#321: Make Courageous Decisions: How Toktam Thomas Created the Life She Wanted & How You Can Too

I welcome you to episode 321.

Yo, are you ready to flip the script on life? Because those bad days, they're just doors to better days.

And that's exactly what we do here at Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

Your host, Kevin Lowe. He's been flipping the script on his own life, turning over 20 years of being completely blind into straight-up inspiration, motivation, and encouragement just for you.

So, kick back, relax, and let me introduce you to your host, Kevin Lowe.

What's up, my friend, and welcome back to the podcast.

This is episode 321, my interview with Taktum Thomas.

More importantly, I want you to realize that today's interview, it's a heartfelt story.

It's an empowering story.

And hopefully, it's going to be a source of inspiration, a motivation to you to never give up on life, even when it may feel like life is giving up on you.

That's the mission of this podcast, and Taktum's life story is a beautiful example of this.

So, my friend, I hope you enjoy.

Here is today's amazing guest, Taktum Thomas.

I was born in 81 in Iran, Persia, Tehran.

And that was, you know, a couple of years, three years after the revolution.

So the Shah had just left and we had dictatorship just come in.

And my parents were just not very happy there. So leaving the country is not as easy as leaving normal countries.

You have to have a reason or you have to get permit to leave your own country.

So my mom decided, my parents decided they wanted to flee.

They fled first my mom with the three kids when I was about three and a half.

And my siblings are both older. she fled to go officially on vacation and she fled through Turkey to get to Germany and my dad stayed back so they wouldn't be very suspicious about what was happening we left all the papers everything behind but my mom had a little bit of cash and about six months later my dad came they left the house everything behind and started a new life in Germany that's how it started.

Wow. And did you say how old were you when that happened?

I was three and a half. My sister is three years older.

My brother is six years older. So I'm the youngest.

Yeah. So I was going to say, so they probably have much more memory of all of that than I'm sure that you do.

Yes. I have barely any memory, but I remember a picture that I saw of us being in Turkey in the snow it was just you know that's where they fled through and I remember just getting being an immigrant going suddenly to a kindergarten which is like preschool here and not speaking the language there was a lot of fear because a fear of the unknown we didn't speak the language my mom didn't have a job it was just a new situation and I could feel the uncertainty certainty of my mom.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I honestly, I can't even imagine.

I can't even imagine as a mother, especially knowing that, I mean, you have your children to take care of and you're fleeing to not just a new neighborhood, a whole new country.

Wow. Now, how long would you end up being in Germany?

Until I was, I believe, about 29.

And I didn't really plan on leaving the country. I was very happy from what I knew in Germany.

And so I was studying, my undergrad is in business economics.

I was studying and part of our journey was to do one to go for one exchange semester somewhere abroad just to pimp up your resume.

And I originally applied to go to South Korea, got a scholarship, but the government, the North and the South had some trouble, so I ended up not going there.

And the lottery system...

Of the universities threw me into Southeast Missouri State University in Missouri.

So I was not very excited about that, because I just wanted to explore a little more culture.

And my thought of America was USA was always that it's not very challenging culturally, I thought it was very similar to what I was living in Germany.

So I was seeking the challenge. But, you know, the universe just threw me into Missouri. And so I took it.

Yeah. Wow. Well, we'll get back to that once Missouri wanted some questions on that.

But going back on childhood, talk to me a little bit about your childhood, because I know things were obviously very challenging because you ended up leaving home when you were, I think, around 12 years old. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So it was challenging for my mom to be by herself.

And this is all obviously very from my perspective.

And my mom seemed relatively normal until I realized maybe she's a little more challenged than other parents. So she was very overwhelmed.

I remember not having any money and being hungry.

And my mom went to the grocery store and filled up the card and said, basically, I am just going to take this food because my kids are hungry.

And that was the first time the officials got involved.

And my mom did not know that there is a service where she could receive money at least to pay the bills and have some food. So that's how it started.

We started basically at the bottom, not being at the bottom in Iran.

My mom came from a family. They had some money.

So starting from scratch and feeling the pain of being basically on the very bottom, having no money, no clothes, not living fancy, not speaking the language, not having work.

That was some pain that we had to go through as a family, especially my mom.

And then once my dad came, he brought a little bit more money.

But my dad was always very physically abusive.

So they tried again to live together in Germany, but decided after about six months or a year that they need to get divorced. And so they got divorced.

My dad moved out. I remember as a child, the divorce, it was very ugly.

So my parents did not get along and my mom was always talking bad about my dad.

And it was challenging for us to know where to go, where to belong, what's right and what's wrong. In the end, we ended up with my mom.

And my mom got together with a man who brought drugs and alcohol into our household.

So by that time I was about four and a half, five.

And so my mom was occupied with this man and entirely kind of forgot about raising her children.

She was escaping into drugs and alcohol.

It just felt, she finally felt a relief because she was, I think, just very challenged all of her life. And she found an escape.

And I raised myself, I mean, from getting up in the morning, getting ready.

If we had breakfast at home, eating breakfast, walking 10 minutes to the bus station, taking the bus, walking another 20 minutes to school, going to school, doing homework, coming back, so on and so forth.

So I basically did everything by myself as long as I can remember, getting up in the morning.

And then at some point she started working as a nurse.

She learned the language and her papers got translated. So she started working as a nurse and then she was working night shifts as well.

So I was barely seeing my mom.

She was between work and intoxicated, basically.

And so it was just not a good situation to live in.

And I always kept everything to myself.

I was raised to be very loyal and not say anything.

So I didn't say ever anything. And I more and more distrusted my family.

More and more, I saw that things were not going right.

I started having different friends, started smoking, started trying to find some love and attention in a new friend circle.

And I just basically disconnected from my family because I saw that they didn't have really what I wanted.

My mom was not living the life I wanted. She was very toxic at home, constantly talking down onto us. There was barely food around.

Nobody was really cooking.

There was just everything was lacking. Love, food, attention, everything was lacking.

She was just so in her own world and in her own pain. She was raised in trauma herself.

She was trying to get some help from my dad.

And my dad doesn't know any other language, but being very aggressive and physically abusive. So that was just pushing me even further out from the family.

And at this point, I'm barely coming home, always sleeping somewhere, smoking, experimenting with drugs, and I'm not even 10.

And the new friend circle that I had found, they gave me love and attention and they were much older than I was, somewhere between, I don't know, like four to six to 10 years older.

And one day, I mean, they kind of introduced me.

There were a lot of boys that introduced me to kissing and touching.

And they were just boys that were at an age where sex was very interesting to them.

And at some point, two of the boys, they were like two brothers, 16 and 17 years old.

Took it a little bit further and basically took me into a restroom and assaulted me sexually.

And that was, for me personally, the tipping point where just, it was like an out-of-body experience in which I realized for the second time in my life, and I can tell you about my first time, that nobody was coming to save me.

Nothing was going to change unless I would take control.

So from that point on, I just made a decision.

And I thought logically to myself, my family cannot show me or give me anything that I desire.

I'm walking down a path that doesn't feel right in my conscience.

And that's where I decided I need to remove myself from my family and I was about age 10.

This is all an approximate because it was also traumatic for me that I just don't really remember the age gaps.

It's all more or less a guess.

So it was around 10 when I decided I need to remove myself from this family and from my friend circle.

And so So I did. And I fought. I went to the officials and I fought for about one and a half, almost two years to be removed from this household, which was really hard work for me.

It was really me against the world.

And I was still not talking about the drug abuse of my mom at home or the alcohol.

Hall and I was not talking about the sexual assault.

I wasn't talking about anything. I just said, I need to be removed out of this household.

And so they put me after one and a half years into a facility, which was a transitioning facility to figure out what's going on, where parents get invited to, and a therapist tried to mitigate basically and find out what's going on.

So after about six weeks in there, six to eight weeks in that facility, they decided that I would have to go back home because they wouldn't know what was going on.

And there was not enough evidence that the household was not good for me.

And that was not an option for me.

I had made my mind up. I'm not going to live back home. And this was the only opportunity I saw.

And now it was not working out the way I wanted. So I chose to take my own life.

And I swallowed, I don't even know, 40, 50, 60 pills.

And...

Next thing I know, I woke up in the hospital and they were pumping out my stomach.

And this was before age 12.

And there was this one lady at the hospital that finally in my 12 years said, I don't care what she's saying, what's going on.

Obviously, there is something going on. A 12-year-old, a 10-year-old doesn't want to move out of her household and a 12-year-old doesn't want to take her life if there's nothing going on.

So she's going to be removed and we're going to ask her where she wants to live and that's where she's going to live.

And there was this one home, children's home that I was very drawn to. It was in the woods.

They had multiple homes. So that's what I chose and that's where I went.

Wow. Yeah. As you tell this story today, especially now as a mother, do you find it is remarkable as I do that at such a young age as 10 years old, that you would have the mindset to even realize like that I have to get out of here and to find a way into to go through this.

This then year and a half long process to get out.

Like, do you find that as remarkable as I do?

You know, I didn't until people told me I really didn't.

I followed entirely my intuition.

There was a force there.

That just always had my back. Wow. Wow.

What was that year and a half like?

Because, I mean, I would assume your mother knew during that whole time?

Yeah. She knew. It was a nightmare. It was a nightmare because I was not having a home to go back to because now they knew I wanted to move out.

I was between staying sometimes at home, trying to stay with friends, which their parents were not very excited about having me.

They didn't want to interfere with the situation.

They didn't know what was going on and they respected my mother.

So if I could sleep a night or two here and there, that's what I did.

Sometimes I was just on the streets for a whole night.

It was just a very toxic situation at home that I didn't want to stay in.

And every time I went home, my mom was basically coming down on me with all the cuss words that you can think of.

And then she called my dad. I was terrified of my dad because he was just physically so abusive. Sometimes he was home and they were waiting for me.

Sometimes my sister tried to lock the doors so I couldn't leave the house again because they wouldn't know for how many days I would be gone.

It was a nightmare it was a nightmare wow.

Picking back up where you stopped at, Talking about the home, the children's home out in the woods. Talk to me about that.

So it was a facility with, I think, like six, seven, eight big homes in the woods.

And they were divided up by age group.

So when I entered that, I went into the group for teenagers that will, you know, eventually be released into their own apartment and to live on their own.

And I learned many, many lessons there. So when I entered, I was very relieved because I had a safe place.

Nobody was talking down on me. It wasn't toxic. There was always food.

There was money for clothes, for the hair cutter.

There was support when I needed help with homework. work, we decided to put me into a school that was, I was before at a very elite high level push, push, push school.

So they put me into a school that was a little more relaxed to calm down my nerves and to just see what's going on with me first.

And so they took good care of me. And you have your own room within a house.

And there was a kitchen since it was the teenagers group.

Each of us had to cook once a week for the whole group. And we were about, I don't know, eight to 10 kids.

And it was a good place to be. It was just very peaceful for me.

For the first time, I just didn't, wasn't terrorized at home.

And was able to just come home and have an all I wanted was a normal life. That's all I wanted.

So I loved it there. And so within those four years, I evolved very quickly into a little adult.

And really what that place also taught me, it doesn't matter how bad you think you have it.

But I just saw left and right kids that had it worse than me.

Way, way, way, way, way, way worse to a point it was almost unbearable what is happening in people's homes that I felt like I needed to leave to make room for somebody else.

It was just heartbreaking to see what especially families are capable of doing.

So I felt in my situation very lucky and was very thankful for my situation in any way you can think of.

So being in that home, I felt very thankful.

And then seeing that my situation was compared to other people's situations, just a walk in the park.

So I felt all the way through gratitude.

Attitude and when I went in there I made my mind up that I'm not going to be that child that goes into a children's home ending with making the exact same mistakes as her parents did.

I made my mind up so I was putting in extra work to have extra good grades to go back to an elite school.

And at age 16 they said you if you want you can move into your own apartment and we're going to assist you like we're just going to be here for you if you need help until you're 18 but you're going to pay your own bills you're going to work you're going to just take care of business yourself but if you need anything we are here and so I moved out by age 16 into my first own apartment.

And I went to school and I worked on the side. I had nanny jobs and just made it work.

I worked, I don't know, 20 hours a day.

I don't know, school, homework, work, nanny jobs, whatever it took.

And I again felt like the luckiest and happiest person on the planet because I finally had freedom.

I had the choice to do what I wanted and wasn't constantly mirrored back, What a loser I am. Wow. You said that you had a job as a nanny.

Was that like babysitting young children?

So I had a school. I went to school for social work and part of the school was going to work like a, do you call it parentheses or like to work at a kindergarten on the side as well.

So I was going to school and then I was working at a kindergarten, which is here like a preschool.

And during that, I got approached by a family or by a woman who was self-employed and had twins and the twins were going to that school and she said, Hey, can you help me out? And I said, sure.

And it ended up being, you know, every almost every day after working there until about eight, nine, 10 o'clock.

And then I added, she had a friend.

So I added another family to that. that the first family, they were twins.

The girls, when I started with them, they were three years old.

And the second family, they had three kids, which I did more on the weekends for them.

It was more like if they wanted to go out and they had three kids from baby to I think it was like six or so. Wow.

So I'm going to make another kind of thought here in my own mind.

Again, looking at the person you were of kind of just, again, how profound it is coming from.

The home life that you had, where you really had no experience of having the parent, having that love and the fact that now, even at this young age, you, though, were babysitting and taking care of children.

I find that really fascinating.

It is. I was very drawn to giving something that I didn't have.

And like psychology and generally speaking, sociology, all the intangible things were always interesting to me.

And I thought I would like to do that and take care, of other kids or adults in some way mentally and help people.

But I was always drawn to that.

But it all played out. This was not a plan.

It all played out. You know, opportunities create opportunities.

So every time I took a step, it seemed like the universe was just there for me.

So I didn't plan ever on babysitting. It all just happened this way.

And then they were all paying me very well because I was now basically a nanny for two families.

And so everything was working out for me the whole way.

And I'm convinced it's because I was just so full of gratitude, although it was hard. And there were times where I had 20 bucks for two weeks to eat.

But I was just so relieved to have a normal life and not be in this emotional pain constantly.

Yeah, absolutely. Now, what happens in the system that was there with you, the children's system? What happened when you turned 18?

They were just not basically responsible for me anymore. But by that time, I didn't need them.

So in the beginning, they help you find an apartment, they co-sign, they help you with furniture picking, and just everything like, do you know how to cook? Are you sure? Do you know the paperwork?

All the bureaucracy that comes with it.

And in the beginning they just are very connected to you up to for me it was two years up to when they say basically you're you're ready to run on your own i think in the end maybe i had a phone call every six months or so there was somebody i could call who was responsible for me but i just didn't need them anymore because I was just running the show myself. Yeah.

Wow. Wow. Wow. You, again, I just, I just think to myself of, again, how remarkable you were as just a child being forced to grow up so quickly.

The idea of at 16, basically being on your own.

Talk to me a little bit about school, education.

Where did you go after high school into college? What direction did you end up taking?

Well, Germany is a little bit different than here. Here, it seems like you just go to college and then you figure it out.

Or you don't go to college and then you're basically doomed.

To do like a $8 an hour job, it seems like here. So in Germany, there are many, many more options.

If you say, I don't want to go to college, which is not really, not everybody, you just go and work at a place like, is that, what do you call it?

When you basically go to school and learn on the job as well.

Okay, yes. So we have a million jobs like that.

All the jobs at the bank, at the bakery, at the whatever you can think of, where you actually work and are not sitting in the office, but even in the office account or so you go to school, learn the paperwork about accounting, and then you go simultaneously, basically, and go and work on the job as well.

So there are a million jobs like that, you decide what you want to do, and then you go and apply and they send you to work there as well as go to school on the side to learn the background.

So if you want to be, I don't know, a chef, you just go and apply at a restaurant.

And when they hire you, they can put you into the chef school.

And you learn the background of how to run a business and a restaurant.

And then you go also learn on the job how to cook.

So that's what I did. First, I went and worked just at a store to make some money for clothes.

It was a Zara. And as I worked there, they offered me a job to open worldwide.

They were at that point, they were expanding. And so they offered if I wanted to travel with them and open stores worldwide.

But they were paying extremely bad. And I was working 14, 16 hours a day.

So I didn't want to do that. Then I moved on to becoming a waitress and I made really, really good money.

And I got stuck there for a little bit. But as I was working there, there was a huge bank, like a chain right there.

And the people were always coming for lunch.

And the director recruited me and said, I would really love for you to work with us.

So I went and did that and learned on the job. And, you know, in Germany, then you learn how to work on the basically stock market.

You learn all the backgrounds, all the numbers, everything.

And it's a very good and safe job. It's not like here that you just know that you're just a bank teller. I went through school for three years and learned everything about money and how it works, how money works.

And then I worked at the bank and they too wanted to keep me.

But I always, always, always felt as if the amount of money I always thought, the amount of money people are paying for jobs, it feels like a prison.

You work Monday through Friday, eight hours a day, and then you have two, three hours to yourself.

And then you don't even have plenty of money to spend those two, three hours the way you wish to.

So it all didn't make sense to me. And the restaurant I used to work, they asked me if I want to become a manager there.

And offered me much, much more money.

And so I did that for a while until I got bored for, I don't know, I did it for two, three, four years.

By now I'm mid and twenties and I was just making good money.

And, but there was no progress. There was nowhere to go from there.

And so I decided to start studying and going to college and it's free in Germany, but it's freaking hard. You have to apply.

And it's basically you come to school, you get your books.

If you want to come, you come. If you don't, you don't. At the end of the year, there are six exams.

And if you fail one of them more than three times, you cannot study the subject in the whole country anymore.

If you just want to show up to the exam, that's fine too. It's not like here it's homework. You're an adult, you come or go, nobody cares.

You have to take the exam at the end of the semester.

And it's It's just freaking, it's really hard. We started, I don't know, with how many hundreds of people, let's say 800, 1,000. And I think...

It was six semesters, and I was one of maybe 80 or so who finished it within those six semesters.

Everybody else either dropped out or never finished, or it took them like years and years.

So that was hard for me because I didn't have the education, and I had to really work my ass off to make that work. So then during that, I decided to come across here to the U.S.

For one exchange semester to improve my English and to just have a better resume.

And that's what I did. And then I met my husband who didn't go to the university, but he lived in that little town who is now my ex-husband.

But I met my husband and I liked him.

And so I spent another semester here. Then I went home, wrote my thesis.

And then I applied for my master's degree at that same university, got a scholarship.

And I started and I finished business management at that school, a master in business management.

So after those two years, I still liked my husband. We got married.

We had one child in Missouri, and I didn't like it in Missouri at all.

And so I said, let's move.

And he had an aunt and a sister here in Nashville. And so we moved here and had another child.

And things were just not feeling right for me, to me.

And in mid-October 2022, I turned my life upside down, basically.

And ever since, life is good. But, you know, I separated from my husband and we still are co-parenting and we still right now living together about to separate physically.

But since October 2022, mid-October, life feels good again, powerful.

And I feel like the time when I was a child and just trusted more my gut and less society rules.

Wow. What a crazy journey you've been on. Yes.

I mean, that is, it's just remarkable. I find myself so just in awe at you.

And I had to say, when you're talking about college and you were talking about how hard it was and the fact that you were only one of a few students compared to the number who started.

I couldn't help but think to myself, though, for myself and the people listening is we're like, well, duh, didn't we just listen to who this woman is?

Like, of course she finished.

Yes, yes, that's exactly who I am.

And that's unfortunately who I buried for a very long time because I thought I have to bend to the rules of society.

And I just recently stepped into that role again and said no more of that I just cannot shrink myself.

To fit into somebody's narrative and I keep shining. Yeah.

Well, well, good for you. Good for you.

Besides for personal changes with, you know, marriage and everything.

What about professionally?

Yes. So I was a stay home mom until last October.

Basically I was drinking my glass of wine at night and I was out of shape.

I was depressed, running Groundhog Day, and I couldn't figure out why.

Every day looked the same. I was taking care of the kids.

I was on the outside living a life that you would think was acceptable or good.

We are living in a good neighborhood. We live in a house, wide picket fence, a girl and a boy, a stay-at-home mom.

Husband is bringing in enough money. Kids go to private school.

Who, you know, on the outside, there was nothing wrong with it.

But on the inside, I was entirely crumbled and broken because I entirely disconnected from my conscience and entirely disconnected from my purpose and was crippled emotionally.

I was, again, in very much pain. And it came down to that I, at some point, one night...

So I was the typical mom who was drinking her glass of wine at night to relax.

That's what we call it, right?

To relax or to just, you know, or some people just have a little bit of, you know, they smoke, they joined or whatever, just to relax, relax a little bit on the weekends with extra food and so on and so forth.

And so I just felt as if something is not right. This cannot be it.

And I was always going back and forth, not drinking for a while.

I wasn't the typical alcoholic that woke up in the morning and needed to drink.

But I knew that alcohol was just part of my identity.

I was drinking the fanciest wines, fanciest bourbon, fanciest scotch.

I was the host always who had the best foods and drinks.

All family and friends always came to my house. My door was always open.

And I just still I felt as if I couldn't identify with that person something was not right and I remember vividly after I didn't drink for a while I picked up a glass of wine one night and I told Ryan I said and here I am again having my glass of wine and I said why why is that playing such a big role in my life.

And I said, I'm just, life doesn't feel right. And I said.

If it wouldn't be for my children, I don't feel like this life would be worth living.

And so as this entered my mouth, I realized what I just said.

And so I was sad. Ryan went to bed.

And that night, I'm not religious. I went down onto my knees and I said, I don't know what's happening.

I don't know how, but I need help.

I basically, I just begged for help.

And so the next morning I'm sorry it makes me very emotional because no you're okay you take your time the next morning I listened to a podcast Andy Prezella and there was this man on the podcast who was talking about conscience and it upsets me because him and I had a little fallout yesterday today.

And he's like my brother.

So this man was on the podcast and he was talking about conscience and he was talking about being a role model to children.

How can you live a life that you do not wish for your children and how kids emulate and not listen.

And he was basically saying out loud the things that I knew were right.

And from there on, I looked him up, I set up with him and my life has changed by 180 degrees.

I just became this other woman. I stepped into my power, physically.

Mentally, and run a business, a life coaching business, and basically created the the woman that I needed in my life, the mother that I needed, the woman that I needed later, and help other men and women do exactly the same, just giving them the freedom of authenticity and confidence in life and removing radically the biases out of their lives.

Because that's a big, big burden that people are just not aware of.

If it's food, if it's drugs, If it's alcohol, if it's porn, if it's whatever is calling you, whatever you cannot let go, the little voice that's telling you to sleep in, that little voice is just making you every day habitually weak.

And you can use the same force and the same energy to habitually create everything you want in your life.

And I'm just living proof because I went from this overweight.

Depressed mother of two who had no income to now one and a half or 20 months later being in extremely good shape, like outstanding shape mentally.

Physically and financially.

I surpassed many, many people doing this for only 20 months because I just live by the universal laws.

I just go with the flow of life and I go with integrity and do the things that need to get done regardless of how I feel about it.

Because I just choose to create this woman who can serve over this woman who was just thinking about herself and her little boo-boos and her little needs and numbing her pain.

So now I live outwardly everything I go through in life and show people that life is not about being happy all the time because if you're chasing happiness, you're just chasing.

There's a lack that you will never be able to fill.

You will be always chasing drugs, alcohol, women, porn, whatever it is.

But if you actually solidify and make yourself proud every day and live with confidence and respect for yourself every day by doing the things that need to get done, regardless of how hard they are, you just wake up differently and are excited about life because you're creating and you experience growth.

So that's what I live every day. And that's what I teach. And it works 100% of the time.

Yeah. I just want to take a moment to say thank you for being so real and open today.

I truly believe that podcasting, what I love about it is it's an opportunity for us to be in somebody's life, possibly right now, somebody on the other side of the world from us.

Maybe it's a woman who's 10 steps behind you.

And maybe she just needed to hear exactly what you said.

And I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your willingness to share that.

You're so welcome. This is all I want.

All I want that I was once that woman and somebody did it for me.

And I truly feel as if I owe. So...

Yeah. Well, my next question is for the person who would love to learn more about working with you, would love to find ways to be connected with you and plugged into your world, where can we send them?

The safest way is on Instagram.

Talk Tom, T-O-K-T-A-M, Thomas.

And I pop up and I live on Instagram 24 seven, creating content, documenting my life.

You can watch me elevate and you can reach me there. You DM me and it's very easy.

I'm right there with my clients, with my people all day, every day.

I go first, I do everything first and you just follow my lead and you will experience it yourself. I do have two programs.

Number one is we need to get you in shape first, physically and mentally.

And number two is then the elite program where we work very tightly together, one-on-one.

Yeah, amazing. Well, talk to me.

I will be sure that all of that is in the show notes for anybody interested, who needs an easy access, a link.

I'll be positive that all of that is there.

I want to end today with just one final question.

And looking at all that you've been through, now you're a mother.

What do you hope that you can instill in your children to as they continue on with life?

What do you hope that they when they're looking back, what do you hope that that they, you know, know that you instilled in them?

I want my children to understand that the outside world is a reflection of their internal state so that we can create the world that we live in.

And I not only preach that every day, I live that right in front of them.

So I live what I teach every day.

And that's what I want them to know. You can create the world that you live in literally. Yeah, beautiful.

Takhtam, thank you so much. You have been one of the most amazing people I've had the opportunity to meet and to speak with and to hear your story.

It means the world to me to have you here today. Thank you very much.

Yeah, absolutely. For you listening, my hope is that you're touched as much as I am, that you're smiling, like that your heart is warm and that you just want a little bit more of this woman in your life.

So you be sure to check out the show notes where I've left links to Instagram in all the places that she mentioned.

Let's show this lady some love. Get on the Instagram and start following her today.

My name is Kevin Lowe. This, of course, is Great Grace and Inspiration.

You get out there and enjoy the day.

Music.