Ordinary People Extraordinary Things
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Ordinary People Extraordinary Things
92. Resilience, faith, and the power of forgiveness with Havva Ramadan
What happens when you mix resilience, faith, and the power of forgiveness? Join us as we welcome Havva, a talented songwriter and singer from England, who shares her inspiring journey from a strict Muslim upbringing to finding her own way. At just 16, Havva ran away from home, facing a harsh reality on the streets filled with struggles like drugs and violence. Yet, her story is one of hope, as she speaks candidly about the complex process of reconciliation with her family and the emotional aftermath of her father's passing in 2018.
We also delve into the often isolating journey of faith and transformation. Havva's story intertwines with themes of finding solace in spiritual communities while grappling with personal doubt and loneliness. Through her experiences, we explore the profound impact of believing in something greater than oneself, which can provide a sense of peace and purpose during life's trials. With heartfelt anecdotes about healing, forgiveness, and the power of compassion, this episode is a testament to the enduring spirit of overcoming adversity and the journey toward peace.
Havva’s book:📚
https://www.amazon.com/Voice-Turning-Pain-into-Power/dp/B0DQJMCNQS
Connect with Havva @havvaofficial on Instagram & @havvaofficial_ on TikTok
https://generationstogenerations.com/podcast
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Welcome to Ordinary People Extraordinary Things. I'm so glad that you're here Today. We have our first international guest. Her name is Hava and she comes to us from England and I can't wait for you to hear her story. Speaking of international, did you know that we are in 49 countries In order to have more countries join us or more people in the United States or wherever you're listening to? Please leave a review and give us a five star wherever you are listening? Now, with the international, we did have a little glitch every once in a while, but I worked really hard to get it as seamless as possible and maybe you won't even notice it, but I just wanted to give you a heads up, but it is a fantastic interview. Hava has so much to share. I can't wait for you to hear. Without further ado, here's Hava. Well, hava, welcome to Ordinary People Extraordinary Things. How are you today?
Speaker 2:Hey, thank you for having me. I appreciate it things.
Speaker 1:How are you today? Hey, thank you for having me. I appreciate it, and you are coming from England and this is our first international. Ordinary People, extraordinary Things, so I'm so excited about that. Oh, lucky me, I'm the first. If people don't know who you are, can you give three words or phrases to describe you?
Speaker 1:um, honest loyal and resilient very yes, yes, you're, you are. I'm just gonna say you're famous, you're a songwriter and singer and you have a beautiful voice. Well, I think so and have some. You have a gorgeous voice. You're working on something in the future, you said.
Speaker 2:I am. I've got a few songs. I've already done them. Actually it's just doing the final touches finding the right people, the train that it needs to ride on. Everything needs like a marketing machine figuring out the right way to do that, but the songs are done, so I'm excited. This is going to be like my next leg of my, of my journey. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's so awesome and you have a book. We'll make sure to link that in the show notes. I mean, you have such, a, such a story. We're going to have to kind of condense it. Can you kind of explain a little bit about your childhood and then what brought you to know Jesus?
Speaker 2:My childhood was not very good. It was. I don't have any happy memories when I think about my childhood. I was born and raised in a very not two streets, but a Muslim religion, in a Muslim religion household. I was, you know, being woken up to fast and things like that when I was just very, very young, like primary school things like that. But I never, nobody ever, taught me why and what I was doing and what I was doing it for literally my whole life. Everything felt like punishment and women are treated very differently and my dad was quite. He was quite heavy-handed with the women thing and like I wasn't allowed to go out, I wasn't allowed to have friends, I wasn't allowed to do anything, basically. So everything just felt like suffocating to me. But I went with it like it was. It was my environment, it was my household and then, as I got to my teenage years, I really just said no to everything. You know, I didn't believe in anything kind of thing kind of. I called myself spiritual, spent many years like that, and then I had such a turbulent childhood, went into.
Speaker 2:I was, I ran away from home when I was 16. I was on the streets for a couple of years. I then sorted myself out a little bit, um, but I got too heavily involved in all the bad things that come along with the streets, like the drugs and the people and the violence and all them kind of things there, but I did get myself out, you know. I got myself out and then I spent the next sort of 10 years probably trying to fix the first 15 in my life and it was tough, really tough, especially trying to regroup with my family, trying to re-establish a relationship with my mum and dad, trying to get them to see the errors of their ways and trying to, you know, open their eyes to what life is now and that there's another way of doing things and things like that, which was a big choice that I had to make to come back and actually do that.
Speaker 2:And then religion didn't really play a part in my life throughout all that time. In 2018, my dad passed away. Um, he had a heart attack. Real sudden, laughing and joking one minute, went to bed and had a heart attack, died literally in my little sister's arms most horrific moment of my life and I think I don't think I'll ever get over it. I don't think it's ever gonna feel okay to me.
Speaker 1:I was just gonna ask. You said you don't think you'll ever get over it. Is it partly because you were kind of starting to mend things and you didn't get to, or just because it was so, so quick?
Speaker 2:or I think I was cheated of saying goodbye to him and so many things that there's so many things I still had left to do. There's so many regrets that I carry when it comes and I know that they always say you shouldn't carry regrets but there's so many regrets that comes when it comes to my dad and I didn't get to say goodbye to him and I think for that I will always have a touch of anger about it. But there's also. I still had so much to work through. I wasn't a proper adult to be able to have the conversations that I wanted to have. You know, as a healed version of myself, I still had a bit of a chip on my shoulder. There was still a little bit of friction between me and him. There was still a lot of hatred for the first God knows how many years of my life of the way that they treated me and stuff like that my life, of the way that they treated me and stuff like that. So I didn't get to a place of forgiveness before the man passed away and because of that I didn't get to have the fulfillment and the and the conversations and the closure. And you know not that, not that everybody does get closure, but there was just. He became such an amazing version of himself in like the last five or six years of his life. He was the best dad ever and it's just. It's sad that that was all I got out of the entire relationship with him and I I knew at one point I always knew for some reason that my dad was going to die young just not that young and I hit one of my birthdays and I do remember looking at him, thinking I've taken too long to forgive you, and the thought kind of passed my mind and I shut it out because it was like quite an overwhelming thought. But, um, yeah, literally two years after that thought he died and yeah, I still had too much to work through with him, not just and just the fact that he's my dad, my life. Without him especially a daddy's girl like I was life feels incomplete, no matter where you turn about what you do. So the funeral was the final straw for me. There was a lot of things. There was about three or four different things that happened on the funeral because I was female, that I wasn't allowed to do or join in or touch or there was. It was really traumatic, the funeral on itself of your father is traumatic enough, but there was things that I went through that day that absolutely destroyed me and I said that was the final straw for me. I will always be respectful of it because my mum is devout Muslim and when we go to funerals and stuff I will pray, you know, I will cover my head, I'll do everything traditional, as everyone does. I will always be respectful to religion because it's how I grew and it's given me some key things to life.
Speaker 2:I took a different path and I was lost for about a year or two and I actually my dream was spiked, which was the beginning of this, of this journey. That happened and I was in such a place about it because it was people that I knew and someone said to me I want to come to church. And I said no, what am I going to do in church? What do you mean? And he was like, just please, just come to church with me. I said okay, because I went after god knows how much confusion, went to the church, hated it, hated everything about it, hated the way that the pastor spoke to me. He really, really pushed me away. Everything that he did made me go. I don't like you, I don't like. Then I'm not here for it and I wanted to walk out. By our respect, I just didn't, you know. I think that he did not realize that what he was doing in in what he was doing, I think he was he was telling me all the bad things about where I've come from and what I believe in, and but it's too soon for me. You're just basically putting me down and you're putting my family down and I was just, I didn't like that. So for some reason I didn't quit, I didn't like the experience.
Speaker 2:And then a really close friend of mine I didn't realize that his dad is actually a very famous bishop. His name is Bishop Wayne Malcolm. I said to him hey, would you mind coming me coming to church? I said like, but you know, like I'm from Muslim background, is everybody good? He's like have a listen, I have a lot of Muslims that come to my church. You know people, even when they're fasting they come to the church and stuff like that just come.
Speaker 2:And I felt like I was home for the first time ever in my life listening to that man speak. It was like a spiritual father for me and in some ways I guess I was looking for a spiritual father, because obviously I've lost my father, you know. But there was something about listening to this man regularly I did. I traveled over an hour every Sunday just to go and listen to what he had to say and to break the bible down. For me it wasn't. It wasn't the way around.
Speaker 2:If I found Jesus and then it went, and then I found Christianity if that makes sense like the Christianity part was really hard for me to actually even grasp. It was hard for me to say Jesus. It was hard for me to do any of the things. It took a very, very long time so I just never looked back. After that there was a gay thing that I was that was missing from my life. And then during this period of time, so over this period of time, I had what I only know now to be a spiritual awakening.
Speaker 2:So I was just in such a dark place and I mean like I was in bed every day, my phone was not being used, my phone was on the other side of the room, people could not get hold of me, I wouldn't let anybody in the house, I wouldn't leave my house, I couldn't even like get up and get in the shower. Getting in the shower was too much effort for me. Do you know what I mean? It was just so hard for me that I was in such a dark place and I was grieving grief. That is really important and however it manifested. But I found myself on my knees asking for forgiveness. I found myself screaming and I mean screaming asking first it was my dad for forgiveness, and then it was my dad for forgiveness, and then it was asking God for forgiveness. And whatever happened in my bedroom that day, literally right here behind me, I can't explain it. It can only be the presence itself off of my shoulders.
Speaker 2:Whatever it was, it didn't feel like that anymore after that day and that was the decider for me, that I was on the right path, if that makes sense. So, yeah, everything just felt right. This is the thing. There was certain terminology to say certain things didn't feel right, but things felt right, like where I was, the people that I was with the community, that I felt and then it did cut out for a minute.
Speaker 1:For a minute there where you were talking about the bible. What did you say about the bible?
Speaker 2:I said, it's the only thing that I read that ever made sense to me. All of it makes sense. It's like you have the keys to all life within that one book and I'm almost annoyed that I that I was raised without it. Do you know what I mean? Like there's so much knowledge in it, there's so many things that you go through in life and there are so many verses, passages um, psalms. There's so many things that just give you the keys to your, to your mind, and it's just.
Speaker 2:It's amazing how we're always externally looking for so many things self-help books, all these different things that people are writing and people are doing and you, you can refer to the bible for anything and if it doesn't make sense in the bible, it's not gonna make sense in real life and what I tell you is got is the key to life, is the answer to everything. So it's great. I don't want to make anyone feel like you find jesus and praise god, hallelujah, and everything's like hunky-dory from there. It was great for a year. It was really great for a year, and then the work really does come in and then it's just like you're on your own, and this path has been one of the toughest of my life.
Speaker 1:I love how you said that you felt at home. That's how I felt when we first walked into the church that we go to now. It's just that's the only way that I could describe it was it felt like home. So it's so interesting that you use that same terminology. You said that this part of your journey has been really hard. Can you explain that a little bit?
Speaker 2:The bigger your gift, the more the devil is going to attack you. I think that's the way that I can put it. When you are a person that has an ordained path, or you're here for a purpose, or you're supposed to be doing something, especially something that is completely the opposite to what you thought you was meant to do, and your mind plays tricks on you all the time, then you've got the outside struggles of you lose friends, you lose a lot of friends and you lose a lot of family and you lose a lot of people because they just don't understand what it is that you're doing. And you lose a lot of family and you lose a lot of people because they just don't understand what it is that you're doing. And it's fine that you don't understand what I'm doing, because if the vision was supposed to be yours, god would have put it into you. They didn't. They put it into me. So I follow and I'm faithful to what it is that I know that I'm supposed to be doing.
Speaker 2:But it's really tough because as time goes on, everything just chips away at you and you don't even recognize yourself. You can't go back because your eyes are open now, so you can't be the person that you was before. You can't even do those certain things anymore because you don't even enjoy them anymore. You can't move. You can't make it go faster, because everything has its timing and everything moves at the right time. At the same time, you're losing the things that you liked. You don't like anymore. The people that you were friends with you're not friends with anymore or they don't want to be things anymore. And you're just like in this tasteless part of life. And then you're being attacked by different people continuously all the time and people are bullying you, or people are nasty to you, or people are mean to you, or the question of what it is that you're doing, and it's just like I don't even know the answer myself. I just it's like a blind faith thing. I just know that this is what I'm supposed to be doing, so I'm carrying on doing it because it's the only thing that feels right. But it's the only thing that feels right, and everything else that used to feel right feels wrong. So it gets real lonely and the isolation part is real Like the isolation part is is really important as well, because without the isolation and without the silence, you can't hear what it is that you're supposed to hear. You can't even focus in the way that you're supposed to focus or get the strength to go down the journeys and and tests and stuff that you're going to go down. But it is lonely, very, very lonely and there are a lot of questions and there are a lot of tests of faith and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:And you do get to a point where you just think you feel so bad and feel so negative inside me. And I just spoke about this on TikTok. He got such a huge response and I didn't expect it because it was just me talking and I was crying while I was talking because I was just like I don't know whether I'm still doing the right thing, because it doesn't feel good, and that's the part that everybody gets to, the way they're like, oh my god, this doesn't feel good. And because it doesn't feel good, you want to stop, you want to go back, you want to get to the times where you was just living your life, happy, go lucky. And it doesn't.
Speaker 2:It's not always going to feel good. Sometimes it feels awful and sometimes it really hurts. And then you think, god, why would you put me in this position? Why would you do this to me. If I'm, if I'm following what it is that you want me to do, why would you do this to me? Why have you got me feeling so sad? And they are the really really tough moments that you gotta through that was really good.
Speaker 1:Thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Well, you need to believe in something bigger than yourself. If you are, especially if you have mental health problems and you have an overthinker, anxiety, any of these things, if you believe that you are the be all and end all and you don't have anything external to give your mind to, to pray, to speak to, to manifest or just to, you know, have, have a, have, a comfort, things that you can put your faith into, that will help you, then you are going to fall and crash and burn every single time. You don't have a get out clause. This, what is what is giving me, is a get out clause when I pray. I've had to learn that when you pray, you release it, you release the worry, you don't worry about it anymore. It's it's done, it is done, it's written, it's done, it's finished, and I never had that before.
Speaker 2:So when I thought I was in control of everything, I thought I was a mess, I'm a mess, I'm a failure. Then you can imagine the spiral that was in my mind all the time, continuously. So it's not easy for me whatsoever. It's not easy for me to have this conversation with you and be open. The fact that I'm doing a podcast is wild to me because I never used to speak about it in public before. It's really tough for me. It's really tough, you know, like my family. I feel you feel like you're going against your family. You feel like you're doing wrong because that's how you was raised your whole life. But it's really important to be respectful of yourself and I think people get lost in enforcing what they think they know and things like that onto everyone else and they don't even realize that that in itself is unchristlike, you think you, you think that you're behaving like a christian, but actually it's unchristlike.
Speaker 1:What would you say to people who are resonating? You just kind of talked about it very briefly. I'm sure you share a lot more in your book about your childhood and then being on the streets. What would you say to someone who's resonating with yes, I, I had a terrible childhood, or I was or am having an addiction problem, um, some of these things that you um quickly alluded to. What would you, what would you share with them?
Speaker 2:no one. People don't really like the answer to this and that's funny, and I've had a conversation about this with someone the other day. He was talking about something about um in his characters in his 40s mind, about something in his character of this of this day and age, and it comes from when I was five and my mom did this and all that lot. And my answer to that well, you're in your 40s, you're not five years old anymore. After a certain age, I know, obviously, as a child, what you go through and what you suffer and everything is out of your hands and it's unfair and it should never have happened. But after a certain age, everything becomes your responsibility, everything, how you choose to feel when you're an adult, given that you're not in the situation anymore, given that you're not in the environment anymore.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying that you necessarily have to forgive people and keep them in your life If you want to cut them out, if that's the way that you move forward, that's absolutely fine. You are capable and you are in control of healing anything that you want to heal. You just have to understand and recognize that, in order to give yourself the permission to do it the whole time, that you hold that blame and you hold that anger and you hold that revenge, you know, and that against those people. And I'm not saying I'm perfect here, I'm not saying I've healed myself of everything and I don't ever have any anger or anything like that, but the whole time that you do that you're just, you're just destroying yourself, happen one time or a few times, and then they don't happen every single day for the rest of your life. So the way that you carry it for the rest of your life is actually your responsibility that's really profound.
Speaker 1:I think that forgiveness is so hard and it's so interesting because of forgiveness, when you actually do it, it actually helps you right. It's not really about the other person, but it's such a difficult thing well, they always say that, don't they?
Speaker 2:that forgiveness is not about the other person, it's about yourself. You don't need to speak to the other person just to forgive them, but you do need to forgive things, otherwise you will become bitter, you will become angry. There's a lot of people that are walking around unhealed. They're angry and they are bitter, and they are. They do feel certain things, but it's not even anything in the current stage of their life is from many, many years ago. But there's nothing you can't do here today. Because I wanted to be, I wanted to get here, I wanted to become this person. I wanted to fix my relationship with my family. I came back from the streets in order do that. I didn't want to be estranged from my mum and dad, no more. And we're talking about 10 years of therapy after that. We're talking about 10 years of fighting, screaming, shouting, smashing things, and it wasn't easy, it wasn't overnight and it wasn't fixed, but it was better than the alternative, you know.
Speaker 1:Thank you for being just so honest with that. I've really enjoyed our conversation. Like I said, I'm going to link your book and all of your ways for people to stay in touch with you on social media and such, but I always love to end with what is your favorite Bible verse or story. I know you said that the Bible just has all the answers. Is there anything that you can share that might be one of your favorites?
Speaker 2:It's Lamentations 28 through 30. And it's basically about when you have anxiety, when you're stressed, and it says when life is tough and hard to take, go off on your own, be in silence, bow your head in prayer and wait for hope to come. And it really, really moved me recently. Actually, I only discovered this one recently and I filmed it so that I could post it. I sent tears as I was saying it and it was just so like you have the answer for everything inside of you. Stop looking for everything externally to go into the silence. Allow it to overcome you. Allow yourself to actually feel things. Don't keep running away from things and distracting yourself with things, with temporary pleasures and things like that. Allow it to run through. You trust yourself that you can actually, if you go into the silence and pray and and wait for an answer and just wait for hope.
Speaker 1:I don't think anyone has ever said Lamentations before. What a good book that gets overlooked. I know every section of it. It's a little bit of a downer, but it has that hope in the middle there. But it's real, right, it's real and I feel like that's what we're talking about in the Bible, and it's not just all like that's what we're talking about the bible and and it's and it's not just all you know roses and sunshine, and I think that's what makes what draws you in is is the realness of it.
Speaker 1:What are you great?
Speaker 2:the bible is actually a uh, it's cut. I'm grateful that I'm able, that I figured out how to be kind to people that are not especially within this journey of um finding and being close to God. It's taught me a lot of my character has changed a lot, and I think being kind in adverse, in in times of adversity, is a superpower, and I'm grateful that I'm actually able to figure out how to do that now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's hard. What kindness have you seen or what kindness have you given in the last week?
Speaker 2:Actually there was a homeless man that approached me yesterday. There's a lot of things there's not so many nice people around me at this moment in time and I try and stay kind. But this homeless man approached me and he said can you buy me a coffee? And I said, yeah, sure I'll buy him a coffee. I'm an ambassador for a charity called SANE um and that's only recent and he'd never heard of it before and he was explaining it was a professional golfer.
Speaker 2:He's now homeless, living on the streets. You know his whole career's gone just because of mental health issues. And it was just really nice just to spend time with him. I could see that everybody in the coffee shop was looking at me do you know what I mean? As if to say, like what are you doing? And it was very strange that people were even looking at me like that. It was very strange that nobody else bought him a coffee. He lit up a little bit that I actually gave him something that and a group of people that could help him. It was nice it was. It was a nice 10-15 minutes with this guy oh how nice.
Speaker 1:So you didn't even just give him money, you actually spent some time and and talked with them yeah, I bet that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I think that was the the best for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, instead of just here's some money which would be kind to actually say, hey, I see you and that's that's amazing.
Speaker 2:And you know what's funny, he was telling me a testimony about God. He was God. He was saying to me, like it was really random, we were talking, talking, talking and then all of a sudden he started telling me testimony and he said that, like he knows that God is real because there's been things that he's prayed for, like a pair of shoes. He said, like God, if you're real, like give me, I want a pair of shoes like that. And he said shoes was there. And I was like no, you've got me. I know you're real, I know you're real. So it was so beautiful to see somebody in such a bad condition to be able he's smiling, telling me a testimony, telling me that God is real, and he's not like angry. And if God was real, I wouldn't be in this situation. Do you know what I mean? He was actually trying to confirm to me that God is real, even though the environment that he's in and the conditions that he's living in it was really something else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, that's such a great story. It's such a great story. Well, I've loved chatting with you and I just appreciate your honesty and sharing your story and I know that people are going to really resonate with some of that. I know that the loneliness and feeling as far as you know God, you know if you wanted me on this journey, why is it so hard. I really appreciate you sharing that part of your story with us.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I hope people do resonate with it.
Speaker 1:Well on Ordinary People, extraordinary Things. Your story is his glory. If this podcast has been inspirational to you, please share this podcast with anyone that you think would really enjoy it or really get something out of it. It was jam-packed with so many insights. Don't forget to follow us on Facebook, instagram and X, and don't miss it. In two weeks, we will be back with Curtis Fry. Yes, he was on our podcast earlier, but his story was so amazing and so many of you loved it that he's back for a follow-up. So don't miss it in two weeks. We'll see you then.