by Saeeda Hafiz
“Me, too,” I said, leaning more toward him and wondering what would happen next.
He turned around and left me there in the doorway, thinking, “I was certain that he was going to kiss me today.”
* * *
The following week, we went out again to do some things in the city and then go out to dinner. During dessert, I said, “I’ve been really enjoying our time together over the last few months.” His face started to twitch a bit, communicating that he wasn’t sure what I was about to say. He leaned back in his chair, but I continued talking while the butterflies in my stomach began to flutter. “I really like you and thought maybe…we could start dating…romantically?”
“Well…it crossed my mind. Once. In the beginning, but…” he stopped and looked down and then said, “but you’re not a Christian.”
“I know, but I’m very spiritual. I love what Christ stands for…”
He shook his head to communicate, “No, I have to be with a Christian woman, my kind of Christian.”
I was holding back my tears and lost my appetite. I didn’t finish my dessert.
The server bounced over. “All finished?”
“Yep.” I croaked out the answer like a frog.
I caught sight of Daniel’s silhouette, but gave him no eye contact. He didn’t look like a Christian to me. He had told me his answer with no compassion in his voice, no reaffirmation of our friendship. He gave me nothing. Just like that, it was over.
I cried all night and the next day, too, and part of the following day. I lay in bed that morning and thought, “My romantic life and my family life are two areas where I suck.” A deep part of me felt that I was doomed, that no one would ever want me.
Even though Daniel and I weren’t meant to be, I still had my spiritual family. The next day, I called Caro-Lion to help me through my heartache. She listened closely, and helped me once again view life as a marathon and this experience as just one more hurdle to jump over.
After Daniel rejected me, I decided to focus on what was going well. I found my heartbreak manageable. Spiritually, I understood that I was not doomed because he rejected me; I was just not going to be with him. I focused more on my great connection to friends, my spiritual family, and my new job as a marketing database manager.
* * *
Aaliyah, Inc., used a statistical model that helped organizations evaluate the health of their business. Their mathematical algorithm was a unique way of asking Jungian-type questions about what drives a business market, asking all the pertinent questions that relate to the holistic health of a business. At the end of what they called “pairwise comparisons,” executives and managers better understood their priorities, obstacles, and what actions they needed to take to grow.
After I had been working at Aaliyah for several months, I asked if I could be added to the new sales and marketing team. I wanted to use the business side of my college degree, not just my software skills. I wanted to use my gift-to-gab, corporate insight, and natural ability to market and promote products that I was excited about. Caro-Lion often said that I was a natural marketer, so I wanted to practice the art of cold calling and discovering what it felt like to hear “No” over and over—and be undefeated. I had done the solo business thing. Now I wanted to know what it was like to build up a business in a team environment.
The energy of being involved in a start-up was a primal adrenaline rush. It demanded that we work hard while being creative and innovative at all times, something that big corporations didn’t necessarily demand. Everyone was hungry and excited about the possibilities of the future.
Aaliyah was the most diverse place I had ever worked. It had about twenty employees, representing five different religions, New-Agers, single mothers, four races, liberals, conservatives, young, and old. One day the printer broke down and an announcement came through on the intercom: “Can we have all major religions say a prayer for our printer so that we can send out this proposal on time?”
We all laughed and prayed. The printer did eventually start working.
I enjoyed the love and acceptance of our multicultural environment.
At Aaliyah, we had to think strategically for our clients and ourselves. Abdul, the president of the company, had a brilliant math-engineering mind. It made this 5-foot 7-inch, stocky, olive-skinned Egyptian very charismatic. His knowledge, drive, and charm closed quite a few business deals. We all rallied behind him.
Abdul and Pamela, the other principal owner, started taking private yoga lessons from me. They both said they wanted to practice yoga to personally grow and de-stress from the pressures of owning a start-up. It not only helped them, but it also felt good to me because they were supporting me. When I joined the company, Aaliyah was expanding their marketing and sales reach. Now they were including Fortune 1000 companies, not just the Fortune 500 companies.
Lakshmi, an Indian woman with an MBA in marketing and a Master’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh, was hired to help us grow. Bright and tenacious, she was in charge of creating a marketing team. She trained us to keep the conversation moving toward a sell or a sales meeting, and she showed us how to interject enthusiasm and smarts when it got tough. The marketing team was excited to get started and take Aaliyah to a higher level.
One day, Abdul called the entire company into the conference room so he could watch us—the new marketing team—give a preview presentation of what we were going to do to bring in new business. He wanted the company to decide if we could convince a business manager to review our product. Lakshmi proudly went through all of the steps, showing how her campaign would increase business. We did a mock customer role-play so that each employee could see the behind-the-scenes conversations that lured the customer into the doors of Aaliyah. When we finished the presentation, the room was quiet and all eyes were on Abdul to comment first.
“Lakshmi, what the hell was that?” Abdul shouted. “This was not what I asked for!” Lakshmi’s eyes looked stunned as they welled up, but she didn’t cry; she just stared at him.
“Abdul…” I chimed in, “How did Lakshmi miss the mark? Is there something specific you can point to that’s wrong?”
Abdul stood there for a minute or two in silence, looking like he was searching his mind for an answer.
“This is NOT what I want!” he shouted.
“What do you want?” I said. “What’s not working here?” By now the conference room was morgue-quiet.
Then Abdul started yelling again, “Lakshmi, I gave you a lot of time to get this right. This is not good enough.”
He was yelling, but he couldn’t give us anything concrete about what was wrong. I was confused.
Later that night, I meditated on what had happened. A thought floated through my brain: Abdul has a brilliant math-engineering mind, but I think he doesn’t understand how this part of the business works. And he might be embarrassed to say so. He then makes us wrong and traumatizes us.
At the end of my meditation, I opened my eyes and told myself to keep an eye on this behavior. It could be dangerous.
I watched Abdul blow up from time to time. It always made me tense, but I wanted to hang in there. I enjoyed the work and the people.
One day, a little more than a year later, I was on the phone with a prospective costumer. Abdul had walked into the sales and marketing room and heard me on the phone with the prospect. When I hung up the phone, he gestured me into his office and started yelling. I had apparently said something incorrect and he began chewing me out for it. He got close, up in my face.
I left his office and went back to my desk. Our office manager came over and said, “Are you okay?” I nodded as my eyes watered. I was shaking. I went home that night and planned my exit strategy.
When I went into the office the next day, the dust had settled. I decided not to use the “I-quit” card too quickly. I wanted to talk things through with Abd
ul. He was one of my yoga clients and I knew that he wasn’t just a businessman; he was also a spiritual man who I had seen do things to improve himself on mind, body, and soul levels. Perhaps Abdul and I could talk things through. We could discuss where we were both at fault, and then we could develop a new way of working with each other, a more peaceful way.
I arrived at work the next morning and, I went straight to Abdul’s office. I stood in the doorway and asked, “Can I talk with you about yesterday?”
He nodded and said, “Have a seat.”
I sat down on the black leather couch. I was wringing my hands, one of the things I do when I’m nervous, especially when I know things might end badly.
“I might have made some mistakes yesterday on the phone, but I don’t think you should have yelled at me. That’s not—”
He interrupted and shouted, “If the situation happened again, I would do the very same thing.” I realized I could not talk reasonably with him.
“Okay,” I said and went back to my desk.
I sat down and started to listen to my voicemail messages, and that’s when I had a flashback.
I am seventeen years old. My mother and I are leaving our house and getting into her car to go somewhere. While I am opening the car door to my mother’s silver Chevy sedan, I see Greg, our twenty-eight-year-old neighbor, grab Carla, his live-in girlfriend, by her hair and start pounding on her. My mother gets into her car, turns on the ignition, and motions for me to get in, too. We drive off. My stomach feels sick. My mom says, “I don’t know why she would let some man hit her.”
Having a knee jerk response, I say, “Why did you let Dad hit on you all those years?”
She doesn’t respond. We ride together in silence.
That night, I went to bed knowing one thing for sure. If I stayed in that environment, I was essentially saying it was okay for Abdul to yell at me. I would be like Paula, allowing some man to punch me in the head in the middle of the street. I would be like my mother, stuck for twenty years with four kids and no self-esteem.
The next day, in my heart, I was done with Aaliyah. I would no longer subject myself to abuse of any kind. I decided to take myself to a higher level.
CHAPTER 15
Expanding the Circle
IN FALL 1997, Gia owner of Holistic Wellness, asked me, “How do you stay so calm all day?”
I had been working for her for about a week.
“I do what you taught me. I eat soft-cooked grains in the mornings.” Gia smiled, grabbed her messages, and went into her office.
I stayed in the reception area, my new workspace. I had left Aaliyah, Inc. and started working for my mentor Gia. She’d hired me part-time as an office manager to answer phones, make appointments, type up letters, develop the monthly newsletter, make bank deposits, and do other clerical duties as needed. While it was a lower-level job than I was used to, working closely with Gia had its own rewards. Gia often called me into her office to do a sitting meditation with her on giving and receiving at the beginning of each day. It helped us set the spiritual intention for the day: attracting clients who needed and wanted our services, eliminating our fears and living in the present moment with courage. Then we could get down to the business of making our intentions a reality. We worked hard.
Gia also gave me the opportunity to teach yoga classes, especially since she had just secured a holistic health contract with the Women’s Hospital. Since her business was growing, she trained me to teach her natural weight loss class, which was successful, and she allowed me to develop my own food class, which wasn’t so successful. I needed practice in this area.
Overall, I didn’t make lots of money, just enough to cover my bills—and sometimes not. It felt good to take a stand when it came to how I was going to be treated in the workplace. I was happy to be working for someone who cared about performing “loving, right actions.”
Again, my life was filling up as it had when I’d had my Atlanta business—but with a few improvements. I still taught yoga, but I only had six to eight classes a week, which was better than teaching twelve to eighteen, as I had before. I prepared food for others, but not as a live-in and not full-time. Working at Holistic Wellness allowed me to naturally market my services. For example, when I appeared in the local magazine Shady Ave, it attracted some independent clients for me. I was also featured in the local city paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, as well as in an Internet publication. I offered my new clients general counseling, but sometimes people needed more intense solutions, and at that point I referred them to Gia.
One evening, I returned home from work to find a message waiting on my answering machine. “Saeeda, this is Essence magazine. We would like to fact check your interview. Please call.”
I thought to myself, “Here we go again. They’re fact-checking my interview, just like they did last time.”
In the morning, I called Essence back. I confirmed my interview.
“We expect this article to go to print in six months, summer,” she said. “Great,” I said unenthusiastically. I hung up the phone, and right then and there, decided not to get excited about the possibilities in life. I decided to conserve my energy for actual events. I walked out the door of my apartment and went on with my normal day.
Money was low, but good things were happening. I started to have a more substantial marketing binder that held all of my press materials and accomplishments. The sound of the phone ringing and messages on the machine were now more likely to be opportunity knocking rather than a creditor, and this was a welcome change.
One day a woman named Donna called me and said, “We’re starting our yoga program here at Carnegie Mellon and I wanted to know if you would be interested in teaching yoga for us?”
Of course I said yes, having been in love with Carnegie Mellon University since my 1983 college-prep summer intensive there. I was thrilled to be asked to do anything for them. I wanted to be back in that atmosphere of unique and innovative thinkers again, and I wondered if I could really have something to contribute.
The CMU yoga classes were different from other classes I had taught. They were three times the size—about sixty people. I was used to twenty, maybe twenty-five students. I was nervous the first few times, but I adjusted.
Each time I entered Skibo Hall, I remembered entering that building sixteen years earlier as an eleventh grader. When I walked up the stairs, my past and my present merged. Then it had been 1983 and I was a scared high school student who was studying physics, chemistry, and calculus on a college campus. In 1998, I was a scared yoga instructor about to lead classes. Classes that felt metaphysical. Classes that felt like I was manipulating the chemistry of these great minds with physical yoga postures, which allowed each person to enter into their deep state of relaxation—Savasana.
The dean of mathematics, the associate dean of mechanical design, and professors and students of physics, medicinal anthropology, English, drama, and art all came to my yoga class. The floor resembled a mosaic, with colorful mats placed on the floor like tiles. Each body stretched out in the relaxation pose. I dimmed the lights and started the class with: “Listen to your body. If something hurts you while in a pose, gently come out of it and relax, and on the contrary, if something is not going deep enough, challenge yourself to go deeper.”
At that moment, I began to teach the postures. I started to get to know my students and what their daily lives were like so that I could reference why a specific posture might be helpful. I was meeting people from many disciplines, from abstract scientific artists to musical theater performers to artificial intelligence robotic programmers. For instance, there was a student getting his master’s in art and mathematics. He explained that he was taking yoga to enhance his creativity and decrease his stress level. I gave him hand postures to help keep his fingers nimble. A second student blew out her knee from too much running. A third student had a bad shoulde
r from overuse in gymnastics. One student was so anxious that she always needed extra Savasana time. One professor was trying to get pregnant, so I let her know which postures generally help with reproductive health.
The seventy-five minutes always passed quickly. I ended the class the same way I started it, with everyone in the relaxation pose, Savasana. I took the students on an inner journey. It created stillness in the room, reassuring them that this was the time that their bodies would feel the benefit of each posture that they had completed both today and in the past.
I told each student this was their time to heal every single cell in the body. It was the time to keep what they needed and wanted for better health, and it was also the time to let go of what the body no longer needed. I affirmed for my students that each of them was whole, powerful, and peaceful.
At the very end, I slowly brought each student back, suggesting that it was time to return to the body instead of continuing to rest in that ethereal space between being awake and asleep. However, some people fell asleep. Some students even snored, giving themselves the much-needed rest they often deprived themselves of. I, too, left the class restored and refreshed.
One evening after class, a young woman approached me, introduced herself, and said, “I would like to invite you to a dinner. It’s a dinner honoring you as one of the most respected female role models on campus.” She handed me an invitation.
“Really? Wow. Me?”
“Sure,” she said matter of factly. “Will you come?”
“I would love to come,” I said, humbled. “Thank you.” I walked away thinking, “How could this university and its students think that I should be honored in this way? I’m only here twice a week.”
When I arrived at home, I called my friend Buddy and told him what had happened. “This request came from the young women on campus, out of the blue. This is the greatest acknowledgment I have ever received. It’s an award that I never applied for. I didn’t market for it or do any self-promotion in order to be noticed in this way.”