Fatim’s Origin Story

The Diktat of the Intellect

For me, operating from the head has always been a sequential process: set goals, make strategies and plans to accomplish them, and set out to accomplish them, one to-do list at a time, one strategic plan at a time with milestones. This is not necessarily a shallow process. I want to warn against making generalizations, demonizing logic, and linearity. I believe it has its place. But as humans, there is more to it than just that. It took me until I was well into my thirties to discover that. Being in the mind is not necessarily problematic. Being only in the mind is, especially when dealing with uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

The Academic Shield

This propensity was drilled into my bones from the youngest age. Parents, schools, “modern” educational systems. But there were early signs that it was not necessarily best suited for my needs. My first academic stumble occurred in the 4th grade. In the French educational system, 4th grade is a steep jump from 3rd grade. The school mistress suggested to my mom that I would do better if they send me back to 3rd grade, as I was too slow to follow instructions, to which my mom objected emphatically. She proceeded to shake me out of my daydreaming tendencies by sending me on errands at every opportunity. As a result, I did get back on track and was actually a pretty good student all around.

The second stumble occurred in 10th grade when I struggled to grasp the fundamental tenets of Newtonian Physics. This time, my dad intervened and tutored me over the Christmas break. Again, I got back in the saddle and delivered very strong academic results for the rest of my high school years.

The third and last stumble occurred after I graduated from high school, while preparing to enter competitive engineering schools in France. This time, neither mom nor dad were around to get me out of this ornery problem I was in, which resulted in me failing spectacularly at the entrance exams, not once but two years in a row. This setback scarred me for life.

It set me on a path of doubling down on academics, overcompensating by associating with prestigious academic institutions, and later on companies, with no real regards for whether or not I was engaged in something I truly wanted to be part of. It set me on a path of only tending to the analytical, logical part of myself, the one that had failed to deliver earlier in my life.

Yet, something started to stir in me in my early thirties. By then, I was a mother and felt an intense need to launch a creative venture. I eventually scratched the itch in 2003 with no artistic or design training under my belt. This was an astounding departure from my usual mode of operation: leaving a good corporate job for a creative entrepreneurial venture in a field I had neither industry nor technical competence. I simply leaned into my curiosity and took the leap. While the whole venture constantly left me feeling creatively challenged, because of my imposter syndrome, I grew immensely creatively and, surprisingly, spiritually. I learned to trust a very powerful side of myself that had never been given a voice or an outlet.

After my company folded, I experimented with other creative concepts, none of which became successful enterprises, but from which I derived an immense amount of satisfaction. One attempt was to move from woven to printed patterns. I developed a collection of African-inspired prints. I even had fabric digitally printed as well as summer cashmere T-shirts made. I also developed a line of African-inspired high jewelry, using precious stones. Creative concept development was my thing, it appears, even if financial success did not ensue. Somehow, financial gains, while important and necessary, were not my core motive. Trusting my creative vision was.

Tumbling Down The Precipice

I faced several Watershed Moments or precipices that abruptly interrupted my creative experiments.

The most momentous one came in 2015, when my marriage of 22 years imploded, followed in quick succession by the arrest of my now ex-spouse and the death of my father. The sheer brutality of this 18-month period dwarfs all the cliffs that preceded it. This was a moment of reckoning that called upon every ounce of resilience, adaptability, tactical acumen I could muster, while shielding my children as much as I could from the fallout and bleak reversal of fortune.

Where the mini cliffs I experienced before kept me on the same lane, this time I had to find another way to go forward. I could not recreate the same container from the fragments I picked from the floor, most of which were not suited to be preserved. Pick up the pieces I did, but the fog only got denser, laced with shame, anger, fear, loneliness, uncertainty, and still an unformed identity about who I was, what I wanted to be. I could not see the way through. I could not see what availed itself for me on the other side. All I could see was limitation, entrapment, opportunities gone, doors closed. No real way out for myself.

I was in a fog for a very long time. At first mild, by then thick as they come. When an attempt to pick myself up was thwarted, I would try another, then another, to the point that I started wondering if I was deluding myself of ever finding a way out..

Shattering The Container, The Last Straw

Little did I know that there was one more cliff around the corner. In the Spring of 2024, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I cannot quite compare this cliff with the previous two, because they are so different. Just like we cannot compare people’s ordeals and tragedies. While some clearly distinguish themselves from most by their brutality, comparison is not very useful in this area.

The Process of Reconstitution

Prioritizing the Fragments

Shortly before the diagnosis, I decided to train to become a coach at the suggestion of a friend. By then, all my attempts to take on a number of corporate roles had been unsuccessful, so I realized that I needed to reclaim some agency over my destiny. Coaching could be that, even if it did not feel like an obvious fit at the time. Three years later, I have come to understand that coaching for me is a tool for human connection threading across the elements of a larger portfolio built around insight gathering, sense making and product innovation.

This is the container I am rebuilding now. The broken pieces of my lived experiences collected at the foot of my cliffs, a dormant creativity I have discovered as an entrepreneur and nurtured through the years with painting, playing the piano, singing, designing interiors, fabrics, jewelry, and print patterns. To that, I have added astrology and archetypes as areas of deep interest. I have come to understand that my true wiring is not linear and logical thinking, though I am competent at it, but thinking in symbols, images, patterns, and making non-obvious connections across a wide range of disconnected fields spanning science, neuroscience, biology, psychology, history, the arts, design, languages, astrology, and more. There is even a name for that kind of superpower: abductive reasoning, and it is not taught in classrooms.

Dethroning the Mind

This kind of wiring could not have easily appeared to my 20-year-old self. Or my 40-year-old self, for that matter. This kind of encoding is non-linear, does not follow a set curriculum, requires a wide range of knowledge fields, and a lived experience to come into focus.

While I can confidently say that I have been gifted with a competent, even capable mind, it did not lead me to alignment or purpose on its own, come to think of it. But it led me to outputs that emerged from experiments I was willing to make, always leaning on my curiosity. Coming to that realization now boggles my mind. After all, most of my life was spent chasing one form of intellectual pursuit after another, only to leave me empty-handed. What I missed is that I was cursed with the gift of general competence, also called well-roundedness. What I missed is that half or more of my superpower resided in right-brain capabilities, non-logical and intuitive. I know now that this superpower of mine has been underexpressed in the earlier part of my life when I was walking around with half of my brain. Only when I was able to excavate this through my creative endeavors, that a more subtle superpower began to emerge: the ability to recognize hidden patterns and to connect them across unrelated domains. This is why I am attracted to color, astrology, archetypal psychology, music theory, and pattern design. This is why I am attracted to people in all their complexities and idiosyncrasies.

When I faced the abyss at the time my household as I knew it collapsed, I instinctively turned to two activities, singing and painting, activities for which I had no training and competence, that would be my logical brain talking, yet craved. So I did not question it. I chose to experiment with it. It was my alternative from conventional psychotherapy, which I chose not to do. Now I know that both were incredibly effective in helping me navigate these tumultuous times. I now know that singing is doubly therapeutic for the nervous system. It is both a form of rhythmic breathing and sound therapy. Art for me was primarily a way to be with and to make color, without judging the outcome. It was a powerful way to be present and in flow, away from my thoughts.

The Warrior and the Body

Intuitive Archetypes

More recently, while I was undergoing treatment, I was struck with very clear images of warriors during my meditations. By then, I was well ensconced in my art practice and was painting every week. Just as I had done during the preceding ordeal, I found art to be a potent medium to calm my nervous system when under extreme duress. It helped unlock the warrior imagery, which in turn inspired my art. I saw various representations of warrior figures. The knight coming back defeated on foot from the crusades. The Japanese samurais in black and white ceremonial garb engaged in sword fights. The indigenous warrior, bow and arrow at the ready, in the middle of a forest.

The Body as Temple

I understood these images as a suggestion to look closer into the warrior archetype in my life and to discover for myself ways to activate it to serve me, in my cancer journey and beyond. I came to view my body as the vessel I wanted to prepare, strengthen and resource to house my warrior self. I came to view my weekly salsa dancing and strength training sessions as a ritual, a spiritual routine for the newly embodied warrior I was becoming, a spiritual warrior of sorts.

Trusting the “Blink”

Two years later, physical movement has become embedded in my daily routine. I also attribute the relative ease with which I traveled the treatment journey to my rigorous physical practice. I now know that research provides evidence of these benefits.

When embodying the warrior in my physical training, I am availing myself to do the same in other areas of my life if needed. My dominant archetypes, Rebel, Dreamer, and Storyteller, feel more supported that way. Together, they open a path for my Sovereign to emerge in a way that feels resourced, so it can do what it is best at: helping others find their own wiring and use it in ways that mean and matter to them, just as I did for myself.

The Professional “Range”

I have transferred the discipline of the warrior to my work routine, expanding my practice beyond the confines of coaching, to include writing, researching, and building unique content. It is all beginning to click into a coherent body of content centered around what I call “The Craft of Becoming.” When successful people struggle to find alignment following a disruptive event or in a difficult transition, relying exclusively on their well-honed intellect is precisely what keeps them stuck. You see, the very competence that built their career or lives becomes the cage that confines them when the landscape suddenly shifts. I know this because I lived it for decades.

I have come to think of this as Leadership Range. Not balance, which implies a static midpoint, but range, the capacity to move fluidly between modes of operating depending on what the situation demands. The executive who can only lead from analysis is like a musician who plays one note exquisitely but cannot hear the rest of the chord. When disruption arrives, and it always does, one note is not enough.

My own journey from the diktat of the intellect to the integration of intuition, creativity, and embodied practice taught me something I could not have learned from a textbook. The gap between what we overuse and what we underexpress is where the real work of leadership transformation lives. For me, that gap stretched between analytical rigor and creative intuition. For a client, it might stretch between relentless drive and the capacity to pause, or between strategic vision and the willingness to be vulnerable with a team.

This is the territory I now occupy as a coach and as a builder of frameworks. The Craft of Becoming is not a program that prescribes a destination. It is a process of helping leaders identify which parts of themselves have been overworked and which have been left dormant, waiting to be summoned. The archetypal lens I use makes this visible in ways that conventional assessments do not, because archetypes speak to patterns of being, not merely patterns of behavior.

Relatability and Shared Transformation

I am a pattern detector at heart. They do not teach that in school. It took me the better part of four decades and a series of precipices to understand that what I have to offer is not my knowledge, but the lessons forged from lived experience, sometimes amplified by knowledge. This is an important distinction, one that separates insight from information.

It is also what makes the work land with clients. A few of my coaching clients are cancer survivors. I did not plan that. I did not market to that group. Somehow, the way I spoke about navigating disruption resonated with their own unfinished reckoning. They do not need advice. Like me, they learned to walk through their own fog and sit with it. That is not a skill one acquires in a certification program. It is a scar that has healed into something useful.

What worked for me may not work for others. But taking the time to figure out what worked, and being willing to experiment even when it ran counter to every conventional belief I had inherited, was the real lesson. Each of us owes it to ourselves to carve our own path after the big drop into the abyss, even when it means enduring a prolonged season of fog and no small amount of trial and error.

What I have learned, above all, is that certainty is a fallacy. Our quest for it is a fool’s errand, one that keeps us circling the same familiar territory when the map itself has changed. Uncertainty can only be met one deliberate step at a time. My work with clients is to help them gain clarity on what that next step is and to move towards it with their core values as the compass. Alignment with those values is the rock that sustains us through the passage and helps us decide where to steer the ship when visibility is low.

Knowing how our archetypal map is structured, which archetypes to invite forward, especially the ones that do not yet feel familiar, that is the recipe. Cancer activated the Warrior and the Sovereign for me. One made way for the other to rise. And rise it did.

Whether you have experienced a harsh fall or you are sitting atop a mountain wondering what comes next, the question is the same. Knowing what you are wired for, being willing to experiment along the way, following your archetypal makeup one step at a time, even before you can name it. That is the way through.