In August 1990, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait changed the direction of my life.

Until then, I had built a career in the corporate world. I had studied Civil Engineering and Business Administration, worked in advertising and marketing, and lived a life shaped by responsibility, ambition, and logic.

Then everything changed.

The invasion disrupted far more than the world around me. It forced me to question who I was, what mattered to me, and how I wanted to live. Looking back, I can see that this period opened a door to a very different chapter of my life.

Poetry became part of that journey.

From the Corporate World to a Different Inner Landscape

I did not move neatly from one life into another. Real transformation rarely happens that way.

I began exploring parts of myself that had little space in my former world. Intuition, dreams, symbolism, creativity, and the inner life became increasingly important to me. Over time, this exploration changed both my personal direction and my professional work.

Poetry gave me another language.

Some experiences resist explanation. We can analyse them, discuss them, and try to make sense of them, yet something remains beyond ordinary language. Poetry allowed me to stay with that complexity without forcing it into a conclusion.

I could write what I felt before I fully understood it.

Why Writing Became Part of My Transformation

For me, writing was never about turning pain into something beautiful. Life is more complicated than that.

Writing gave me a place to meet my own experience.

Through words, I could return to memories from another angle. I could notice what remained unresolved, what had changed, and what I had carried forward without realising it. I could explore contradiction without needing to tidy it away.

This became part of a much larger process of self-awareness.

My life had taken me from the corporate world into work centred on intuition, personal transformation, and understanding the many dimensions of who we are. Poetry did not sit outside that journey. It became another way of entering it.

The Story Behind This Episode of Unbox The Podcast

In this episode of Unbox The Podcast, I share the personal story behind that transition.

I speak about the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the upheaval that followed. I explore how a period of profound disruption led me towards unexpected questions, new forms of expression, and eventually a very different life.

This is not a story about pretending that painful experiences happen for a reason. I do not believe we need to romanticise suffering to find meaning in our lives.

It is a story about what we do with what happens to us.

What Do We Create From What We Have Lived?

That question has stayed with me for decades.

We cannot always choose what enters our lives. We can, however, become more conscious of how an experience shapes us, what we continue to carry, and what we choose to create next.

For me, poetry became one of those choices.

Years later, that thread would continue into my first Arabic poetry collection, أنثى السَّحَر (Untha Al Sahar- Female of Dawn). Looking back, I can see that the path towards it began long before I knew I would ever publish a collection of poetry.

Perhaps that is one of the most interesting things about our lives. Sometimes we only recognise the pattern when we look back.

Listen to My Psychic Journey

This episode forms part of my My Psychic Journey series on Unbox The Podcast, where I share the experiences that shaped my path from the corporate world into more than three decades of work with intuition, self-awareness, and personal transformation.

If you have ever lived through a period that disrupted your sense of identity or changed the direction of your life, this episode may speak to you.

Listen to the episode and join me as I revisit the experiences, questions, and choices that changed mine.

🎙️ Thank you for subscribing to Unbox The Podcast and listening to my My Psychic Journey series.