Meet Khadijah Abdul-Azeez

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Khadijah Abdul-Azeez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Khadijah, so great to have you sharing your thoughts and wisdom with our readers and so let’s jump right into one of our favorite topics – empathy. We think a lack of empathy is at the heart of so many issues the world is struggling with and so our hope is to contribute to an environment that fosters the development of empathy. Along those lines, we’d love to hear your thoughts around where your empathy comes from?
Empathy came from the things I’ve been through starting from childhood where I felt misunderstood and unloved. I came from a household where tough love was shown and empathy was lacking severely. So growing up I knew I wanted to be the opposite because I had such a big heart and I didn’t understand how others could hurt people because of their trauma.

Empathy is being able to put yourself in others shoes and draw from a time where you was in the same situation and feel the emotions with the person. So for me empathy naturally came to me. Through my experiences I always felt that I went through what I went through to be able to relate to others.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
My name is Khadijah Abdul-Azeez and I am a creative soul. I am the second oldest of 12 children and we are born and raised muslim and also was home schooled. Growing up in a military household was hard for me. I grew up in Georgia with my family but I did t travel other places but Georgia is home. My view on family is that we definitely can be the cause of each others trauma and healing must be done in order to connect correctly. So growing up African American and Muslim was definitely hard for me. Trying not to conform but at the same time show people we are just as human. Going into adulthood is when I started to be on my own and make decisions for myself. I decided to first become a certified peer specialist because I’m 2017 I had a very severe manic episode and it left me shattered. I was rushed to psychiatric hospital and later found out it was Bipolar. That made me feel hopeless because I felt like it was my fault and I was embarrassed of all the things I’ve done while going through my manic episode. But there was a fire in me to overcome it. My mother told me about a job I can get by being a counselor from lived experience call certified peer specialist. I attended the training and got certified! After that I decided that I wanted to follow my dream of becoming an author so it took me from 2017-2019 during COVID to finish and publish my first book called Makeup For Your soul. It’s like a chicken soup for the soul type book but instead I use makeup as a metaphor to talk about deeper things in life and how to beauty yourself from within. But also use makeup as a fun way to enhance our beauty. I describe to my readers you can’t have one without the other inner beauty and outer beauty goes together. The book is about things I went through in life and how it shaped me to get closer to god in all that I do. It’s my journey from a world of fake beauty to a world of true beauty. This is a book for people looking to self develop and wants to create a relationship with god. It helps motivate you to be your best self.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
My biggest skills were confidence empathy and optimism. Building confidence didn’t happen over night and also there were times where I had to rebuild it. I did this by writing like my future self to myself and explaining all the things that would happen in the future. This kept me hopeful and alive. My empathy came from all the losses I took but I turned them into wins. It came from going through so much heart break that I feel it’s in me to heal myself and others . My optimism came from believing in myself and also watching others succeed. Watching others flourish makes me happy and not jealous. I love to see people win it gives me hope that I too can win. I also read a book called how to be an optimist and it really opened my eyes to techniques and tools I can use to stay positive.

Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?
The most helpful deity I know of is God he has helped me through all of my challenges and struggles and continues to do so for me. The next is family they have helped me financially or honestly never judged me as a fell short and made mistakes and for that I am forever grateful. My mom helps me in ways I’m and super grateful for. Whenever I have an idea or something that I am working on she’s always there supporting and doing her research while she cheers me on. Also I would have to say myself. I did so much healing and digging for my truth. I sat with myself in times of loneliness and comforted myself through it all. The knowledge that I have was through my own research and reading. I took myself from some dark places though prayer, helping others, and speaking my truth.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Hakim Wilson

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