There’s one huge advantage to ageing… and it’s called wisdom. Now, in my 50s, I feel the power of it.
It has allowed me to reflect and build a better version of myself, letting go of resentment, anger, bitterness and expectations.
I see the relatively young Prince Harry shoot from the hip – in his book, on TV, to all who will listen – and I want to reach out to tell him now what he will come to see in 20 years.
That if you want the people you’re attacking to empathise, it will only happen once you stop expecting it from them.
I do understand Harry, in that I moved away from cultural expectations and suffered similar banishment.
As a result, I’ve felt alone and isolated. Left unchecked, that hurt gets turned against those you love. You ask yourself why they weren’t there for you, why they didn’t put their neck on the line and speak up, even apologise.
What I didn’t appreciate then was that my deciding to do something different, didn’t mean that others would just get on board.
Wisdom has taught me to give people space and time to decide how they want to respond.
I learned that the more I shoved my values down people’s throats, the more they did the opposite of what I hoped – which was to love me for me, accept my differences and co-exist with respect and admiration.
Like Harry, I married someone outside of cultural expectations.
I was expected to marry someone like us – Muslim, Asian, preferably of Pakistani heritage.
Why? Because for generations in my family, that’s what they did.
They married people who looked like them, lived by the same cultural values and practised the same religion.
And then I chose to marry a white Englishman who wasn’t religious and whose closest sense of my cultural values was his love for chicken jalfrezi.
I was the first woman in my Kashmiri community to break the taboo and I suffered the backlash. Disowned by some family, I was talked about behind my back, saying I had brought shame to my family and my parents’ legacy.
My mum, brothers and sister stuck by me, taking the brunt of it.
When I look back, I recall how I wanted those who didn’t accept my decision to know they were wrong, prejudiced, backward. This was their problem, not mine.
So I used my public platform. I talked about them on chat shows, wrote about them, to show that I was right and they were wrong.
What I know now, 20 years on, is that they were scared for me.
They’d never known anyone do what I did. They feared I’d be lost, change, move on, and never come back and be that Saira they knew.
The more I pointed the finger, the more they felt I’d shut the door. But now, with time and getting on with my life, I have the very thing I craved from my wider Pakistani community – acceptance, respect and support.
You see, Harry, I get your feelings of hurt. But once you’ve shared it, you’ll feel alone again.
Your family will carry on as before. So my advice is this: Say your piece, then get on with life without regrets. It is the passing of time that heals rifts.
Live true to yourself, without anger and resentment, and in time you will you harness the respect of the very people you are disrespecting right now.
