Taking a leap of faith has been a stepping stone to the successes that former Estcourt educator Feeyola Dawood can attest to.
Ms Dawood is a familiar face is the education fraternity, having spent more than a decade as a teacher at Forderville Primary School.
Hundreds of Estcourtonians have been learners in her classroom.
However, teaching was not her dream job – being a journalist was, but she took a leap of faith and more than 30 years later, she is a Grade 2 educator in Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
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Relocating to the UAE from a small town like Estcourt was also a step into the unknown, but here too, Ms Dawood took another leap of faith. “In 2013, I decided I needed a change and I took the biggest step in my life and went for it. It was the right decision at the right time. Although there was an underlying fear of the unknown, my faith in the Almighty allowed for this change to take place,” she reminisces.
What lay ahead was something that started as a novel idea and has blossomed into a published book, ‘Mothers Know’, which started as a personal collection of letters to Ms Dawood’s daughter but soon became a global message for young women.
Ms Dawood explains: “I’m a person who strives for the personal touch, so when it was my daughter’s 20th birthday, I didn’t know what to give her. One day, she asked me something and I thought to myself, this is it! I would write a few notes on life lessons. So this was practically the start of this amazing book.”
Her inspiration for the book was based on her personal life lessons.
“I decided on letters to my daughter and drew the inspiration firstly from my own experiences. I looked at my life and what issues I was dealt with, that led me to advise my daughter. But it soon turned to all daughters, because I realised that what I may have experienced, someone is probably going through the same thing. So that’s when I spoke to other young girls, my daughters-in-law and other young women, and took the issues they felt needed to be spoken about, but was unfortunately “pushed under the mat” so to speak. It was the ability to look at something from a different point of view. One of the highlights of writing this book was knowing that I’m giving a part of myself to my daughter, daughters-in-law and granddaughters, including my family. The low-lights were speaking to the many young girls out there and realising that the same issues we were dealt with during our lifetime are still surfacing today in a world where we have progressed so much, but unfortunately not in our thinking,” she says.
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For more than a year, Ms Dawood worked on the book, in between juggling work commitments and family life.
“This year, Covid-19 took us by storm, bringing everything to a standstill. It was also a year of achievements; it was during the lockdown period that I actually completed the book and everything just fell into place,” explains Ms Dawood.
Taking another leap of faith, Ms Dawood made contact with a publisher in India and what started as a gift for her daughter became a guide to thousands of young women across the globe. The good news is that the book will be available in South Africa soon.
“This could not have been done without my editor, Nasreen Variyawa – an amazing woman who guided me at every step. It is an accomplishment and an achievement for me. I am both proud and humble at the same time,” says Ms Dawood.
With one published book to her name, Ms Dawood says this ‘interesting learning experience’ has made her better equipped to tackle a second book. To end off, Ms Dawood sends gratitude.
“Along this journey of mine, I have met many amazing people. To all my family and friends back home, much love. To all my friends and co-workers from around the world, a huge thank you. Thank you for believing in me,” she concludes.
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