Mariyam Mohamed

As I sat soaking my feet in a lake-like pond, waiting for the tiny fish to begin their natural pedicure, my mind drifted into an unexpected direction. The gentle ripples, the cool water, and the soft tickle of fish brushing against my skin created a peaceful moment that felt complete on its own. Yet a thought surfaced: this simple experience could easily be commercialized into a tourist attraction. A few signs, a few influencers, a clever tagline, and suddenly people would feel they needed this exact experience simply because it had been packaged and promoted to them. That reflection opened a deeper realization about how easily human minds are shaped through suggestion—whether in advertising, politics, or everyday selling. Mindwashing rarely appears dramatic or forceful. It is far more subtle. The mind absorbs messages constantly: an advertisement hinting that you are not enough without a product, a political speech implying danger unless you support the right person, a salesperson as...

I have been taking teenagers as clients for the past five years, and in many ways, they have become the heartbeat of my work. In fact, the majority of my clients are these bright, brilliant young minds who walk into sessions with more depth than most adults give them credit for. Every teen I meet carries a story, a spark, and a uniqueness that is so evident—if only someone pauses long enough to see it. What I notice again and again is how misunderstood they often are. Their emotional outbursts get labeled as drama. Their need for independence gets labeled as disrespect. Their silence gets labeled as attitude. Their rebellion, too, often gets reduced to nothing more than bad behavior. The truth is, their actions are rarely about “behaving badly”—they are usually a mirror of the relationship they have with the adults around them, especially their parents. Teens do not rebel to hurt us. They rebel because they are fighting for identity, autonomy, and emotional safety. The teenage years ...

  Reflecting on “The Conscious Parent” on My Daughter’s Birthday Today, as I sit with  The Conscious Parent  open in my hands, I find myself pausing—not because the words are difficult, but because they awaken something deep inside me. These pages remind me of the beginning of my own journey into motherhood: raw, overwhelming, beautiful, frightening, and transformative all at once. I remember the day I found out I was going to be a mother. It wasn’t fear of the child. It wasn’t reluctance. It was the fear of  myself . The fear of whether I was strong enough, wise enough, stable enough to carry a responsibility so sacred and so consuming. I wondered if I could truly take on everything that would come next. And everything  did  change. I stopped working. I became a full-time mother. And suddenly, a tiny human depended on me for every breath, every cry, every moment. Like the book says, infancy is a landscape of constant unpredictability—no agenda, no rhythm, ...