protecting her skin.

When a Muslim woman covers her body, she’s often told she’s oppressed.

It was an interesting conversation.

But it wasn’t the one I found myself having.

Around the same time, I came across a series of posts by Zaid Kdahhaj that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

Whether every historical connection he draws stands up to scrutiny isn’t really the point of this essay.

What struck me was the question beneath it.

Across civilizations, religions, and ancient traditions, light wasn’t treated as something to avoid.

It was woven into daily life.

Temples faced the sunrise.

Prayer followed the movement of the sun.

Rest followed darkness.

Life itself was organized around natural rhythms.

Whether those traditions understood circadian biology as we describe it today, or simply observed what generations before them had learned, they seemed to recognize something we’ve forgotten:

Human beings belong in a relationship with light.

Then I looked back at Anne Hathaway.

And suddenly the image felt symbolic.

Not because I think she was doing anything wrong. She’s free to do whatever she wants.

She’s simply living according to the health story we’ve all inherited (and not questioning it).

Protect your skin.

Avoid the sun.

Stay out of the heat.

Cover up.

And we applaud it.

That was the part that made me pause.

Not Anne Hathaway.

Us.

Somewhere along the way, we began to believe that one of life's most fundamental elements had become dangerous.

I don’t believe the sun is our enemy.

I also don’t believe in burning.

Those are not the same thing.

We’ve somehow collapsed the entire conversation into two extremes: either avoid the sun completely or stay out until you’re burned.

But nature rarely works in extremes.

There is a way to be in the sun that respects it rather than fears it.

There is also a very real and well-documented consequence of not getting enough sunlight. We talk endlessly about protecting ourselves from the risks of overexposure, but far less about the health consequences of chronic underexposure.

That imbalance fascinates me.

What Zaid’s posts reminded me of is that we’ve become remarkably suspicious of nature.

The sun.

Dirt.

Bacteria.

Cold.

Heat.

Hunger.

Darkness.

Bare feet on the earth.

Unprocessed food.

Silence.

Rest.

Even our own symptoms.

The more advanced we’ve become, the more we’ve started treating the natural world as something to defend ourselves against.

And yet, when I think about health...

Real health...

It has almost always come from moving closer to nature, not further away.

Eating food that looks like food.

Sleeping when it’s dark.

Walking barefoot.

Watching the sunrise.

Being outside.

Living seasonally.

Respecting rhythms instead of resisting them.

Maybe that’s why these posts have stayed with me all week.

Not because they’re telling me something I didn’t know.

But because they’re helping me see something that has become almost invisible.

Celebrity culture tells us to fear wrinkles.

Nature asks us to remember where we came from.

And once you see that...

It’s very difficult to unsee it.

I’d love to know what you think.

Not about Anne Hathaway.

About the bigger question.

When did we start believing that the very things humans evolved with had become our enemies?

If this resonated, you’re not alone.

Subscribe for weekly essays on healing, womanhood, hormones, identity, desire, motherhood, travel, and what it means to build a life that actually feels like yours.

The podcast “Unprogrammed” is now live, where I explore women’s health and healing in greater depth

Written by Dana Dinnawi, holistic health coach, writer, and creator of the Hormone Detox Program.

There was a brief period during lockdown when my husband cleaned a bathroom. And by brief, I mean one day.

Not his bathroom.

Not a bathroom.

Our bathroom.

The one we all used. The one that somehow managed to collect toothpaste splatters, wet towels, empty toilet paper rolls, and mysterious water spots faster than seemed physically possible.

At the time, we were living in Toronto. The city was locked down. The cleaning lady couldn’t come. The children were home. Everyone was home.

For the first time in our married life, I was working full-time, and he wasn’t working at all.

Lockdown was a boom time for the wellness industry. Suddenly, everyone wanted to detox, balance their hormones, strengthen their immune systems, and reinvent themselves from their living rooms. My programs were full, my days were packed with Zoom sessions, client support, content creation, and Facebook groups.

Meanwhile, everyone else in the house seemed to be pursuing a full-time career in Netflix. They were working tirelessly to ensure no series went unwatched while I kept the economy afloat from the dining room table.

And because he’s a good man, and because he could see that I was trying to hold together a household, a business, and what felt like the emotional stability of an entire family during a global pandemic, he started helping out.

First, he took over making the lemon water, celery juice, and smoothies every morning.

If you’ve ever made celery juice for a family, you’ll understand that this wasn’t a small gesture. Celery juice sounds simple until you’re washing, chopping, juicing, cleaning the machine, wiping the counters, and doing it all again the next day.

I was relieved.

Then one day he announced that he was going to clean the bathroom.

And to be fair, he did an excellent job.

The mirrors sparkled.

The sink shone.

The bathtub looked brand new.

The bathroom smelled faintly of lemons and accomplishment.

I was genuinely impressed.

For about five minutes.

Because then it started.

“Dana...isn’t the bathroom SOO clean?”

“The bathroom smells so nice.”

“Dana...Look at the bathtub...”

“Don’t you think the bathroom looks good now?”

“I made more space on the ledge over the sink..don’t you think that’s a good idea?”

The first few times I responded appropriately.

“Yes, that’s wonderful.”

“Thank you.”

“It looks great.”

“You did an amazing job.”

"Yes hubby, that's amazing, thank you!" (because that's what men need to hear).

By the twelfth time, I was still smiling externally while internally having a completely different conversation.

A conversation that sounded something like:

It’s a bathroom.

You cleaned a bathroom.

ONE.

ONCE.

Congratulations.

You’ve completed a task that millions of women quietly complete every day without holding a press conference afterward.

What I wanted to say was:

Try cleaning it every day for twenty years.

Try cleaning it while making dinner.

Try cleaning it while helping with homework.

Try cleaning it while running a business.

Try cleaning it while remembering everyone’s birthdays, buying the gifts, scheduling the appointments, folding the laundry, ordering the groceries, and making sure nobody runs out of toothpaste.

Then come talk to me about the bathtub.

Also, let’s keep things in perspective.

This was a Canadian condo bathroom.

A tiny little room measuring approximately one yoga mat by two yoga mats.

You need three paper towels, a bottle of disinfectant spray, a Swiffer wipe, and a positive attitude. Twenty minutes later, you’re standing back admiring your work.

Come talk to me after you’ve cleaned an Egyptian bathroom.

The kind with actual square footage.

The kind where the shower somehow manages to wet every surface within a five-meter radius.

The kind where cleaning the bathroom qualifies as a moderate-intensity workout and should probably count toward your daily steps.

If you know, you know.

But of course I didn’t say any of that.

Because women are taught very early that there are some thoughts we are allowed to have and some thoughts we are supposed to keep to ourselves.

So instead I smiled and admired the bathroom.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Until suddenly, somewhere between the fifteenth and sixteenth compliment to himself, I had a realization.

Why don’t women do this?

Seriously.

Why don’t we?

Why don’t we spend the day announcing our achievements with the confidence of a man who has just discovered a bottle of bathroom cleaner?

Why don’t we gather the family into the kitchen and say:

“Everyone, please take a moment to appreciate how beautifully I loaded the dishwasher.”

“Notice the way I’ve arranged the forks separately from the spoons.”

“Look at the precision with which I folded your towels.”

“Please admire the smoothie I made. I’d like a few words of gratitude before anyone drinks it.”

“Let’s all pause and acknowledge the fact that I’ve cleaned up after every single one of you before going to bed so you could wake up to a calm house.”

Why don’t we do that?

I think the answer is because most of us have been doing these things for so long that we have even stopped seeing them.

The work becomes invisible.

Not because it isn’t important.

But because it’s expected.

The laundry appears folded.

The fridge remains stocked.

The appointments get booked.

The floors get cleaned.

The children get fed.

The emotional temperature of the household gets monitored and adjusted.

And because it happens every day, nobody notices.

Sometimes not even us.

The irony is that the things that keep a family running are often the things least likely to be acknowledged.

Not because people are ungrateful.

But because consistency is invisible.

Nobody applauds the sunrise.

It’s simply expected to show up every morning.

I think that’s what happens to many women.

We become so dependable that our efforts disappear.

So capable that our contributions become background noise.

So responsible that nobody stops to ask what it costs us to carry all of it.

Including ourselves.

And maybe that’s why that bathroom has stayed with me all these years.

Not because of the bathroom.

But because for one brief afternoon, I got to witness something women rarely permit themselves to do:

Celebrate their own effort.

Take credit for their contribution.

Enjoy being appreciated.

There was something almost childlike about his pride.

And instead of rolling my eyes at it, I think I understand it differently now.

Maybe he wasn’t being ridiculous.

Maybe he was simply doing what women should do more often.

Maybe we should all walk around the house occasionally saying:

“Did you see what I accomplished today?”

“Did you notice how much I carried today?”

“Did you notice what it took to make all of this look easy?”

Not because we need applause.

Not because we need medals.

But because the work matters.

And because somewhere along the way, many of us learned to appreciate everyone else’s contribution except our own.

So here’s my reminder to you.

If you cooked dinner today, count it.

If you folded the laundry, count it.

If you held your tongue during a difficult conversation, count it.

If you comforted a child, supported a spouse, showed up for a friend, ran a business, made a meal, cleaned a bathroom, or simply got through the day, count it.

The fact that you’ve been doing it for thirty years doesn’t make it less valuable.

It makes it extraordinary.

And if nobody else notices?

Notice it yourself.

If this resonated, you’re not alone.



Subscribe for weekly essays on healing, womanhood, hormones, identity, desire, motherhood, travel, and what it means to build a life that actually feels like yours.

The podcast “Unprogrammed” is now live, where I explore women’s health and healing in greater depth

Written by Dana Dinnawi, holistic health coach, writer, and creator of the Hormone Detox Program.

A few weeks ago, I received what will almost certainly be my last absence email from Cairo American College (CAC).

For almost two decades, those emails have been part of the rhythm of my life.

“Please note that your child was absent from...”

“Please note that your child checked out at...”

“Your child arrived late to...”

The sort of email every parent eventually learns to skim before opening.

By the last week of May, the parents’ WhatsApp groups had become a support group for moms traumatized by absence emails.

At least once a week, someone would write:

“Please. No more absence emails!”

School was practically over.

The kids were practically graduated.

We were all hanging on by a thread.

So when this particular email arrived, I almost ignored it.

Almost.

When this last one arrived, I sat there staring at it longer than I expected.

Because suddenly it hit me.

This is it.

We’re done.

Not just with drop-offs and pickups.

Not just with parent-teacher conferences, concerts, sporting events, and trips.

Done with something that has quietly shaped almost every chapter of my life.

Because CAC was never just my children’s school.

It was mine first.

It’s where I met my husband.

And if you’d told either of us back then that one day all three of our children would graduate from the same school where we first met, I don’t think we would have believed you.

Actually, that’s not true.

We probably would have believed it.

We believed all sorts of things back then.

That’s the advantage of being seventeen.

You don’t yet know what should be impossible.

You haven’t accumulated enough evidence to doubt yourself.

You just decide something and assume life will cooperate.

Which, in our case, is exactly what happened.

We met at CAC.

And almost immediately, there was something.

Not some grand cinematic moment.

Just that strange certainty that arrives before you have any reason to trust it.

A flicker.

Juvenile, maybe.

But real.

By the time we were walking down the graduation aisle, we already knew we wanted to get married.

Which is an absolutely ridiculous thing for two teenagers to think they know.

And yet we did.

The funny thing is that while we were completely confident about getting married, we knew absolutely nothing about marriage itself.

Nothing.

We didn’t do compatibility tests.

We didn’t analyze our personalities.

We didn’t discuss communication styles, attachment theory, love languages, financial planning, family systems, conflict resolution, or any of the other things people wisely discuss today.

We didn’t have spreadsheets.

We didn’t have relationship books.

We didn’t have frameworks.

We had certainty.

Which, looking back, was either incredibly foolish or incredibly brave.

Possibly both.

What we did know was that we wanted a life together.

And somewhere in that imagining, there was always this idea that one day our children would walk the same halls we did.

Not because we were trying to create a legacy.

It just felt right.

As though the story should continue.

And of course, there was another image too.

One we carried long before we had children.

We wanted them to graduate from CAC.

Not just attend.

Graduate.

To sit where we once sat.

To walk where we once walked.

And one day, when their turn came, to cross that stage with the Pyramids rising behind them.

Because if you went to CAC, you would understand what that image means.

It’s more than a graduation ceremony.

It’s a rite of passage.

A marker in time.

One of those moments you can see years in advance and still be stunned when it finally arrives.

The problem, of course, is that wanting something at seventeen and actually making it happen are two very different things.

Life has a way of introducing complications.

Careers.

Countries.

Moves.

Finances.

All the practical realities that never show up in teenage dreams.

And then, eventually, children.

But before our children ever became students at CAC, the school somehow found its way back into our lives and became woven into the fabric of my motherhood.

Long before school drop-offs and report cards and graduation ceremonies, there was the playground.

At the time, none of my friends had children yet. Most weren’t even married.

As a young mom, I often felt like I was living in a completely different season of life from everyone I knew.

I needed somewhere to go.

Somewhere my children could play.

Somewhere I could find other women who understood what my days looked like.

And somehow, that place became CAC.

Every afternoon around 3:15, a few of us moms would gather our children and head over as soon as school let out.

We packed snacks.

Water bottles.

Beach toys for the sandbox.

And then we simply let them loose.

For hours.

Back when motherhood felt both exhausting and wonderfully uncomplicated.

We didn’t spend our days worrying about screen time, germs, food dyes, emotional resilience, social-emotional learning, or whether our children were sufficiently enriched.

Our biggest concern was making sure nobody fell off the monkey bars.

The kids would run around barefoot, fill their pails at the drinking fountain, and make mud pies in the sandbox.

They’d dig canals and build castles and run from one end of the playground to the other.

They probably ate almost as much sand as they played in.

They’d come home filthy.

Covered in sand.

Covered in sweat.

Totally happy.

And every afternoon we’d drag them home, throw them straight into the bath, feed them dinner, and do it all over again the next day.

During the summer, when daylight saving time shifted their little body clocks, and they were suddenly awake at six in the morning instead of seven, where did we go?

CAC.

When I needed a safe place for three energetic children to run wild?

CAC.

When they wanted to swim?

CAC.

The pool is where they learned.

The playground is where they learned.

And honestly, so did I.

Because that playground wasn’t just where my children grew up.

It’s where I grew up as a mother.

It’s where some of my closest friendships were formed.

Where I learned from women whose children were older than mine.

Where I found community during those early years when motherhood can feel both incredibly full and surprisingly lonely.

It became a sanctuary.

A second home.

And once they became students, I threw myself into it.

Completely.

I joined the PTO.

Helped organize book fairs.

Volunteered for International Day.

Attended performances, assemblies, sporting events, concerts, classroom presentations, and every parent-teacher conference I could.

I never wanted to miss anything.

Partly because I genuinely loved being involved.

And partly because I knew, even then, how quickly childhood moves.

When your children are little, school feels like something you’re doing together.

You walk them to class.

You help them carry their backpacks.

You know the names of their teachers, their friends, their friends’ parents, the security guards, the staff.

You know everything.

Or at least you think you do.

And then something strange happens.

Without any warning.

Without a meeting.

Without a ceremony.

Without anyone preparing you for it.

You become less necessary.

Not all at once.

Gradually.

A little more independence each year.

A little more distance.

A little less information.

Until one day you’re walking toward school together and they say:

“You don’t need to come in with me.”

Or:

“I can walk by myself.”

Or the one that somehow feels both wonderful and heartbreaking:

“Mom, it’s okay. I’ve got it.”

And they do.

They’ve got it.

That’s the whole point.

That’s what you’ve been working toward all along.

But nobody talks about how bittersweet it feels when it finally happens.

Because motherhood is a strange arrangement.

You spend years teaching your children how to leave you.

And then you’re surprised when they do.

Before I knew it, I wasn’t organizing classroom parties anymore.

I wasn’t walking anyone into school.

I wasn’t needed for every detail.

My role had quietly shifted from participant to observer.

Which, I suppose, is exactly what should happen.

But knowing that doesn’t make it any easier.

Looking back now, I realize CAC didn’t just witness my children growing up.

It witnessed me learning how to let them.

Which is probably why receiving that final absence email felt so strange.

Because what ended wasn’t simply our family’s relationship with a school.

It was the closing of a chapter that has quietly accompanied almost every version of me.

Student.

Girlfriend.

Wife.

Mother.

And now, somehow, the mother of graduates.

And then, last week, our youngest crossed that same stage.

With the Pyramids behind him.

And just like that, the dream was complete.

35 years later.

Not the dream we thought we were dreaming at seventeen.

Something better.

Something larger.

Something that took decades to fully reveal itself.

And what surprises me now isn’t pride.

It’s gratitude.

Gratitude for the institution.

For the teachers who shaped me and later shaped my children.

For the campus that somehow became the backdrop of multiple generations of our family’s story.

For the friendships.

For the families.

For the ‘tiny guys’ who once filled playgrounds and classrooms and birthday parties, and who somehow became strong, formidable young men in the blink of an eye.

For the countless ordinary moments that felt insignificant at the time and now feel irreplaceable.

Because the truth is, when you’re living a life, you rarely realize you’re building a legacy.

You’re just trying to get through the day.

You’re trying to make good decisions.

You’re trying to show up.

You’re trying to keep your children fed, educated, safe, and reasonably functional.

And then one day you look back and realize that what felt ordinary was actually a thread running through decades of your life.

A thread connecting who you were, who you became, and the family you eventually built.

That’s what CAC has been for us.

Not just a school.

A witness.

To a first meeting.

To a marriage.

To the early years of motherhood.

To lifelong friendships.

To four graduations beneath the Pyramids.

And to a dream two teenagers made long before they had any idea what it would take to bring it to life.

PS: I saved that last email:)

If this resonated, you’re not alone.



Subscribe for weekly essays on healing, womanhood, hormones, identity, desire, motherhood, travel, and what it means to build a life that actually feels like yours.

The podcast “Unprogrammed” is now live, where I explore women’s health and healing in greater depth

Written by Dana Dinnawi, holistic health coach, writer, and creator of the Hormone Detox Program.

My daughter (who is now a mother), was maybe twelve or thirteen when she looked around the Eid table at her grandmother’s house and casually announced:

“You know what’s really sad?”

No one looked up.

Fifteen people were already busy serving themselves.

“…My children are never going to say they can’t wait to eat at their grandmother’s house.”

The comment landed in the brief silence that happens at the beginning of a meal.

That sacred first few minutes when everyone is finally sitting down and entirely focused on their plates.

Forks moving.

Serving spoons clattering.

People taking their first bites.

We were at my in-laws’ house.

The dining room was packed.

Family from both sides squeezed around a long oval table that seemed to stretch forever.

And the food.

The food occupied nearly every visible inch of it.

Large trays overflowing from one end to the other.

The Eid ‘fatta’ - toasted bread layered with rice, garlic vinegar, and slow-cooked meat, all soaked in ladles of rich broth.

The wara2 3inab - grape leaves stuffed with rice and herbs, swimming in the rich broth they'd been cooked in.

The white rice.

The ro2a2 - delicate layers of pastry soaked in ghee and meat stock until they became almost impossibly soft.

The macaroni béchamel.

The chicken pane.

The obligatory mountain of French fries.

And probably several other dishes I’ve blocked from memory.

The kind of table that announces itself before anyone even sits down.

People were still admiring it.

“Allahhhh...”

“Eh da kolo da?” (What is all of this?)

Ya khabar abyad.” (Good grief, look at all this.)

“How did you make all this?”

“Bas, khalas, you’ve outdone yourself this year.”

The annual ritual of pretending the table had appeared by divine intervention.

The familiar choreography of holiday meals.

Everyone performing astonishment.

The hostess performing modesty.

The food occupying center stage.

As though the rest of us were merely supporting actors in its production.

Admiration first.

Eating second.

Human connection somewhere further down the list.

And just as everyone settled into that first blissful silence, the one that follows the opening round of appreciation and precedes the inevitable food coma, my daughter chose to share her observation.

“You know what’s really sad? My children are never going to say they can’t wait to eat at their grandmother’s house.”

Silence.

Not dramatic silence.

Worse.

The kind where every single person hears exactly what was said.

The kind where nobody quite knows what to do next.

I remember feeling the words land physically somewhere in my stomach.

Not only because she was probably right.

But because I could feel, almost instantly, the tiny flicker of satisfaction it gave my mother-in-law sitting across the table.

Confirmation.

Proof.

See?

Even the children know.

No one said any of this out loud, obviously.

Women of that generation would never be so direct.

Their competition was much more sophisticated than that.

More elegant.

More passive-aggressive.

It floated invisibly underneath the food itself.

Whose table was fuller.

Whose dishes disappeared first.

Whose recipes people requested.

Whose grandchildren begged to come over.

Whose food generated the most reverence.

Love expressed through fullness.

Status expressed through excess.

And maybe because I had married into another strong food culture while already coming from one, I spent years feeling trapped somewhere between two highly accomplished women armed with clarified butter and generational confidence.

One grandmother deeply Egyptian.

The other, also Egyptian, but with an unmistakably Lebanese cuisine.

Both extraordinary cooks.

Both deeply loving.

Both capable of feeding thirty people with the intensity and pride of women preparing for battle.

And then there was me.

Hovering awkwardly in the middle for years.

The woman making salad beside the fried food.

The woman quietly reducing sugar.

The woman replacing one heavy dish with vegetables no one particularly asked for.

The woman whose children counted down the days until they could eat at their grandmother’s house.

The woman whose salads could never quite compete with fried chicken, French fries, and nostalgia.

The woman who spent years feeling as though she was losing a competition she never actually wanted to enter.

I wasn’t making the macaroni béchamel heavy enough to immobilize a person afterward.

Or the fried chicken pane with mountains of fries.

Or the endless syrup-soaked desserts that somehow appeared after people had already eaten enough for two full days.

And I hated the subtle condescension surrounding it all.

The indirect comments.

The comparisons disguised as jokes.

The exaggerated praise over certain dishes while my own sat there looking far too green and far too alive to compete properly.

As though making food people could continue functioning after eating, somehow made the meal less loving.

I realize now that part of what I was reacting to wasn’t just the food.

It was the hierarchy inside it.

The implication that the woman who fed people most heavily somehow loved most deeply.

That motherhood itself could partly be measured by how desperately your husband and children preferred eating at someone else’s table.

And maybe I’ve carried resentment around that for years without fully admitting it.

Maybe because somewhere deep down, I always felt like I was failing a test I never wanted to take in the first place.

The strange thing is that over time, without consciously planning to, I slowly started building an entirely different kind of table anyway.

Not abruptly.

Not rebelliously at first.

Just quietly.

One year, there were more vegetables.

Another year, less fried food.

Then fewer desserts.

Then lighter dishes.

Then more color.

More freshness.

More things I actually wanted to eat myself instead of food prepared mostly for performance, nostalgia, obligation, or applause.

This Eid, now as a grandmother myself, I hosted the holiday meal.

My grandson’s first Eid.

Three generations gathered around my table:
his parents,
his grandparents,
his great-grandparents.

And for the first time in my life, I realized something almost disorienting:

The traditions have moved to my house now.

I was no longer the younger woman awkwardly trying to navigate someone else’s expectations.

I was the grandmother.

The table sat in the middle of the room beneath giant white Queen Anne’s lace flowers spilling wildly out of a clear glass vase, their green stems twisting through the water.

The silver serving trays reflected the afternoon light softly across the white embroidered tablecloth.

Green napkins were folded neatly beside stacks of small plates. Someone had already stolen a ta3miya before everyone served themselves.

Outside, the city had that unmistakable Eid feeling, quieter streets, slower movement, the sense that behind every apartment door, people were eating too much.

And strangely, I had spent far more time setting the table than cooking for it.

That’s become one of the biggest shifts in me.

I no longer care very much about impressing people with food.

But I care deeply about beauty.

The flowers.

The serving spoons.

The bowls.

The light.

The textures.

The feeling of sitting down somewhere that feels calm and abundant and alive.

That part still feels magical to me.

Maybe more magical than the food itself now.

So this year I hosted brunch.

And the more I think about it, the more inevitable it feels.

Of course, it was brunch.

At this stage of my life, it couldn’t really have been anything else.

I made a point of stressing this in the invitation.

Brunch.

As though the distinction mattered.

Which, of course, it did.

Because brunch comes with an entirely different set of expectations.

Nobody expects fatta at eleven in the morning.

Nobody arrives looking for macaroni béchamel before noon.

No one is reaching for Ro2a2 soaked in ghee while holding a cup of coffee.

A brunch table gives you flexibility.

Flexibility to be lighter.
More creative.
Less predictable.

You can blur the line between breakfast and lunch and somehow nobody feels deprived.

And that was exactly the point.

Not because I was trying to rebel against tradition.

But because I wanted to create a table I actually wanted to sit down at.

A table that felt festive without feeling excessive.

A table that reflected who I am now, not who I was expected to be.

There was cold roast beef sliced thinly and fanned across a platter with peppery arugula tucked into the center.

A salmon cake topped with tiny white dollops of cream cheese lined another tray.

A simple baked frittata, fragrant with herbs and vegetables, proving that food doesn't need to be drenched in butter to have flavor.

Caesar salad dusted generously with parmesan.

A tuna niçoise scattered with green beans and eggs.

Foul (Egyptian fava beans) beside crisp ta3miya (Egyptian falafel) because some traditions deserve to survive.

And small tuna sandwiches on white toast because my son specifically asked for them, and despite all my philosophizing about tradition, there are still some requests a mother says yes to.

Wara2 3inab glistening beneath a light olive oil and pomegranate molasses dressing, looking far more elegant than their broth-soaked holiday cousins.

The table was full.

Beautiful even.

Abundant in the way holiday tables are supposed to be abundant.

But not oppressive.

No giant trays threatening to collapse under their own weight.

No bubbling casseroles swimming in cream and starch.

No collective agreement that everyone would spend the rest of the afternoon unconscious.

Just food.

Colorful food.

Fresh food.

Food I actually wanted to eat.

And perhaps most importantly, food I didn’t have to recover from afterward.

And maybe that is exactly why my daughter commented all those years ago.

Because my table never inspired that almost feral anticipation certain holiday tables did.

Nobody spent weeks talking about my food.

But sitting there this Eid, I realized something:

I no longer want them to.

Because somewhere along the way, the entire performance of excess started feeling exhausting to me.

Not celebratory.

Not generous.

Just exhausting.

The endless “Oh my God, I’m so full” followed immediately by dessert.

The competitive hosting.

The praise people give food so heavy it practically functions as sedation.

The way gluttony somehow became confused with love itself.

And what unsettles me most now is that the food no longer even feels special.

Not really.

Maybe decades ago it was.

When these dishes appeared once or twice a year.

When abundance itself still carried meaning.

When sugar and fried food and giant trays of meat still felt rare.

But now?

People eat like this constantly.

Heavy restaurant meals.

Delivery apps.

Desserts every weekend.

Excess all year long.

So the “specialness” disappears and all that remains is the heaviness.

The obligation.

The food coma people laugh about while secretly feeling awful.

And every holiday I find myself quietly wondering:

“Why are we celebrating with the exact foods making everyone sick the rest of the year?”

Why does nobody stop to think about the diabetic grandfather?

The aunt with high blood pressure?

The morbidly obese relative?

The chronic dieter who has been starting over every week for the last twenty years?

The woman who silently negotiates with every bite she takes?

The woman whose stomach hurts after every meal but keeps eating anyway because “it’s Eid.”

Why is physical suffering so normalized in celebration?

And why does it have to continue for three or four or six straight days?

One beautiful meal will never harm anyone.

But endless excess absolutely does something to the body.

Of course it does.

For years I thought the choice was between preserving tradition and abandoning it.

Now I think there is a third option:

Questioning it.

Keeping what still feels alive.

Letting go of what doesn’t.

Because not everything we inherit deserves to be carried forward indefinitely.

Not every recipe.

Not every ritual.

Not every belief.

Not every family dynamic.

Some things survive simply because nobody stopped long enough to ask whether they still make sense.

And maybe that’s what I was really doing this Eid.

Not making healthier food.

Not rebelling against anyone.

Just paying attention.

Paying attention to what still feels true.

The older I get, the less interested I become in doing things simply because they’ve always been done that way.

Whether we’re talking about food.

Family.

Relationships.

Religion.

Marriage.

Work.

Anything.

Tradition can be beautiful.

But tradition can also become a hamster wheel.

A loop we keep circling because familiarity is easier than thought.

And somewhere between the salmon cakes and the ta3miya and the giant vase of wild flowers sitting in the middle of the table, I realized something:

I don’t actually want to recreate the holidays I grew up with.

I don’t want to recreate the food.

Or the expectations.

Or the performances.

Or the unspoken competitions.

I want to create something else.

Something that feels more honest.

Something that reflects who I am now instead of who I used to be.

Maybe that’s what growing older is.

Not becoming your parents.

Not rejecting them either.

Just becoming yourself.

And trusting that to be enough.

If this resonated, you’re not alone.

Subscribe for weekly essays on healing, womanhood, hormones, identity, desire, motherhood, travel, and what it means to build a life that actually feels like yours.

The podcast “Unprogrammed” is now live, where I explore women’s health and healing in greater depth

.

Written by Dana Dinnawi, holistic health coach, writer, and creator of the Hormone Detox Program.

March, 2016.

I arrived in LA at 11pm. Jet-lagged, grimy, and beyond exhausted. It had been nearly 24 hours since I left home in Cairo.

I checked into the hotel, went up to my room, unpacked, showered to get the airplane stink off me, and all I could think about was getting into bed.

The kind of hotel bed that looks medically engineered for comfort. Crisp white sheets. Giant cloud-like pillows. A mattress so plush you know you’re about to have the best sleep of your life.

You can never replicate hotel bedding at home, no matter what you do.

And believe me, I’ve tried.

I pulled the covers back, climbed in, felt that immediate cool softness against my skin, reached over to switch off the lights and thought:

Ahhh. Finally.

Two minutes later, I sat bolt upright.

Shit.

I turned the lights back on.

I got out of bed and checked the door lock again.

Then the balcony doors.

I fumbled around behind the curtains, looking for the balcony light because there was absolutely no way I was opening those curtains onto a pitch-black balcony where a potential murderer could be standing.

The lights flicked on.

I slowly pulled the curtains back.

Nothing.

I stared for another few seconds anyway. Just to be sure no one was crouching dramatically in the corner waiting for me specifically.

I closed the curtains.

But kept the lights on.

Because honestly? A determined criminal could absolutely scale five floors if he really wanted to. But not if it’s lit, right?

Next, I dragged the desk chair across the room and jammed it under the door handle like I was in a low-budget crime documentary.

I checked the peephole.

Empty hallway.

Then the bathroom.

Behind the shower curtain.
Under the sink.

No one there.

Still left the bathroom light on, though. Obviously.

Then the closets. The same closets I had unpacked my clothes into twenty minutes earlier.

Clear.

Finally, under the bed.

I got down on my knees slowly, fully convinced a hand was about to shoot out and grab my ankle.

Nothing.

I climbed back into bed cautiously. Not relaxed exactly. Just…willing to proceed.

I switched off the main lights and stared into the dim glow coming from the bathroom, calculating whether it was enough light to both soothe me psychologically and identify an intruder if necessary.

Here I was.

Finally, on my own.

Absolutely petrified.

So much for all my “strong independent woman” bullshit.

I had never slept alone before.

Never.

Remember, I have five siblings. I never had my own room growing up. Then boarding school roommates. Then marriage. Then children.

Whenever we travelled, we travelled together. If my husband travelled for work, I either stayed with my parents or the kids were home with me.

I was simply never alone.

I was 42 years old and had never spent a night by myself.

That trip to LA was for my first-ever coaching retreat.

I had signed up for the year-long coaching program for female entrepreneurs led by Gina DeVee - The Divine Living Academy.

The program itself was online, with modules, coaching calls, and a Facebook group, all of it, but throughout the year, we were also meeting in person in different cities around the world.

Around 250 women.

LA was the first retreat.

I was finally going to meet Gina and all the women I’d only known through tiny profile photos and online calls since we started in January.

I just had to survive the first night alone first.

Which I did. Fitfully. Relieved when it was finally 7 am, and I could get up and get ready.

I checked our Facebook group and saw some of the ladies were already awake and heading down for breakfast, so I decided to join them, despite only vaguely knowing who they were.

When you’re in your 40s, you don’t really expect to make new friends (turns out, you absolutely can, and some of them even become lifelong friends too).

And as an introvert, it didn’t come naturally to me to walk up to a table of women and say, “Hi, I’m Dana.”

Even if we technically “knew” each other online.

But what else was I going to do? Eat breakfast alone?

I mean, I could…

I had the entire day free before the retreat officially started the day after. I’d never been to LA before. I wanted to see the city.

And Gina had always referred to us as “Academy sisters.”

Talk to your sisters.
Check in with your sisters.
Support your sisters.

So there was already this strange sense of familiarity between us. A kind of unspoken bond.

When I got downstairs, I saw a few tables filled with women from the program. I recognized some faces vaguely from profile pictures and calls, but not confidently enough to be sure.

Still, on a whim, I picked a table and walked over.

“Good morning…”

One of the women looked up immediately, squinting at me…

“Oh…aren’t you… Dana…from Cairo?”

She recognized me from my Facebook profile photo.

And that was that.

I sat down, and within minutes, we were making all the connections.

“Ohhh, you’re the health coach.”
“You’re the relationship coach who asked Gina that question…”
“You’re the one from Australia…”

By the time breakfast ended, we had an entire day planned together.

Downtown LA.
The Walk of Fame.
Beverly Hills for lunch.
Wandering around aimlessly in the California sunshine like we’d known each other forever.

And just like that, I spent the entire day with women I had never met before.

Women from everywhere:

The UK.

Australia.

Norway.

South Africa.

All across the US.

Different lives.
Different backgrounds.

There was the mother finally allowing herself to pursue the dream she had postponed for years.

The corporate lawyer quietly unraveling an entire life that no longer fit her.

The woman recovering from divorce and trying to remember who she was outside of being someone’s wife.

The empty nester wondering what comes next.

The coach building a business from her kitchen table during nap times.

The woman who had never travelled alone before, either.

And all of us shared this one deep thing in common:

We wanted to make an impact in the world.

And we wanted to do it while fully living our lives too, traveling, growing, having fun, honoring our desires instead of endlessly postponing them.

That was 10 years ago.

And tonight, I’m boarding another plane to Paris for another retreat with Gina.

Which feels surreal because it honestly feels like just yesterday that I boarded that first plane to LA.

I can still remember exactly how I felt.

Excited.
Terrified.
Alive.
Completely unsure of myself.

Certain anyway.

When I signed up for The Divine Living Academy, it was a massive investment for me financially, emotionally, psychologically…in every possible way.

And honestly, most people thought I was out of my mind.

And by “most people,” I mostly mean my husband.

Lol.

Not because he wasn’t supportive. He was. Completely.

But he’s practical. Rational. Grounded. The kind of person who likes things to make logical sense before committing to them.

Like most men.

And from the outside, this made absolutely no logical sense.

An online coaching certification for women entrepreneurs that also required traveling around the world multiple times a year?

And why did I even need another certification anyway? Wasn’t I already a certified health coach?

Yes, I explained patiently. But this was different. This was transformational coaching. Personal development. Mindset work. Emotional work. It would deepen my work with clients.

(The truth was, Gina had me at “four trips this year,” but that didn’t feel like an acceptable reason to give out loud).

The 2016 retreat schedule alone was:

LA.
Paris.
Florence.
Miami.

Four international trips by myself.

For me.

No kids.
No responsibilities.
No negotiating over where everyone wanted to eat.
No organizing schedules.
No trying to make everyone else happy.
No rushing through a city while mentally calculating timing, naps, meals, bathrooms, traffic, and whether someone was about to have a meltdown.

And no needing a vacation from the vacation when I got home.

Just me.

My suitcase.
My notebooks.
My room key.
My own desires for once.

And honestly? That part felt almost as shocking to me as the program itself.

At the time, it sounded wildly excessive to almost everyone around me.

“Why do you need to travel for this?”
“Couldn’t you just do it online?”
“Who spends this much money on personal development?”
“Isn’t this a bit much?”

I’m sure many of you can relate.

Because underneath all those questions was the real question so many women quietly carry their entire lives:

Are you really allowed to want this much for yourself?

Because that’s what I was actually confronting.

Not whether it was practical.
Not whether it was responsible.
Not even whether I could afford it.

But whether I was allowed to prioritize a desire that existed purely for me.

No caregiving attached to it.
No motherhood attached to it.
No sacrifice attached to it.

Just desire.

And I remember something very clearly about that period of my life:

I was getting tired of waiting for certainty before moving.

Tired of waiting to feel fully ready.

Tired of waiting for permission.

Tired of waiting for my desires to somehow become practical enough to deserve taking seriously.

And honestly?

I was getting tired of waiting, period.

Because the truth is, women can spend entire lifetimes postponing themselves.

Waiting until the kids are older.
Waiting until there’s more money.
Waiting until things calm down.
Waiting until everyone else is okay first.

Waiting until wanting something for yourself finally feels justified.

And somewhere deep down, I think I knew that if I didn’t start saying yes to myself then, I might never do it.

So I did it.

I booked the flights.
Packed the suitcase.
Dragged the chair against the hotel door like a complete psychopath.

And got on the plane anyway.

And somewhere between all those airports, hotel rooms, breakfasts with strangers, notebooks full of dreams, and long walks through cities I’d never seen before…something inside me shifted.

Not dramatically.
Not all at once.

But quietly.

I started seeing myself differently.

Not just as a mother.
Or a wife.
Or the person responsible for everyone else’s comfort and well-being.

But as a woman allowed to want a life that expanded her, too.

Adventure.
Beauty.
Growth.
Freedom.

More.

And once you experience that, once you realize the world doesn’t collapse because you chose yourself for a moment, it becomes very hard to go back to the version of yourself that endlessly waits for permission.

That decision changed everything.

Not because the program magically transformed my life overnight.

Although…looking back, it actually kind of did.

But because it changed the way I saw myself.

Before that year, I viewed travel as something extra. A luxury. An escape. A reward you earned after all your responsibilities were handled.

And somewhere along the way, through all the movement, the conversations, the cities, the women, the constant stepping outside of my normal life, I realized something much bigger:

Travel wasn’t entertainment for me.

It was expansion.

Every city stretched me a little further beyond the life and identity I had become used to inhabiting.

It reminded me how easy it is to confuse familiarity with truth.

To assume the way you’ve always lived, thought, related, mothered, worked, and moved through the world is simply “who you are,” when sometimes it’s just the environment you’ve stayed inside for too long.

Sometimes you need distance from your life to see it clearly.

And since that first trip to LA, I’ve worked with Gina several more times and travelled to retreats all over the world with her:

Florence. Twice.
Paris.
Miami. Twice.
Maui.
Mallorca.
Dubai.
Mykonos.
Las Vegas.

She even came to Cairo in 2019.

And yes, I worked my ass off to get myself into those rooms.

But every single trip was worth it.

The work itself was intense, deep personal development alongside serious business-building.

You didn’t walk into those rooms to learn how to write better Instagram captions or have a prettier website.

You went in to completely unravel.

To deconstruct your beliefs.
Your conditioning.
Your fears.
Your identity.

To throw out what no longer fit and leave as someone more honest.

And little by little, retreat after retreat, Gina helped us peel away years of programming women quietly carry inside themselves:

You’re too much.
You can’t do that.
Nobody does that.
That’s unrealistic.
What about your kids?
What will people think?
You can’t have it all.

We cried.
We laughed.
Then we cried even harder.

Some days, the emotional release was so intense we would go back to our rooms in the evening and just sleep, completely exhausted from everything we were confronting and shedding.

Somewhere along the way, travel and lifelong learning became non-negotiables for me.

Not indulgences.
Not escapes.

Necessities.

Because honestly, who wants to live without growth, curiosity, purpose, beauty, or adventure?

And I think that’s why so many women secretly long to travel.

During my work in this program, and in order to get my coaching certification, I had to complete over 100 hours of coaching calls with women.

And I asked almost every woman some version of the same question:

“If you had no obligations, no guilt, no financial limitations, and nobody else to consider…what would you do?”

And over and over again, the answer was the same.

“I would travel.”

Not because women simply want vacations.

But because travel represents freedom.

Choice.
Movement.
Possibility.
Space to hear yourself again.

And I think for many women, especially mothers, wives, caregivers, women carrying endless emotional labor, freedom slowly becomes abstract.

Something postponed indefinitely.

You stop asking yourself what you want because life becomes organized around responding to everyone else.

But ten years ago, something in me refused to ignore that anymore, and to let that part die. And now here I am again.

Paris.

Ten years later.

Older.
Wiser.
Far less interested in hustle and achievement than I was back then.

But maybe even more devoted to growth now than I was then.

Just differently.

Ten years ago, I wanted expansion. I wanted transformation, momentum, success; I wanted to see how much bigger my life could become.

Now, I think I’m more interested in depth. In beauty. In truth.

In building a life that actually feels aligned and peaceful from the inside.

And maybe that’s what makes this return to Paris emotional for me.

Because it’s not just another retreat.

It’s a full-circle moment.

A reminder of the woman who boarded that first plane without fully knowing why, only knowing she had to go.

And maybe that’s what growth actually is.

Not becoming someone completely different.

But returning to the parts of yourself that always knew.

The morning I left for the final retreat in December of that first year in 2016— the graduation trip in Miami after twelve intense months of work — my husband stood at the door and said:

“I’m so proud of you. You really did it. Tala2ty 3einy…(You drove me crazy at times)… but you did it.”

And tonight?

This time, he’s coming with me.

Oh… and I still wedge a chair under the hotel door when I’m alone. Growth is beautiful, but a girl still likes a security system.

If this resonated, you’re not alone.
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The podcast “Unprogrammed” is live now, where I explore women’s health and healing more deeply.

Written by Dana Dinnawi, holistic health coach, writer, and creator of the Hormone Detox Program.

We didn’t have MTV growing up in Saudi Arabia. Or ABC, NBC, or CBS. This was the early 80s. We didn’t really have TV or movies either, not in the way you’d imagine. Saudi Aramco, where we lived, had the only movie theatres in all of Saudi Arabia. Which, at the time, felt completely normal… and also slightly unreal when I think about it now.

No satellite TV. No streaming. No “just look it up.”

Nothing.

Saudi Aramco had its own channel. Channel 3. It was automated. No presenters. No humans. You got what looks like a computer screen. Blue background. With the daily schedule typed out on it. They aired a few sitcoms, Sesame Street and Looney Tunes after school; we had a movie night on weekends, documentaries, and that was it. It shut down at 10 pm every night.

We also had regular Saudi TV, which only aired Arabic shows, the news, and religious shows.

And we had these antennas that could, in theory, pick up channels from Bahrain, Dubai, or Kuwait, which were countries slightly more ‘progressive’ than Saudi.

And when I say “could,” I mean if someone was willing to stand there and adjust them by millimeters… patiently… like they were trying to tune into a signal from outer space. So we could watch shows like Falcon Crest, Dynasty, Knots Landing, all censored of course.

And even then, whatever you got was already outdated.

So anything current, anything global, anything even slightly “now”… had to arrive from somewhere else.

It had to be brought back.

Which is how we first watched Billie Jean.

Someone had traveled to the US, or wherever, recorded it on a VCR (videocassette recorder), which at the time was the closest thing we had to capturing television, and then, generously, brought the tape back and passed it around.

That’s how things moved. Hand to hand. House to house.

You didn’t “watch” something. You were invited to it.

And that invitation mattered.

Wajeeha, my best friend (then and now), had called me earlier to tell me she had the tape.

She had THE tape.

“Dad..PLEASE take me to Wajeeha’s house now. We have to see Billie Jean.”

It was the weekend. It was Wajeeha, my best friend. No questions asked when I wanted to go.

“Yalla.” “Let’s go,” He got his keys, and we got into the car.

“Shoo ya3ni Bilie jean?” as we drove off.

He didn’t mean it in the literal sense, of course. He knew we were going to listen to the song or watch something. He meant it sarcastically.

“Daaad…”

“What’s the big deal?”

Of course, he wouldn’t understand... the way most parents never understand their kids’ taste in music or their fascination with pop culture, especially when it feels so far removed from the world they grew up in.

And more so because in that car ride, on our way for me to see Michael Jackson, we were listening to Fairuz.

That’s all he played in the car. Fairuz. Abdel Halim. Abdel Wahab. Sometimes Farid El Atrash, if we were really unlucky.

A much more cultivated taste in music.

So ya..Michael Jackson was junk for him. Literally NO big deal at all.

Still, he indulged us.

“Salmy 3’3amu Musa” (“Say hello to Uncle Mousa for me”), as I jumped out of the car 5 minutes later. Wajeeha is Palestinian. And her father, 3amu Musa, was also a doctor and my dad’s friend from when they both went to Ain Shams University in Cairo together back in the 60s.

They each went their separate ways after medical school, with no communication after leaving Cairo and no way of knowing where life had taken the other.

Until, by one of those almost unbelievable coincidences life sometimes produces, they both ended up working for Aramco… literally living next door to each other, separated only by a small hedge between the two tiny “starter” homes Wajeeha and I were both born into.

And this is where our friendship began, almost without choice.

A few years after we were born, both our families were moved into bigger homes. But by then, both the friendships and the family bonds had already cemented themselves, even though the houses were now much farther apart.

So weekends, afternoons, sleepovers, random visits… all of it continued. Wajeeha’s house felt almost like an extension of my own.

I ran down the path to Wajeeha’s house and I walked in. No one ever locked their doors in Aramco.

3amu Musa was napping.

Her mom, Auntie Zleekha, was there.

“Mar7aba Sitt Dana….keefik el yoom?” (“Hello Miss Dana… how are you today?”)

“mnee7a”…(“Good…”) kiss kiss..

“Keef ejaytee..?” (“How did you come?”)

Baba.. (my dad)

Tayib leysh ma aja ma3aaky..? (“Why didn’t he come with you?”)

I had no clue. lol..I was more preoccupied with Billie Jean than thinking of extending the invitation to my father..

Thankfully, before I had to come up with an answer, Wajeeha came rushing out.

“Yalla, yalla!” (“Come on, come on!”)

And she pulled me into their family room.

She had gotten hold of the tape.

We stood a little too close to the TV, waiting.

Fully aware that this was something important.

We’d been listening to Michael Jackson and Billie Jean on repeat on our Walkmans for months.

Listening. Clicking stop. Hitting the rewind button. Knowing exactly when to press the Stop button again, because we’d heard it and repeated it so many times.

Play. Click. Stop. Click. Rewind. Click. Stop. Click. Play.

So now we are finally going to see the video. The video.

The tape went in. That mechanical whirr. The slight distortion on the screen as it adjusted itself.

We took a step back.

And then he appeared.

The music started simultaneously.

And the audience on the screen started screaming.

So we started screaming.

Not even screaming, actually… shrieking.

High-pitched, uncontrolled, slightly unhinged shrieking.

The kind that suggests something has gone very wrong.

And then he started dancing.

So we started screaming some more, totally mesmerized by his moonwalk.

And that was it.

We lost it.

Completely.

Until Wajeeha’s mother came running in.

“Shoo feeee,,, shoo feeee??”

“What’s wrong? What’s wrongggg?!”

Full panic.

The kind that assumes someone has fallen, broken something, or possibly died.

Which, to be fair, would have been a reasonable conclusion based on the sounds we were making.

And then she saw us.

Perfectly fine.

In the middle of the living room.

Standing there staring back at her, completely unaware of what we’d done.

Her relief lasted about a second.

Followed very quickly by something closer to disbelief. Possibly regret. Definitely disapproval.

“ولكو… مجانين…”

“Crazy…”

We had interrupted her day… for this.

Undeterred, we continued.

We tried to copy everything. Every move. Every turn. Every impossible glide.

We put on socks so we could “slide” across the floor. That didn’t work.

So we took off our socks.

Then we tried with shoes. On carpet.

Also didn’t work.

At some point, we decided the problem wasn’t the floor, it was us.

Which felt accurate.

We kept trying anyway.

Dragging our feet, pushing off, attempting something that looked, at best, like we were slightly unstable.

Nothing even remotely close to a moonwalk.

But in our minds, we were very close.

The more he danced, the louder we got.

The more we failed, the more we committed.

Sliding. Shouting. Attempting… something.

To Michael Jackson.

And as I sat in the movie theater last week and that exact Billie Jean moment popped again, this whole memory came flooding back,

“ولكو… مجانين…”

Crazy….

Maybe we were.

I mean, we were.

Screaming and shrieking like that. Over someone we didn’t know and would never know.

But what did we know?

We were 10.

I didn’t realize it then, obviously.

That this wasn’t just about music. Or dancing. Or even excitement.

It was about something deeper that had already started taking shape long before that living room.

It was the beginning of a fascination with celebrity that would last over 40 years.

-If you’re reading this as part of the third issue, I’ve left the full piece open.

In future issues, this is where the writing deepens.-

Before Michael Jackson… there was Princess Diana.

And that was a different kind of fascination entirely.

She wasn’t loud or electric or something you could imitate in a living room or dance in front of a mirror to. As I did repeatedly.

She was quiet. Composed. Beautiful in a way that felt almost unreal.

She was every little girl’s idea of something to become.

Not just a princess, but the princess.

The dresses. The posture. The softness in her face. The way cameras followed her like she carried something the rest of the world didn’t.

Even from a distance, even through the limited, delayed glimpses we had, there was something about her that felt… magnetic.

You didn’t just watch her.

You felt her.

And without realizing it, you absorbed something:

That certain people existed on a different level.

That their lives mattered more.

That being close to them, even for a second, meant something.

Michael Jackson was the explosion of that feeling.

And for years, I didn’t question it.

I followed it.

I felt it.

I participated in it.

And somewhere along the way, over the next few decades, I ended up collecting these strange little celebrity encounters of my own.

Omar Sharif.

He was having dinner at the same restaurant in Cairo where I was having dinner with my husband’s family. He was with a group of people. He got up to leave at the same time we did.

Of course, he got surrounded.

We waited.

Of course, I was going to shake hands with Omar Sharif. No version of me was not going to shake hands with Omar Sharif.

I can’t tell you what he said. I was so smitten. I was in my early twenties. He was still very handsome. Not yet all grey. And oh so charming. He took his time. He didn’t take your admiration for granted. He chatted graciously, with humor. He looked you straight in the eye, and you were just… ready to go home with him.

It was all very civilized.

No screaming or shrieking.

Not outwardly, at least.

A few years later, I was working at AUC in the Office of Communications and Marketing. We were organizing an event. George Clooney was coming to give a talk about Darfur… his involvement in Sudan.

I didn’t get to be part of the welcoming committee.

So I stood outside Ewart Hall like everyone else, waiting to watch him get out of his car.

He arrived with Don Cheadle.

And before the doors of their van even opened, we were all screaming.

I got his autograph.

Then I called my husband.

Still screaming.

And he told me I’m never to answer the phone like that again. He thought something had happened to me. Or to one of our kids.

Which, to be fair, was a reasonable assumption.

Then Toronto. 2007.

I was eight months pregnant with my youngest son, having dinner with my daughters and my brother on Yonge Street, right across from the Elgin Theatre.

Right in the middle of the Toronto International Film Festival.

We noticed a commotion outside, so we asked one of the waiters what was going on.

“Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are coming.”

We paid the bill and ran.

Yes. I ran.

Eight months pregnant.

My kids will never let me forget how fast I ran to see Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

Which we did.

Barely.

A few years later, I was back in Toronto again.

Another café.

As I was waiting in line to get my coffee, I saw Sarah Rafferty (Donna on Suits) sitting at a table with her toddler daughter.

No room for screaming here.

Just quiet disbelief.

I was a huge Suits fan at the time, and I knew the show was filmed in Toronto, and the cast lived here while filming, but I never imagined just… running into one of them like that.

So casually.

Like she was sitting in her own living room, feeding her baby.

I messaged my brother, another die-hard Suits fan.

“You need to go to her NOW and get a photo.”

No one else in the café seemed to even notice her.

I would later learn that this is very… Torontonian.

Long (very embarrassing) story short…

I asked for a photo.

She said, “No.”

Just… no.

And I slinked back to my spot to pick up my coffee.

And that was that.

In 2021, I was back in London.

Still very much the Covid era. Everyone in masks.

My son and I were in Boots, going down the escalator. My husband had gone ahead, so it was just the two of us.

Coming up opposite us was a woman and a man.

As she got closer, and we crossed at the same moment, my son, standing one step below me, whipped his head around. Mask on, eyes wide open.

We’d clocked her at the exact moment.

I didn’t hear what he was saying, but I knew.

“Did you see?”

It was Monica from Friends.

Courteney Cox.

She also had a mask on, but there was no missing her.

She was with her boyfriend.

We got to the bottom of the escalator, grabbed my husband so he could see her too, and ran back up the one she had just gone up.

We didn’t make it in time.

Of course.

I also ran into Piers Morgan during that trip on the street and in cafés more times than I can count.

Can’t say he elicited more than an “oh… isn’t that Piers… What’s his name?”

And that was before he even proved to be such a prick.

My last celebrity sighting was in September 2023.

Also in London.

By pure coincidence, my husband and I had planned a quick getaway, which ended up being the week after the Queen died.

London was… different. Full, but quiet in a way.

A few days before the funeral, we were out walking, as we always do in London, when we noticed police cordoning off part of the road. We were in Chelsea, not close to Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, or any of the historic buildings where the funeral events were taking place.

So we figured it must be some dignitary. A president, maybe. Someone in town for the funeral is on their way to their diplomatic residence.

So we waited.

Out of curiosity.

There were no crowds in this part of town at all.

We were the only ones on the sidewalk, actually, as close to the edge of the road as you could get.

And then we saw the two Range Rovers approaching.

Prince William and Kate Middleton in the first.

Prince Harry and Meghan in the second.

They slowed down right in front of us.

The sun was casting just enough light on their tinted car windows.

Just long enough for us to get a very clear look.

Long enough for them to wave.

I.

Died.

Remember, I love Princess Diana. And this felt like the closest I would ever get to anything connected to her.

I couldn’t actually scream out loud.

No one did.

Out of respect, I think. The moment didn’t allow for it.

But for the next fifteen minutes, I couldn’t stop.

“oh my god… oh my god… oh my god…”

Over and over again.

Quietly.

But completely.

That was September 2023.

Then October 7, 2023 happened.

And something shifted permanently for me after that.

Not just politically. Personally.

Because suddenly, all these people I had followed for years… actors, celebrities, public figures, influencers, even members of the royal family… started posting.

Or not posting.

And with every statement, every silence, every carefully worded PR-approved message, something in me sank a little further.

No.

No, not you too.

Not you too.

Over and over again.

People I had admired. People I had followed for years without even questioning why. People whose lives, outfits, interviews, relationships, homes, opinions, and curated glimpses into daily life had quietly occupied space in my mind for decades.

And suddenly I could see it so clearly.

Humanity was not their priority.

Money was.
Access was.
Power was.
Image was.
Protecting the brand was.

And once you see that clearly enough times, the illusion starts collapsing very quickly.

Not dramatically.

Quietly.

One unfollow at a time.

And then beyond their political views, I started asking myself something even bigger.

Why was I following them in the first place?

For their clothes?
Their red carpet appearances?
Their skincare routines… which I would never follow anyway?

I do love their kitchens and closets though, not gonna lie.

But still.

Why was I letting these people lead my attention?

Do I actually want their lifestyle?

Does what they say or post add anything meaningful to my life?

Does watching carefully styled appearances improve my thinking, my nervous system, or my sense of truth?

The answer was a very clear no.

Unfollow.

Unfollow.

Unfollow.

Unfollow.

Even Prince William and Kate.

Especially the ones I had convinced myself were somehow different.

It took me a couple of hours.

Not because it was difficult technically.

But because I was realizing how much unconscious attention I had handed over for years.

I decided, if I want to see Kate Middleton’s outfit, which I still do from time to time, I can go look. That doesn’t require passive, daily consumption.

If I want news, I’ll go to that page intentionally and read it.
They don’t deserve my following, my attention, or my algorithmic loyalty.

Curiosity doesn’t need a follow.

So I chose intention over habit.

And this was part of my healing since.

To curate my consciousness with the same devotion I use to curate my diet.

Delete the noise.
Unfollow the chaos.
Turn down the propaganda.
Let silence become my filter, not algorithms.

And maybe part of what I’m really missing is not celebrity culture itself… but the loss of a certain kind of experience. A slower, more private kind of living. One where moments belonged only to the people inside them.

My kids will never know the simple pleasure of running over to your best friend’s house to watch a tape you had to wait months for.

Or the quiet magic of spending an afternoon dancing in front of a TV screen… and no one knowing you were doing it.

That it would remain a memory only for the people in it, and for them alone.

I had to ask Wajeeha to help fill in the gaps for this story.

She’s the only one who could.

We have no photos.
No screenshots.
Nothing to go back to.

Only what exists in our minds.

And the memory still makes her cry, because it’s not just about what we watched.
It’s about what we felt.

A moment in time tied to emotion.
Aching for a version of life that no longer exists.