In the early 2000s,
I started writing because I did not know
what else to do with what I felt.
I was young.
Too young to understand loss.
Too young to speak honestly about emotion.
And like many people,
I learned very early
how to stay quiet instead.

At seventeen,
I read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.
I did not fully understand it then.
But something stayed with me.

The idea that beneath noise,
beneath fear,
beneath thought,
there might still be something untouched.
Something aware.

Writing became the only place
where I stopped pretending.
Not because I wanted to become a writer.
Because I needed somewhere
for emotion to exist honestly.

I searched for feeling everywhere.
In movement.
In competitions.
In crowded nights
that became quiet the moment
I came home again.

Sometimes distraction
felt easier than honesty.

But eventually,
silence always returned.
And so did the need
to understand what I was carrying.

Years later,
that feeling became ZUHRA.

The name comes from Arabic.
Flower.
Light.
Radiance.

Flowers became part of ZUHRA
because they reminded me
that softness can still survive.
That even fragile things
continue to return.
Again and again.