HerSphere Insights
Honest, practical perspectives on business, finances, and life as a woman building her future in the UAE.
What I Want My Children to Remember
There's a particular kind of pressure that comes with grieving in front of your children — the sense that you have to get the performance right, because they're watching and learning from every part of it. I felt it acutely in the months after my husband died, raising my twins largely on my own in Dubai, a long way from the family network I might have had back home.
Strength Does Not Always Look the Way People Expect
.In the UAE, the women I see who are widowed, or newly single, or separated from their support networks, are doing something extraordinary and almost entirely invisible.
Learning a New Version of Life
In the UAE, widowhood has a particular effect on identity that goes beyond the emotional. It is also legal and practical.
Your visa may have been tied to your husband. Your name may be on accounts jointly but not independently. Your financial identity may be, in part, constructed through him. When he is gone, all of that has to be rebuilt — in your name, on your own terms, through a system that is genuinely not designed for simplicity in these circumstances.
It is the small things that get you.
Grief is not one feeling. It is the absence of someone threaded through every ordinary moment of your day. I have been a widow for…
Redefine Success
Confidence doesn’t always arrive with a bold entrance. Sometimes, it builds quietly, step by step, as we show up for ourselves day after day. It grows when we choose to try, even when we’re unsure of the outcome. Every time you take action despite self-doubt, you reinforce the belief that you’re capable. Confidence isn’t about having all the answers — it’s about trusting that you can figure it out along the way.