Things We Don't Learn In School Ft. IrambintSafia

Today I sit down with Iram bint Safia, a certified life coach and the author of No One Taught Me This. We talk about the things school never prepared us for: emotional resilience, the victim mindset, codependency, and the messy, beautiful work of parenting and self-reflection. Iram shares her own story, from growing up with a single mom in Abu Dhabi to homeschooling her three children in America, and what she’s learned about breaking cycles. This conversation is full of moments that made me pause and think about my own patterns, and I know it will do the same for you.

Growing up with women who saw me

Iram was raised in Abu Dhabi by a single mother, a nurse, after her parents divorced when she was five. She describes her childhood as safe and female-oriented. “Women have been the most beautiful, most blessed blessing to me in my life,” she says. Her mother, her sister, her teachers at the Anglo-Indian Catholic school, all poured into her. They recognized her gift for speaking and performing and polished it. She wanted to be a star, to be loved and in the limelight. That early validation from women shaped her, but it also set her up for a shock when she moved to Pakistan for university and suddenly felt like an outsider, seen as “damaged” because she came from a broken home. The shift from being celebrated to being pitied planted seeds of shame that would take years to unravel.

The shame of not finishing and the permission to begin again

Iram chose the wrong bachelor’s degree, computer science, and fell into a deep depression. She left without completing it, got married, moved to America, and had three children. For years, she carried the shame of that unfinished chapter. “I had a lot of shame. Shame of not completing, shame of not pushing myself, shame of running away from something that was difficult,” she tells me. It was her mother who, years later, asked a simple question that opened a door: why don’t you go back and finish? That question gave Iram permission to believe it was possible. She went back, earned her bachelor’s in education, became a teacher, and later a life coach. I know that feeling of needing someone to say it’s not too late. Iram’s story is a reminder that we often build our own mental barriers, and sometimes all it takes is one person to help us see that the door was never locked.

Why I chose to homeschool

When Iram moved to America, she experienced culture shock. She worried about raising children in a society so different from her own. After listening to a series by a teacher about homeschooling, she felt a pull. But it wasn’t just about protecting her kids from outside influences. It was about connection. “When the children are going to school eight, nine, ten hours, they’re not with you. And with the social media age, when they’re in the home, they’re still not with you. When are you going to be with them?” She asks. Homeschooling became a way to bond deeply with her children, to be present in a world that constantly pulls families apart. She acknowledges it was expensive and hard, but it gave her children the freedom to learn at their own pace. Her middle child struggled with math; they paused it for two years, and when they returned, she picked it up quickly. That kind of flexibility is impossible in a traditional classroom. Iram also calls out the hypocrisy of parents who worry about socialization but don’t set boundaries around friendships. “I hate this hypocrisy of us parents,” she says. She believes in friendships, but with structure and limits, so that the parent-child connection remains the foundation.

The trap of the victim mindset

As a life coach, Iram works with women on emotional resilience, and one of the biggest patterns she sees is the victim mindset. It’s not always obvious. “We become so comfortable in that being uncomfortable that we do not see your problems become your identity,” she explains. It’s the familiar ache of complaining without seeking solutions, of feeling helpless because it’s easier than doing the hard work of change. Iram says that stepping out of it takes courage and a willingness to say, “I am the problem.” That’s not about self-blame; it’s about ownership. She helps women identify cognitive distortions, the stories we tell ourselves that keep us stuck. And she emphasizes self-compassion as the first step. You can’t heal what you keep punishing yourself for.

Codependency and the missing husband

One of the most striking parts of our conversation was about codependency, especially in Desi families. Iram explains that the term was originally coined for wives of alcoholic men, but it shows up everywhere. In our culture, she says, “a lot of mothers are codependent upon their children.” When a husband is emotionally unavailable, the wife often pours all her focus into her son. That’s the classic saas-bahu dynamic, where the mother-in-law’s identity is so wrapped up in her son that she can’t let go. Iram calls it “the missing husband that leads to codependency on your children and your sons and obsession with them.” It’s a cycle that repeats because no one talks about the root: unmet emotional needs in the marriage. Women are taught to be “good girls,” to sacrifice, to practice sabr, but Iram redefines sabr not as silent suffering but as cognitive flexibility: pausing, reflecting, and choosing a response that serves you. That kind of sabr is active, not passive.

What no one taught us about marriage and communication

Iram and I both agree that expectation management is huge in relationships. We grow up with Bollywood ideas of marriage, and then reality hits. “I am not created to make my husband happy all the time. I am created to be a source of coolness for him and he to be a source of coolness for me,” she says. That shift from pressure to partnership is everything. She talks about the two keys that open any relationship: acknowledgement and validation. When I was postpartum, I learned this the hard way. I would go to my husband with feelings, and he would give me solutions. It made me feel like something was wrong with me. What I needed was for someone to say, “It’s okay that you’re feeling this.” Iram says that in coaching, she sees women who have spent decades giving to everyone else and now don’t know what to do with themselves. They need permission to exist for themselves, not just as caretakers. And that starts with honest conversations, even when they’re uncomfortable. “Speaking up is equivalent to being disobedient,” she notes, and that shame keeps so many women silent. But breaking cycles means calling out what’s wrong, even if it makes others uncomfortable.

Why this conversation matters

I walked away from this conversation feeling full. Iram’s honesty about her own shame, her parenting mistakes, and her unlearning is a gift. She doesn’t pretend to have it all figured out, and that’s what makes her coaching so powerful. For Desi women especially, we carry so many unspoken rules about being good daughters, good wives, good mothers. This episode is an invitation to pause and ask: whose expectations am I living by? And what would it look like to give myself permission to change? I hope you listen and find a little more compassion for your own story.