Khadija Danazumi

I think, for me, helping others, because there's many times where everyone will always tell me, put yourself first, put yourself first, you're people-pleasing, like, you have to do stuff for yourself, but I honestly, my success came from all of the people I stopped to help along the way. I feel like their success is my success. If I help someone, I'm not losing anything from it, so it's kind of like I make an effort to learn what they're going through, and what they're doing, what's bothering them, and that helps me, and for some odd reason, it will come up in the most random places where that piece of information is what I needed to get through something.

I wouldn't say it's advice, but my senior year of undergrad, I struggled a lot with health and everything, and I told my mom, I can't do it, I was going to drop out, and she told me, you're almost there, just push a little bit more, and every time I feel like I can't do something, I always tell myself, just, you know, you got to just push a little bit more.

There's plenty of passion to go around, but the difference is what you do with it. I always tell my kids that you can do whatever you want, because a couple of my kids, they want to have, they want to do a lot of things, make a change, but they think the change that they are trying to make is not impactful. That's not true. Any kind of change is impactful, whether it's reading a book to kindergarteners, that is something that is big, too, you know? So, they always feel like they have to do something grandiose, something super big and mind-boggling, but it's the little stuff that add up and make you into the person that you are, and I think it's definitely important for people, whatever they're passionate about, no matter how little it is, to put their all into that.

Biggest challenges is learning to ask for help. I learned to do everything on my own, so whenever I was struggling, it would take a lot for me to ask for help, but I realize I'm so comfortable with people asking me for help, but then when it comes to me asking for help, I would completely feel like I'm a burden, or I would feel like it's too much for them. But the moment I completely stopped thinking that way was when things got easier for me and more manageable, and honestly, it was the best thing I did for my health and mental health. If I needed help with something, I would ask for it. If I needed financial assistance, I would ask for it. There's plenty of resources, plenty of opportunities. But if I don't ask for it, I wouldn't know, and I wouldn't get it. So I just learned to ask, and if I don't get it, I don't get it. And if I get it, yay!