The Power of Resilience, Minimalism, and Love: Bibi Kasrai’s Journey

Transcript auto-generated from the episode audio; formatting has been cleaned up, but wording is verbatim.

Hi, I'm Cynthia Marks. I head up the Holistic Psychoanalysis Foundation established by my late husband, Dr. Bernard Bail. Welcome to. And now, love, Bibi comes to us full of enthusiasm. Welcome, Bibi. She's creative, resourceful, smart and curious. We are just getting to know one another. But I can clearly feel the warmth and love she exudes. I truly mean that Bibi left Iran at the age of 17. She ended up studying at the University of Moscow and later earned an MBA at Harvard until 2009. Bibi was a journalist, a world traveler, and an executive looking for some other sort of satisfactions.

She decided to hang up those diplomas and begin a new journey with the goal of helping others find inspiration and happiness. So here you are. Thank you. What a beautiful introduction. And can you write it for me? Well, it's all true, I think. So there's so many things to talk about, and we're not going to get to all of it today. No. But I want to know how you ended up here. That's a giant question. How did you end up leaving Iran? I mean, it sort of in a nutshell, you're growing up there from the age of 1 to 17. You saw that country completely transform and you lived in a situation with your parents.

That was pretty unique. I think, relative to the rest of the community. Tell us a little bit about all that. Yes, it's a very open ended question. It is going to take the rest of the podcast thinking back. Our perspective is different than living in that situation. Looking back, I think I was very sheltered in a very unique family. You don't wake up and think, my parents are famous or my parents are decent. That no matter who you are, I parents are rich, my parents are poor. You know, circumstances come and go and you realize certain things. But your normal is your normal.

Exactly. Your normal is your normal. You don't have an idea that I really am growing up in a unique type of family. Very intellectual. You know, my mom was a American learned designer, you know, then goes to Paris and works, you know, into your studio. Then comes to Iran. My father was already famous at the time as a contemporary poet in a country known for poetry, Like there were five or six people starting this new contemporary poetry movement. But by the time my mom and my dad met, you know, she was very well established in her career. My dad was already famous for their time.

They married late. When I come along, you know, not only it's me, but I have an older sister who my parents adopted, which was also very weird for Iran for their times. You know, I mean, everything they did was so unconventional that I didn't understand at the time. Again, that's the normal. So it's the three of us, me, my brother, my older sister, my mom insist on putting us in a French school system, which creates really the first tension between my parents. My dad is like, No, she has to go to a normal school, so she learns what our society is about.

Meet all sorts of people from all walks of life. My mom, like know with your life style, we're going to be in trouble. They have to learn other languages. We are going to become one day. You know, she saw the doomsday so he did. Yeah. And there was there was nothing really publicized about that doomsday. She just was. Yeah. You know, my father was kind of always on the margin of being a dissident poet, was censored, was certain jobs were not allowed for him. So there was that. So my mom was like, no, my kids have to be well versed in languages.

And it just so happened that between the three of us, I really loved languages. So not only I went to a French school, but I wanted to learn more so Spanish. So learning was given to us freely, whereas other things that spoiling kids at that time for my peers were not easily thrown at us. They had the means to. My mom had the very my father now was a civil servant who always cared about his poetry mostly. But my mom, no, I mean, had a great career and great clothing. And I always say upstairs, downstairs, the upstairs of our house was like, this lady's and this.

Back then, you know, we received the Vogue and Elle and fashion magazines and downstairs, all these revolutionaries would come in the rooms, feel the salons and talk about ideas and like dictatorship and this and that. And I was like, I always say, I don't know how I didn't end up. I am crazy. But, you know. What do you do with a thirst for both of those in my upstairs, in my downstairs that there's always something going on? Grade The teacher said, you know, who do you know? Do you have that in America? Who you want to become? You write an essay?

Yes. You want to become when you grow up. They gave us that. And everybody wanted a doctor or engineer. Astronomer was like the big thing at the time. And I literally wrote, I have a big dilemma and they make you read that in front of the class. And I said, I had a dilemma upon which. I reflected. All week. I didn't know if I want to become Sophia Loren or Ernest or Che Guevara. The kids are looking at me. The teacher panicked, called my parents. It's like she can not say that name. In school you are going to get in trouble. And my father is like you.

Genetically, you are not, Loren, You are not. Good luck. So I grew up like that. And we go to the national exam. So the revolution happened. We stayed after the revolution. My parents being very idealist, thinking things are going to get better. Society is not going to get worse. It's going to get better. That's what we all want to believe. So what did you see see changing in your community or in your or in Iran? I'm an atheist, but I'm not anti religion. If you said I'm religious, I'm like, good for you, it helps you. We saw the rise of religious fanaticism little by little. our big goal is to fight imperialism.

Well, let's wear the veil like no, it's not that. All at school, all of a sudden things change. We're in an all girl. I was in school at school, and then I'm in an all girls school. And French is bad now. We should learn just Arabic. Why we are Iranians? Why should we learn Arabic? And how old were you then? About? I was 15. 16 when I switched. All of a sudden, from five to age 16, It's all French schooling with Persian in a school. And then now it's you go to the school literally at the end of your street and you wear something. I would have.

Arguments, you know, in the French schooling system, it's all about curiosity or what they call it on the mall. It annoys when you are like, why this works the way it does? Why is this put like this? What is composition? What is you? The more what you ask, the better it is. So it's like a ramped up curiosity. Yeah. Very well said. And then all of a sudden it's like, no. The way you pray and the way you enter the bathroom is with your left like. Or I'm like. Not. I'm why we are teacher. Why we all wear the veil in a classroom where we are all girls.

You say that it's not good for the eye of the man to glance upon your hair, but we are all women. You're asking too many questions. So my great for I was always a very good student. So everything 20 out of 20. And then they could not subtract anything from the facts at that time other than give you the discipline. Great. I was 12 out of 20. and my mom said, like, what's the thing? And they said, because she has so many question, she drives people crazy. I want the American audience to hear this. Our religion teacher said one day, Ladies. As of today, if your parents ask.

You to peel cucumbers or eggplants or zucchini, you should say no. my gosh. You say, my God, I didn't. I honestly it didn't even register with me. I go home and we debate. We are coming from a family where we debate. You know, some families were like telling my dad, Your kids have zero respect for you. They always talk and and my father like that. So what, we are at lunch. And I said, you know what? Something happened. Like, my mom never asked me to peel anything any way because I was not into that. And I said, today our teacher said. That you are at the age where if your parents ask you to peel vegetables like cucumbers and eggplants, and so you should not do it.

My mom and dad were like made. I remember this. My dad, like said. You know what? Look, that's my mom is like, moody. You go to the school, get their stuff out, we can teach them at home. Between the two of us. My mom said between the two of us. Like we don't have enough. We could teach her. Well. I'll teach the other. Not this one. They are like, What good does it do? And I am like, What? My dad's nothing. It's just sitting there thinking. So I go back to school and I ask my. Classmates because they grew up in that system and they're like, But then we debated.

I debate it with people who came to our house and at the time thought, this revolution is taking us forward. And my dad always let me debate with older leaders. It's like, tell them I said, you know, what would you feel if you had this always around your head? You know, they're like, Well, our issues are bigger right now. Our goals are big. Later in life when, you know, I lived in the Soviet Union, I understood that everything has to be fought for right there. And then if you think that something veers off and it's wrong, it's wrong. So true experiences in life, we learned that.

But then I started seeing the diminution of women in that country and where we are going. And prior to this experience, well this sort of evolved to be when you were ten or nine you didn't feel this oppression of women in our house. No. But it was there in Iran. I didn't see it with the eyes of an adult. But I can see now other families of friends, like when they did that in my household, my father always, democracy is killing me. You know, like whenever we did something or said something is like, it's my doing, you know, I really didn't feel it.

I really never felt my mother is oppressed. I never felt me and my sister. If anything, the opposite. My aunt would say, why you make Mandela is my brother to my mom. Like, why do you make him wash his socks? But not the girl says, Because I don't want his future wife to say your mom didn't do that to my daughters. They couldn't take care of them, so I didn't see it. Looking back, was it dare? Yes. Well, I. Guess so, because you mentioned that some of the girls in your girls school, just when it came to the conversation about the cucumber, already knew that that was not an acceptable thing to do.

Whereas in French school. There was not per se, sex education. But there were lots of foreigners from other countries, you know, including a lot of French kids. And yeah, we knew about sex. I personally did not experience it, but I saw, for example, somebody in there where you put your pencils and pencil box and some pills like this numbered and they said, what is dieses? That's for contraception. And I'm. Wow. well, she had sex. Never did it occur to my mind that the cover story and this is even taboo probably for me to say that as an Iranian I would imagine.

And so would you say that. Do you feel that when you when you started this conversation about the cucumber and you knew that that is not an okay thing, do you second guess yourself or step over what you'd like to say and say, okay, do I really want to say this? No, no, no, no, no, no. Because I'm 58. I have a daughter who is 23. I just feel like everything. If we don't shame people on eating or exercising, we are not shaming them for having healthy, healthy sexual life. Yeah, Women in Iran. My grandma was married when she was 14. They came to ask for her.

Hand and I was listening to her. I said one way like, How did you feel about that? What did she say? She said, I had a knot in my stomach. They said, Tomorrow they're going to my father. You know, said to me, your dad and your to be married. That's just like you cannot ask. You cannot question your parents. My sister was like, Did you ask no questions? No. I asked my step mom. Like, what does he do? And they said, he's a painter. And I the only painter I had in my mind's eye was the guy who came twice a year and painted the house. And they looked terrible.

God. She didn't even imagine this painter, you know, like fine arts. She said I was lucky the minute I saw him from behind the window. He looked very nice. Beautiful. Was he much older than her? Yeah. And did they remain married? Yes. Yeah, very. She said. You know, at the time, love was like that. We got used to each other and he took care of me. And that would be kind of unusual for it to fall into a really good place. No, some people. Say that arranged marriages. I have my own opinion, although my non arranged marriage ended up in divorce. I have my opinion about arranged marriages, which I mean, I could never do that.

So there was some amount perhaps of matchmaking on parents parts to see if this could be. Yeah, the families are good if you know, they check out certain, but you imagine the trauma of a 14 year old? Not at all. I just can't even. And then to know and maybe you spoke with her about this that this is going to be a traumatic, traumatic and scary experience. But on the other hand, to not really question it, Right. I am supposed to go through this that 14 year old might not have the wherewithal to say, wait a minute, I've got some questions about this.

It doesn't feel right. I mean, it didn't feel right. But you're not allowed to question it. and then the lady who was supposed to take care of her. Said, you know, I will always be. With you. We go to Tehran, I take care of you, you know, things like that. But talking of burn art and his theory of the imprints in the womb, I always I didn't talk to my grandma like that because I was so young when we left each other for the last time. But if I had to. Talk to her now, it's like the imprint. With the first time she got pregnant, she. Had the 16 year of age difference, which my oldest uncle and 18 with my mom.

I mean, they were like sisters. Yeah, My mom took care of her to me. That world that these people in Iran, they think the young brides, you know, they're like I read the other day, an eight year old died of hemorrhaging, bleeding because she was a child bride. Yeah, that society does not sit well, obviously, with someone like me and with this generation and with this uprising that we see. Yes. So I want to get on to you moving out of Iran. But but I have this question, which is knowing at me, I, from my perspective, want all women to feel like they have the same rights as every agency.

And I don't think all women feel like they deserve the same rights. And that could be because of this imprint eons of mistreatment, a belief that matches that of their husband or the men around them. From my perspective, that's not healthy for women individually or at large. But do we have the right or how do we impose this better life on these people who already think their life is as it should be? Curious about that because who am I to instill what I think is proper education? I think education is the key empowerment, love. And maybe it starts with love because you can't convince someone to educate themselves.

Everything starts with love because love makes us more curious. Loves makes us more generous, love makes us more open, courageous, willing to adapt and learn love really love it hand-in-hand with education. A lot of time education goes with discipline and my way or the highway and this way. But to love which education I see in the younger generation, although they are like some of the most oppressed population I know in the world, in this system that's been in place for 45 years, thanks to the Internet, thanks to social media, thanks to what they see, there are a lot of bad stuff they see also, but they are more opening up and by opening up, they are more curious to devour this new information and this new things if channeled in the right way.

I think they are learning. I mean, I am working with a lot of kids who now have been injured in Iran and or out a couple of them. I have bonded really well with them. One of them, thank God, after two years, just last week, this day, she got out of Iran and out of Turkey and now into Germany. And when you say injured hurt because they've expressed an opinion that. Bullet's in their eyes, raped in the prison, injured by their parents being given by arranged marriages, you know, in the most deprived regions of Iran, like Baluchistan, even university, even the worst form of university we have in Iran opened up her.

I said, How did you come from this family to here? I mean, their journey. She said, You know what opened my eyes? It's stupid series on TV, which she's in Baluchistan. And you know, the TV thing is in Tehran, the capital. And the parents said to their kid, now that you have done your homework and you had dinner and you go brush your teeth and sleep, good dream. She's like, I was the personnel. I was the maid of my parents. The fact that the kids preoccupation should be their homework and brushing their teeth opened up a new world to me. So I wanted that world.

I mean, the bar is this low. Yeah. For her. Yeah. Was to university. Gets arrested, raped in prison, touching. But working with them. I see. Okay. The world she knows so much is so bright. So I have a glimmer of hope in this darkness that I see. But I think they have to be injected with love. So. And I think according to Bernard, basically his work is to get us all to a place where we act from love. And once we are unencumbered by the trauma that was given to us even before birth, we can be that. We can be that love. We can operate from a place of truth about love and I think that we can at this point, we can only do it one individual at a time like you are, and hope that hundreds of years from now, maybe we've improved as a society.

But I mean, I think a lot of us look at this endeavor of trying to heal women's position in the world and think, my God, that's just an impossible. Question for you. Because, I mean, you know how I learned about Bernard's total accident, but why was he so. Attacked. About this theory, Why it was so controversial, Why it's not more widespread? Why? I know it's because it's not the pills you take. But people go to therapy. People go seek therapeutic methods to heal themselves. Yes. So why was he why his theory, which is so beautiful, was attacked.

I think, on several different levels. He was attacked. Meanwhile, he always had a thriving practice, so there was always a group of people who were interested in his methodology. For the longest time, he was treating his patients through basically a Freudian method, but ultimately discovered that he wasn't seeing success for his patients and he wasn't seeing success in his own treatment because he was always being treated. He was in supervision and was working with some of the world's most renowned therapists, which was fabulous. He had these great intellectual conversations with them, but he walked away thinking, Well, that was a great intellectual conversation, but have I grown now?

Haven't grown, haven't grown? And he became more and more disillusioned and he sat back and said, I'm just going to forget everything. I'm just going to forget everything. My patients aren't getting better. I'm not getting better. And he. How old was he when I think he was. In his early sixties? I can't say for sure. So we just started talking with his patients and asking his patients to say, share their dreams. And he started writing down the information in their dreams. And after hundreds and hundreds of these interviews with his patients, he discovered that everybody was sort of coming to the same thing, that if you can figure out that your dream is a conduit to your unconscious, and in there lies the real you and your dreams are provide writing that key the set of keys for you to get there.

Basically, they're saying, here's the trauma that you've had and you keep dreaming about X, Y, and Z and that x, Y, and Z. Those bits are trash in your barrel, so let's get rid of it. He discovered that not all of this happens when you're three or four years old. You come prepackaged when you're born. You've already had to do things in a feeling way to create survival for yourself. You need to keep your mom safe. She doesn't need to worry about all the stress that she's put on you. You've decided to take this stress so that she's okay so she can help you survive.

That idea of having been imprinted by your experience with your mother in the womb and once you are an infant and then as you progress as a child, was not acceptable to his community, who was very much wrapped up in a Freudian method, they didn't want to go there. It just seemed too much. I mean, first you have to agree that there's an unconscious and that your unconscious is giving you messages. You have to agree that perhaps what you've been doing, the way you've been treating your patients is not correct or is just an adjunct, or that there's more, That's a lot to come to.

And how scary is that? If I think about these things, am I going to lose my patients? How do you establish that completely new paradigm in a world that's so set and so conservative just didn't fly? It didn't fly and he tried and tried. He went to every conference. He was a professor at UCLA and he was just shut down. I can't believe. That that's the part about his life that I don't his theory I don't understand why it seems so in a way intuitive to some of us. But and to others, it's really scary. I mean. Because Freud was also controversial. Yes, Controversial.

Yes. I told you the other day, sometimes the zeitgeist or the tsunami is behind us and pushes us and our ideas forward. And sometimes it's in our face and it's early for the time. I think so. And he wasn't able to accomplish what he wanted to in his lifetime. How sad it was for him. It was such a disappointment. And at the very end of his life, he said to me, If you can move this forward in some way, please do. And that's what you're doing. He didn't burden me with it, and it took me some time to come around to actually having the lights go off and the energy come where I said, Yes, let's let's do this.

I mean, I really love it. Gives us courage. That's exactly what I said. And that's all it is. Because I'm not educated in this. I mean, I'm a layperson. I wasn't analyzed by this man, but I absorbed like a sponge everything that he had to offer because he loved me so much. And I was so kind by him. No, no, I. Didn't know. That. No, I am simply his wife and a giant sponge. I dream every day. Is that normal? I dream and I. Everybody. Does every day. Everything that when I tell people, they're like. And some of them are scary because they are so scary.

Do I seem like an outlier to people? Well, and everybody dreams every day or every night, but most of us don't believe we do. Those of us who believe we do don't remember them often enough. And I think there are ways that those of us who don't remember can train ourselves to remember. But now what are we going to do with all this information? I mean, it's completely valuable, but we aren't trained ourselves to know what to do with our dreams. As far as I can see, the authority on this is Bernard, and we have this little group of people who know that this message that he wanted to share with the world is precious and they're trying to move it forward.

We've got some young therapists that are treating their patients with this methodology. But the reason we're here is to make that grow, whatever that means, even if it means as individuals, we just become curious about our own dreams and write them down and and truly believe that they are something to be respected and that there is information there that can help us grow. Thank you for sharing the story. I'm interviewing you. I know. I'm so sorry. This is all about. You. Know. It's great. I think it's it's fascinating. I'm sorry if I took no direction.

But what's going to happen here is I can't always be interviewing this small group of people that know so much about Bernard. I want to interview people like you. You're so unique and you have a gift that can be given to the world. And you're an example of living a life. Now, I'm not sure that you always felt this way. It seems like maybe you did. That comes from a place of feeling that you know that the best path you can walk starts from a place of love. So you know that. And if we can help people understand that Bernard's work gets us there, then seeing what you're doing is nothing but motivation.

I cannot get such a huge credit because although I grew up in a very my parents never told us what we should do, even when we asked them, What do you think when I grow up I should do? They said, Whatever you wish to do. My brother one at one time said he loved magic as a kid. He said, I want to be a magician. My dad said, Become the best magician you get. And my mom would. Say, How much? When you tell him this is going to take this. And run with what you want. Our plan to work in the circus is like. However, because I was good at schools, meaning good to the teachers, good to my parents.

Then I became good to my bosses. Then I became a good employee. I became a good wife. I became a good you know, nobody is a good mother ever. Because if kids make you feel like poop, but, you know, because of all these things at some. Age is like why I. Fulfilled my duty to everyone. What? What do I want? What does Bibi want? What makes me happy? I mean, you go to to school. I wanted to be a journalist. Then certain things happen. Certain things change. Life throws curveballs at you, so to speak. Then I became I said, okay, I work for the World Bank.

Then my boss again, I was a good employee. My boss is like. you should get your. MBA and you should go to Harvard. Harvard Business School. Why? I have a masters. Why? no, no, no. Trust me, in America, they respect him. Okay, so because of him, you go, and then you come out there like, you're so good. You should do marketing and. Okay, but is that what I really want? Then you do that, you excel at that you're good at that Is that now you make money. And because you make money and you pay the mortgage and you pay the bills. so you're good. No, none of this matters.

And then finally I said, for stress relief, I cook and everybody loves my cooking. And what if I cooked for children and I taught them and then adults go and then. Everybody says, I want to become a. Cook? You know, 16 years ago, you were a vice president. Now they look at you as their mate or as their cook. They put all this. They inject their own beliefs and their fears into you, and you have to fight with that. Again, this tsunami right now, everybody wants to be a cook on the on Instagram. You know, like whatever. So you do that and you are finally, little by little, one spoon at a time, one recipe at the time you find yourself and you say, I'm good at that.

And they like that. Then doesn't mean anything. At my age. You transform again, you change yourself. You don't have to be the. Best at it. You can be the happiest at it. And you do that and you are like, You get divorced. You're like, I'm never going to fall in love again because love is bullshit. You're not. But that's B.S. If life is this energy given to us, that is called life or Chee or whatever is in you for as long as you breathe. Life is beautiful. Yes. Tell us again what that says. You really want to know that? Yes. Our reason the gazebo lasts.

Then they get all the toshka He did, and the Paul body just got RPF roses. Roxanne showed that her Koran pay does that in the home, which has the home. She got no home lost. Yes, Yes. Life is beautiful. That's all it says. But it's a part of one of my father's epic poems about written in one of the darkest points in his life. And Iran's history about doesn't matter what happens. Your brother is in prison, your friends are getting executed. You live in extreme poverty. Life is beautiful. Life is an eternal bonfire scene from everywhere. If you feed it, it's for everyone to be seen.

If not, it dies. And it's your responsibility that you didn't keep the fire alive That spreads that message I just started. I'm not into tattooing. I'm not a Gen Z or I'm not a millennial. I just, you know, the last two years this has been my constant. So I finally said, you know, I'm going to have it tattooed as part of me because it's really good reminder. It is. And it is part of you. I mean, you're living that life. I'm trying to until I don't want to, you know, all of us, when we come to this podcast or social media, we have an alter ego that we want to show off to the world that I am here now, am better than you.

And then you turn, you go behind the door. You can come. The life is not about the I have plenty of things I've done badly that if given the chance, I will try to do better. That's the best thing I can do. I can feed a little bit of fire. I can be better. I can mend amends with people. A year ago, I went to a family member or ex family member. I said, You know, I want to invite you for lunch and I want you to sit in front of me and tell me why you think I'm an asshole. my. Goodness. They didn't want to take that meeting, you know? So it's okay.

I do what I have to do and people all. It's their responsibility. If they want to live angry or they want to live happy, that's the best we can do. So we are not perfect and we don't live in the perfect world. And we all have had childhood traumas. I am lucky enough to have learned that I have PTSD. You know, the day I've done a lot of therapy, but the day my therapist said, it was very funny. She didn't even say, I am I know. Is like, I'm building. And like, I put PTSD. I'm like, PTSD. Isn't that for soldiers and whatnot? It's like, no, it's for a kid who saw her father arrested at age five and her aunt at age nine and at age 12, So people coming and showing their torture marks.

No, that's not that's you can see the best parents in the world. Yes. You were in the most secure room or family or writing or whatnot. No, it comes back to haunt you. You have to get rid of your anger, your traumas, love. Yes. But it is really something. How much we even, I think, unconsciously protect our experiences, because whatever that is and all that trauma that you experienced, that was your experience, that was your normal. And if you speak to it, somebody else might say, my God, that's that's trauma. How do how are you even sitting before me?

But we're so good at resilient. Yeah. And to delete. Yeah, but that's we can't just keep doing that because we're just perpetuating the issues, the war, the mistreatment, the poverty, all of that. People who resist. In your culture less in the American culture going to a therapist are talking about it is like playing tennis. But in some cultures it's so much taboo. It's like, I'm not crazy. I don't have any issues and look at me. I make so much money, look at me, I'm so gorgeous. Look at my wife and my pool and my house. Why do I need therapy?

We Americans are like that too. Really? I believe so, yes. I think there's just so much resistance to looking at oneself, to not saying that that what you present to the world is not a presentation of the perfect life of happiness, and it's glowing on the outside. But open those doors. Yeah. I mean, you see these postcards you guys send every year during Christmas? Everybody looks like the Ralph Lauren. Yes. And wings like angels behind them. Yes. And then the next year they got divorced. And all those ideas that this sort of perfect Thanksgiving dinner.

And it's almost as if you're right. You have that, too. Yeah. It's almost as if for part of my life, I would keep that card over there and it's Thanksgiving and go back to it and make sure I've got all those right elements in that photograph thinking that I could just transfer that to my life now. So I'm going to shift a little bit. So you ended up going to Moscow and how old were you then? Well, another trauma, because five years after the revolution, they came to arrest my father. We were at home and he wasn't. And by the time he realizes that we are arrested, he's coming.

And then they said, no, they're no longer here. He they realize they think that the person who drove my father didn't see the car that my uncle came with is like, they're gone probably. And they left. He took my father to hide him somewhere. And the Guardians of the Revolution who were with us and we were on their home arrest. They gave up and we went to my grandma's house, They sealed the house and everything. So a lifetime of memory behind those closed doors. And we go to my grandma and my mom is masterminding our our escape from Iran with smugglers.

We are French educated. So we thought of going to France. The smugglers took us to Afghanistan, to the Pakistan, and there was war in 83 in Afghanistan. So we were there. And from there we it took us a long time and no hope to go anywhere near France. So they made us fake documents, Afghani documents to send us as students Khadra future Khadra of their revolution to Moscow. But lucky for us, the perestroika or Gorbachev came soon after we were there. Otherwise, I would have definitely been one of those who end up in the gulag. because of my march.

Yeah. And the country that we saw us growing up. my God. It's on the other side of the Caspian Sea. The things of the revolution. Everybody has education. Everybody has health care, everybody has a home. Good things are happening when people are treated as equal. And at Moscow State, the very intellectual I must say, Milia, the school of Journalism. You know, I learned Russian in a very accelerated method. I go to school very sick, very different, very from the way we dressed, you know, coming from kind of like comfortable upper middle class to looking like a babushka.

And we see everything around us. And then you look, you know, I again, as a curious child, I look at the places where the system are rotting. The termites are eating up as easy as asking like, how come we don't have things to eat? But like, this kid, that kid, their fathers, their parents are diplomats and they have a special store and like, a special store, like, you know, although my Russian was not up to par to them, they really helped me was a great people think, I was like, starved. But yeah, it was a different lifestyle, but intellectually very stimulating.

The kids would come when they got to like foreign literature. I was a bookworm, so they would ask me if we had to return Manhasset. They would ask me about him or if we had to do Balzac or Baudelaire or whatever was in the world literature. They would ask me questions and I would tell them. So you were the CliffsNotes? Exactly. I was the cheat, not exactly the CliffsNotes. So they would then take me and introduce me. They were like. let's go sneak into Bulgakov's house. And Bulgakov was forbidden in the Soviet Union. And they we snuck in. Now it's the Bulgakov museum.

Tell us what that means. Well, Bulgakov was also a dissident, and his masterpiece was Master and Margarita. It's a love story, allegory of everything that happened. And he was forbidden. And they gave me a copy, and they helped me read it. And they took me to this places or that many sages of artists underground, they took me. So this coincided I was really riding the wave. Gorbachev came to our school and gave a speech, you know, like this whole thing. So it was amazing. What a rich. Experience, that journey as a journalist and then opening up of the Soviet Union and working, that was very powerful.

Then I finish and I think, now finally I go to France. But no, another setback. I can't go to France this time because I have a Afghani passport and France was not there. So then one thing and another and somebody says, go to him. I got an invitation for a wedding of a cousin and I go with nothing like literally nothing, because in Afghanistan now, the Mujahideen and the Taliban are coming to power. If I go back. Yeah. They know I'm not Afghani. What happens to us? I can. And my father said, Bibi, you have to get out of here. My mom got off out of there, went to Vienna, to her sister to get us out.

There were glitches there. Anyway, long story short, by miracle and by me being me like accidental, I'm like the Forest Gump of life. You know, I'll go to the American embassy with a terrible French accent. I do not speak English very well. It's like, you speak French? I say, yeah, I speak French. They happen to speak French. You know, I got a visa. I got a visa, a tourist visa to come here and stayed with my mom's family in Fairfax, Virginia. And my visa is about to expire and being deported. I filed for political asylum. I went to look for a job.

I got a job at the World Bank. How I got that job is a whole Netflix series and where it got me. So, you know, riding waves of life that was filled with trouble, too. I mean, that was not the American dream as we see it in the movies. And for example. I mean, literally my first apartment with a roommate, my first salary, I was doing slave work at odd hours. I was paid $600 a month. I had to get an apartment in Virginia with a roommate to pay 300, and the rest of the 300 was bus pass and the same baloney sandwich every day. and things like that.

And you were going into DC? Yes. Well, you were working for the World Bank then? Not at the beginning. Not when I got the I. Yeah. No, that led to that later, which was a lucky break. I was from 630 600 a month. You know, just that's a change in lifestyle too. So what was it, 1992? That's great. Yeah. Well, and you had these parents who sort of lived on the edge of what was typical or maybe not even on the edge. I mean, didn't that give you kind of a good base or a strength to know that you could always accomplish something? I'm not even speaking financially, but you could find your way.

Yes. Yes. Although the Afghanistan and Soviet Union, something I never had growing up was financial anxiety. That thing changed because in Soviet Union, for example, the first three or four days, I didn't even nobody took care administratively as I didn't have anything to eat, you know? And then the value of money for the first time without my parents became very apparent to me that you starve to death if you don't have money or if you have 90 rubles a month, and then you don't manage that, you know. Yes. That kids. You don't think about. The captive.

Yes. Yeah. So that gave me financial trauma, which I had actually therapy helped a lot with. But the love of parents, I think, love the security that love envelopes you as a child, which is very important. That sense that yeah, whatever happens you can write, you can overcome. Yeah. Yeah. As long as you're working from that place of love. So you were here in Fairfax and then you ultimately ended up with the World Bank and then you went on to get your Harvard MBA and by then, were you no longer working with the World Bank? Yeah. My boss was like an amazing person and became my first mentor.

Really, in America. And he was going to leave to go to Indonesia or Singapore at the time, I think. And I was frustrated because I was so involved with the privatization in the Soviet Union that I saw the corruption and I saw the methodology used that really impoverished the good people. I knew because I would go monthly to the Soviet Union and back. And I saw the methodology that at the time I didn't agree with it. So there was there was some amount of internal discomfort associated with the job you were doing. Yes. And one thing I learned is if something goes against the grain and this is my dad, bless his soul and his art, was that maybe when you go down a path, the first few steps as you, the rest is gravity takes you don't go there.

If only we could all recognize that. Yeah, Life is comfortable. They pay you, You fly business class, you fly first class. You are a 24 year old. They treat you as a queen. You rub shoulders with Gorby and ministers. Don't fool yourself. My teachers were starved. My professors, good people. They were starving. I remember one time I went to visit them and I had this. I mean, it was so humiliating for me and I had to put $100 bills in envelopes. And when I said goodbye to them to leave it on the table so it was awful, or how my siblings and my father lived there, I mean, yeah, they.

Went through that humiliation. It was probably still something you just internally to do. I mean, to be able to help them on some level. When I confided in my boss, I said, You know, I travel with people who, on their expense report to put their shaving cream because to be reimbursed. And then I cannot reconcile. The two says, Baby, you cannot change the system. You can just get yourself out of it. You know, if I stayed right now, I would have been a retired member of the World Bank. I would have been seen, like you know, some big deal with a good retirement.

I just I couldn't. So he told me, you have to apply to business school. I said, business school. My business school. Like I said. I have a master's degree. It's like nobody gives a shit about Moscow status. It's a great university. It truly is. But here you are in the United States. Here you know, in 94 it was like, Go, just do it. You're smarter. Look at these assholes you work with. You're smarter than them all. Just go do it. I said, I don't have the money. It's like, Have you heard of the Harvard Endowment? I said, No. What is it? Obviously, I got a scholarship.

Yeah, to go. So then that took you. You now you were out of the World Bank and you were moving on to. Boston, Massachusetts, and started this school. Everybody's super smart, and so it's smart. But isn't that interesting how we just assume everyone else is smarter? Yeah, though. Well, I'd never assumed everybody smarter. I didn't, honestly. And then I go to this school because my background is in the humanities and they all came from this. They were or they were did junior work at Goldman Sachs. Rice. And McKinsey. And like they knew the answer to every case that.

Like, who are these people? What are they talking about? so I'm going to fail. And I took me to a very steep learning curve. I'm so because my family, if you ask them what is the stock market or what is profit and loss and not their. World. Cash flow and stuff like that, it was like, Yeah, another world. And I learned all of that and I learned very fast. And I went again. My life took a left turn on Albuquerque and I just, you know, and I became that some marketing executive and. I did a like I did that a few years. Good money, good salary, good career.

I'm like, this is not for me. We raised the money. They're like, Do you want to move to Los Angeles and do that from here? I said, No, I will not raise my kids in Los Angeles one day. I said, Is that my purpose in life? To make other people, rich people, richer and famous people more famous? And we had the at the time my kids were little and we were having dinner and I said, this cucumbers and tomatoes are very special. I want you to first smell them and then eat them. And they're like I said. what would you think this tomatoes are grown. You said in the supermarket. okay.

Yeah. It's time for me to rethink all of this. Harvard's cooking girl was born. That's quite the moment. It's almost a message from the universe. But that's how I pretty much my journey is that, yeah, I did 12 years of that, and it grew from kids to parents From parents. Then I built the first corporate teambuilding events around cooking in the world, the first corporate team building, breaking bread, companionship. The word companion is wheat bread, breaking bread. I did that around corporate, so from all over the world are now looking to come to Harvard cooking girl, bringing their teams.

Then COVID happened and COVID put a stop on everything. How long did you have your Harvard course? It was the longest employment. I it still is because I'm in some sort doing that. Yeah. Yeah. But the break was of COVID and for the first time I work from home behind the computer and I help a young entrepreneur who social change entrepreneur, who wanted to do what my dream always was to democratizing, giving $1 at a time, everybody giving just $1 a month what's called the dollar donation club. And I helped him to that to eradicate plastic from our oceans, you know, clean up the environment, do that.

And this was because you couldn't do what you had been doing for 12 years. From home and meetings with people on Zoom meetings. That's not for me. That's a. Tough one. Yeah. The 12 years of your Harvard. Cooking. Girl, that was something that was satisfying. Very much so. I love the connection with people, the banter, the joy, you know, through cooking, teaching, mentoring. So many students, like five or 600 people came under and went from all over the world. People who spare. It's weird, like people from Yale and Princeton and Harvard and SDSU and UCLA.

I know their parents were like, Why. Are you doing this? Why don't you do all the love of it all? It was very gratifying. It was really the most gratifying thing. And then I after COVID, I start, I lost everything. Obviously, I lost my studio. I had to donate all the equipment, everything I invested in. And then I started again from my kitchen and then renting a kitchen and doing stuff that I love to do. And so this was different. Yeah, in a different way. But still, I do a lot of corporate. And then I started my retreat because I saw there is so much thirst for not being one person in one frame doing one thing.

Because during COVID, I did this capitalist series with the minimalism and like leaving lights and leaving really with less. So capitalist, not capitalist. Yeah, capitalist, you know, it's the best ism. How are you Happy. And does that have something to do with taking a moment to find happiness in something that you might have otherwise not even thought about or felt about? Like what? What does a capitalist do? The biggest influence on my life is the influence of Japanese culture. You know, the ikigai finding or happy place. Where is your happy place?

Not happy in the way. Like, I'm happy. I have. We are. I'm high but happy in You do something you obviously have to provide for yourself and your family. You have to be paid. You have to be happy. You have to be content with what you do. It has to be shot. It has to have meaning. It has to have purpose. So ikigai, as I learned ikigai, I started to not teaching it, but preaching it. Part of that during COVID was making little videos of that. I'm happy to list dot com ones. I walk a coffee, you take things a moment you take for yourself a conversation like we have doing all of these.

And people are like, Why don't you teach it to us all? So in one of those experiences, let's say the bonsai video, are you explaining to your listeners or viewers how to find the happiness in that experience? No, it's just mostly you don't even see me. You see my hands again. The Japanese think it's about negative space, not the things you say or show the stuff in between the lines that you see. You know, to cultivate a bonsai, it's like cutting your own fingers so you can, you know, make the things grow. It's about the experience of doing something and cutting everything looks beautiful.

But when you have negative space, it looks even more beautiful and things like that. Arts therapy. Why we do yoga or visualization is not because you have to show to someone You can do this right? Get in the most twisted position it possibly can. Yeah, It's taking it to a place where there's some amount of comfort, not physical comfort, but. But emotional comfort coming from it. So is that what Ikigai? Yeah. Is is finding your path to finding your place where there is emotional satisfaction. A good place in the world. If I have to make a translation of it, it's what speaks to me.

And that means being good to yourself as an individual. Which then actually it's like a Venn diagram when they want to explain to you the ikigai and then imagine a drop here that trickles if you're good, it's the butterfly effect. If you are in your happy place, people around you are. I always say, I want my friends to be happier than I, because when your friends are miserable, you are miserable in order for you're miserable. you're so selfish. And then. Here again. Describe that to us. It's a more northern Scandinavian idea. Perfect guy. Not in the same sense.

I lost a lot. I lost pretty much 90% of my I don't want to call it my wealth because my wealth is not defined by that. But I had to lose my house and I became a minimalist. So I just gave away all my books other than the books that were assigned for me, not because I read a book. It was before Marie Kondo or what's her name? Yes, the the organized fashion specialist. I didn't even know her at the time, but ten or 12 years ago. So I got rid of a lot of things. But what motivated you to get rid of your books? Because I wanted to leave, to be happy, to live with less and then see where I see my comfort.

When I started getting rid of stuff, it was like having less weight on my shoulders to the clothes. You don't. Wear the. Shoes you don't need the books. You read the books. Okay, It's here and here. So could you really feel a change inside? amazing. I live in the people who judge you and don't know you. They're like, Are you happy in a two bedroom house? I'm like, Yeah, I use this room to sleep in this room to entertain. And my kitchen and, my office, I could live with less. Honestly, I feel like this place, if I ended up here, I can live here very happy.

So when you when you transitioned to this, you had come from a place where you basically lost almost everything. When you lost almost everything, I think a lot of us would be panicking or coming from a place from fear. And maybe you did too. But how did you how did you get yourself out of that? Or were you just forced to because you had now all of these things that were completely different financially and you couldn't support the life that you had, the way that you had? Of course I'm scared, you know. Of course, when you have two kids in private colleges, when you lose your studio, you lose your house, you're hit with a lawsuit, you feel all of these things.

I would be a liar if I said I didn't. But it's also the power of love, the love in your friendships, in your community that supports you when you supported them, the love of your companions In the worst time in Afghanistan, my mom had a lot of anxiety about where my kids are going to end up, and my father always said they're going to end up well, and my mom had a fight with him. So how are you. Always so sure? And his answer was. Because we were good people. And that to me was such an unrealistic answer. But now I remember that because we were good people.

And look at what happened to you, you know, partially because of that of coming from good people. So this life that you live now with less accouterment is different. It's more satisfying. Is it is it better? Are you happy? I am happy. When all the people I have unresolved issues with become happy with me or with. Themselves. So that may mean that they become happy with themselves, but still unresolved with you. Yeah. That's got to be hard. Yeah. Because you have to learn that it's out of your control. That's hard. Yeah. Yeah, that's for me is hard.

Do I have existential problems? Yes. Do I pose as somebody who is happy? I wake up in life. I don't love you. I want that guy on the movie set. No, but I try to remember. People think I have too much empathy, but it helps. Too much empathy helps you because when something happens, you put yourself in the shoes of the person who has lost a child or the person who has lost a dear one or. And you have to do that in order to be coming from a place of love. Exactly. Exactly. I don't even understand what too much empathy would be. Some people say you get too invested in other people's problems.

You just want, I am a problem solver. I'm a little bit like men. I am not my girlfriend. No, I'm not one of those girlfriends who you say, this happened. I would say, yeah. my God. too bad. I'm not like that. And it's bad because it irritates some people. I'm like, let's do this. Let's have a plan. Let's do that. Now, what about this? What about you do this and they don't want to hear that. I see. But that is a sort of empathy. I think it is. Yeah, but I don't know. We all have issues, but having honestly, what I come to understand by the fact that you have less.

You have less to worry about. my gosh, what a relief that is. There aren't so many balls to hold in the air. I don't worry if I leave my door open. Like if they come, what are they? no. There are a couple of things I really like. They go back to my childhood, but like, what are they going to steal? They're probably going to leave something and go. And the more I leave it, the more like. Last week I took the coffee like my friend said, What's the. Poor coffee table to you? I said, I don't know. I just got rid of the coffee table. I put it to Tammy flooring and, you know, like cushions.

And I like I like that. So the less you have, the less you want to have. So you're sharing this. You've learned so much from living this way with anybody who wants to pay attention. So how do we find out about you? You're still operating as the capitalist. And so if we Google you. yeah. You're there. I operate as the capitalist dot com. I operate at the Harvard cook as the Harvard cooking girl. I operate on Instagram as everybody else. I ever since Instagram existed, I had maybe 3000 followers. The next day I wake up, I have 40,000 followers. my God.

In like 90 days. Why? Because something somewhere I said that either did for someone or I mean, people who don't believe in karma. Honestly, you do something, and next thing you know, a friend like Bobby or Seun come in and get like, you should do this. Listen to podcasts you should do. I'm like, Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for it's not soliciting is that and I operate. I hope I can operate one day as the best version of me. Well, I think you have a lot to offer. You think? Yes. And I think we need. That to my kids. You could say that to my kid.

Okay, well, let's fact each other. Children. So you also are working on I'm sure this is first small groups, because a retreat can really only be these small groups. But is that something new that you're doing? Very new. I just want to have it's an experiment for myself to get 12 people. Women only. Women only. They don't know each other. They probably don't know me. I want to offer yoga. I want to offer curated talks about I believe that the future is going to be ancestral. I think we are going to go back appreciating slow food, appreciating life with no cell phones, appreciating one on one conversations, appreciating the nature that feeds us so that in every molecule we eat, there is no microplastics.

I believe we are going to get there. I want to believe. I want to believe that, yes. I hope we don't climb up this hill and reach disaster before we get back to. Yeah, I hope the climate change is going to we are going to help. It's not going to resolve itself. No. But we need situations like this where people believe us. So I want to create this curated talks about these issues, but I want to blend it with food from the blue zone is yoga visualization, sun beating, art therapy. How I heal and shoot my soul and teach it to other people. How we make products that are good for our skin.

But we can do it at the kitchen table, things like that. It may be an experiment like the way I started over Cooking Girl and go somewhere. It may fall flat on its face because people don't see any value in it. Well, you're just starting this up, right? Yeah, well, I'm very curious to see how it goes. And so your plan is that during the course of a retreat, is it a one day ritual? You'll go through several different. Yes. And and your your guests would then maybe recognize themselves in two or three or all of the events of the day and start to see a source of happiness or well-being or comfort.

Obviously, those that are coming are certainly curious about improving some aspects of life. It's me. There are people like not they go leave us and they dream that what they know in their bones is good. And sometimes again I go back, sometimes the zeitgeist is ready for it, and sometimes they're like, What did she say? Yeah, not ready. Let her aside. Well, I think you have so much to offer us. And I am so grateful that you were here today, and I'm excited to talk to you more. I want to learn more from you. boy. Yeah. No, that's the old boy. That's the whole point of this.

So we're going to have more conversations with Bibi. So please join us again and. We look forward to having you comment and talk to us about what you think of. And now, love. Bye for now. Thank you.