The Power Of Self Work Ft. Rammal Mehmud

Today I sit down with Rammal Mehmud, one of the pioneers of female photography in Pakistan. This conversation is not just about the art of capturing light. It is about walking out of a marriage that was slowly erasing you, sitting with the grief and the blame, and quietly rebuilding a life you can call your own. Rammal shares what it really takes to break free from narcissistic abuse, the messy aftermath of divorce in a society that still shames women for leaving, and how doing the deep inner work led her to become a life coach.

The artist child who found photography

Rammal grew up in Islamabad, the eldest of four in a full house, always drawn to art. “I would create these magazines out of clippings of different magazines and make my own,” she tells me. Her grandmother sat with her for hours with Play-Doh and plaster. Deep down she wanted to study at NCA, but overprotective parents and a push towards a secure desk job landed her in an MBA. The artist child never really went away. She just found another outlet.

That outlet arrived through Flickr. The website fascinated her: the way a photograph could hold depth and emotion just by how the focus fell. “What is that called and how do I produce that in my pictures?” She remembers wondering. She saved up, bought a DSLR, and started shooting. Soon her classmates and their friends were asking her to photograph university projects and family events. There were barely any female photographers in Pakistan at the time. Rammal and her sister Nabia became the pioneers. She brought a candid, editorial style that had never been seen in local wedding photography. “I showed pictures to my clients, this is what I have in mind, we want to actually capture the real chemistry you have.” They loved it. Her business grew so fast that people began shifting their wedding dates to fit her availability. “I was like what’s actually happening, do people really like my work that much?”

When a love marriage becomes a trap

By 2015 Rammal was at the top of her game, shooting international clients and running a team. But the familial pressure to marry was relentless. She was about to turn thirty. “I was like why should I tie myself down,” she says. But the rishta process felt like being judged and sized up, a traumatic memory in itself. Eventually she agreed to a love marriage with someone from the same industry. The red flags were there, she admits, yet she walked in anyway. “When I walked into the marriage it was exactly opposite of what I had in mind.”

What followed was a year of narcissistic abuse. Gaslighting that made her question her own identity and worth. “Whatever you’re thinking whatever you’re saying is wrong,” she describes. She felt trapped, isolated, and her mental health spiralled. “There was a time when I started self-harming myself. I did not know how to express what I was feeling.” She was flying around the world for shoots yet coming home to a reality where she had no free will. The final breaking point came when she discovered proof of infidelity. “I didn’t know whether to be happy or whether to be sad. But after reading the whole chat it was like I was not safe there anymore.” That night, she packed her valuables and drove to her mother’s house.

The messy aftermath and the power of boundaries

Walking out did not end the storm. Rammal’s hands would shake, anxiety taking over her body. Her ex-husband started a campaign of character assassination, even reaching out to mutual clients. Some relatives blamed her, telling her she brought it upon herself. “My parents also felt the pressure to make the marriage work,” she says, and at first they could not see why she wouldn’t go back, because he had crafted such a perfect image in front of them.

Therapy taught her a quiet but radical lesson: “The information that you have is yours. You don’t have to share it or say anything to anybody.” She learned to set proper boundaries, something she had never done before. She stopped explaining herself. And she started surrounding herself with people who felt safe, like her friend Natalia who became a fierce cheerleader, and later a circle of blogger friends who gave her space to just be herself. Her sister Nabia held the photography business steady while Rammal grieved.

Makeup as therapy: how art saved her

During the hardest months, Rammal could not talk about what she was feeling, so she turned to makeup. “I expressed it through makeup,” she says. Sitting in front of the camera, doing her face step by step, became a form of me time. She decided to create a series of images walking through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, fear, and acceptance. Each look was a language she could finally speak. The series went viral. Thousands of new followers appeared overnight. Big influencers reposted her work. BBC reached out for a podcast. Later, she took it further into cosplay and character creation, transforming her features entirely through paint and patience.

What made this so healing? She says she was “able to connect to the child who was an artist.” That little girl who once played with colours was still there, and makeup gave her a way to come out and play again. It was an authentic return to herself, not a performance for an audience.

Becoming your own person: moving out and coaching

Eventually, Rammal realised she needed physical space to really grow. She made the unconventional decision to move out of her parents’ house, in the same city. There was resistance. Her father was initially on board, then after family members talked to him, he stopped speaking to her for a while. But she knew she had to do it, to work on her relationship with her parents from a place of clarity, and to pursue a new career as a mindset coach.

“Distance does make the heart grow fonder,” she says now. Living apart allowed her to see her parents as humans, not as the lens of perfection or expectation. She started taking her father plant shopping, something he loves, and actually listening to him. She began to fill the communication gaps with intention, and the relationship healed in ways she never expected.

During her own healing journey, Rammal kept searching for answers. She enrolled in an NLP certification, neural linguistic programming, the language of the mind. She explains that the unconscious mind stores all your memories, feelings, and beliefs, often holding you back without you knowing why. As an NLP coach, she now guides clients to the root cause of trauma, helps them sit with the emotion, learn from it, and let it go. “I’ve actually seen clients bloom in front of me,” she says. “First session they came to me sobbing, and who is this person now?”

Her coaching focuses on clients struggling with imposter syndrome, self-worth, grief, and those seeking clarity on their goals. She stresses that it is not about what someone else can give you. “Just be your own person. Gather so much love in your own self that you don’t need it from the outside. And whenever you feel like there is something you need externally, it’s time to look inwards.”

The small thing that changes everything

Rammal’s story does not hand you a before-and-after where the pain disappears. She still talks about the grief, the panic, the days when just getting up and doing makeup was a victory. But what runs through her entire conversation is the quiet persistence of showing up for herself. In her lowest, she was still seeking therapy, still trying to eat healthy, still pushing herself to sit in front of a camera. Progress, not perfection. And always, always, with the kindness she now teaches her clients to give themselves.

This episode is for anyone who has ever felt stuck in a life they did not choose. It is a reminder that the ground can crack open and you can still grow something from it. Rammal did not just survive her circumstances. She kept doing the inner work until the circumstances shifted around her. That is the power of self-work. And it begins with one small, gentle step.