From Arctic polar plunge to Mount Everest: A Dubai mum’s story of resilience and overcoming grief
Ahlaam Ali’s life took a turn when her father passed away…
‘Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy, it's unbelievable.’
Roald Dahl's quote encapsulates the motto of Ahlaam Ali, a Functional Medicine practitioner, who works between Thailand, Dubai and London. And if being outrageous involves a plunge into the middle of the Arctic, so be it. And now, she’s ready and prepped for a trip to Mount Everest, which will take place in the last week of September.
A single mother, and a woman handling different businesses between Thailand and Dubai, Ali laughs as she speaks about her “crazy stories and decisions” with candour. “I always look back at the things that I do, and wonder ‘did I really do that’ and ‘was that really me? No, no, it can’t be, it must have been my evil twin,” she says.
Yet, Ali is proud of her impulsivity; it has led her to some of the richest experiences in life. A sense of accomplishment reverberates in her voice as she looks back at the journey she has taken in the past decades; a journey punctuated by heartbreak, gnawing grief, bittersweet moments and yet flavoured by a victory, exhilaration and joy. As she explains her story, grief has been a trying companion throughout, but she was never going to let it define her. After all, as she maintains, when life punches you, you just have to climb back up.
The downward spirals and climbing up again
Ali is a single mother, and her sole priority has always been her son, who has also given her “pearls of wisdom” that has given her much light in the darkest times. “He’s too wise,” she says with a laugh. Ali moved from the UK to Dubai in 2004 with a four-year-old son. After managing several businesses over the years, including counseling and specialising in gut health, her life took a turn when her son went to study in Cambridge, in 2021, during the second wave of the pandemic. “He was my strength and comfort; everything felt so empty when he left,” she remembers. In spite of the gnawing loneliness, she tried to carry on. There was work to be done; she couldn’t allow herself to fall to pieces.
My health took a hit. I was just spiraling downwards, without knowing what my next destination was. One evening, I just realised that I had to get out of this rut. I needed to have some big goal in my life; a fitness goal....
However, her father fell ill and passed away in March 2022. Ali tears up at this point, as it becomes difficult to use the past tense to talk about someone so present. Grief doesn’t grow smaller or reduce, neither does it disappear, as much as we like to hope that it does. We just slowly grow around it, and it’s something that Ali slowly learnt, and is still learning. Moreover, loss and heartbreak ages you; and can eat into you physically, as she explains. “My health went downhill. I wasn’t sleeping at all." Life was on autopilot. One day dragged on to the next; time seemed to have stopped. Nothing made sense; she tried to find vestiges of his presence in his old possessions, and would keep his favourite shawl next to her.
She didn’t know how to get off the hamster wheel at first. The rut appeared to be deeper than she imagined. “I was just spiraling downwards, without knowing what my next destination was,” she says.
With her son's support, she fought to break free from the cycle of painful thoughts that consumed her evenings. So she travelled more, to places such as Turkey, as it felt liberating, cathartic; a brief escape from the overwhelming grief. She knew the process of finding herself again was a rather long, arduous task. Determined to reclaim her mental well-being, Ali sought out experiences that could break her free from the emotional paralysis that had taken hold. It began with challenging cold, frozen fears within her, which included her fear of swimming. “And so, I started taking diving lessons in June and July,” she says.
It was terrifying at first, especially for someone who feared being underwater and panicked about drowning. Yet, she tasted victory: The fear of water didn’t control her anymore. In fact, it spurred her on to do something completely out of character and unusual: An Arctic expedition.
The tale of the polar plunge
Ali isn’t able to keep the excitement out of her voice as she narrates the story of her Arctic expedition. “I just went for it. It was in November 2022, and one of the wildest, and most liberating experiences of my life,” she says, with a chuckle.
With a group of friends, she took off to Norway’s Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago, situated in the Arctic Ocean and went on the Arctic expedition. Surrounded by just glaciers, blue skies, mountains and seabirds, Ali finally felt a little lighter than she had done in the past few days. It’s what Nature does to you, she says, as she recalls the deafening quiet of the little town she lived in. This was a new, unusual kind of peace that she experienced, thrilling, yet, simultaneously calming too. The population was minimal, perhaps around only 1000 people, which was a relief.
This expedition was not without its adventures of course. Ali, who had just somewhat mastered her fear of water, had to contend with huge waves and a ship rocking precariously in the middle of the sea. “I was in tears. I kept thinking to myself, this is how I’m going to die,” she remembers. Her cheeky cheer resurfaces and she follows the statement with, “Well, I thought, at least passing away on an adventure would make for a good story, now wouldn’t it?”
Nevertheless, Ali persevered, and she was greeted with her next challenge: A polar plunge, which involves jumping into the icy, freezing sea. “I refused to do it at first. I said ‘No, what rubbish, I can’t do this’,” says Ali, narrating her almost feverish panic, as she paced back and forth in her room. And then, after much pondering, positive self-talk, she transformed into a daredevil. “I have no idea what came over me, but I said, okay, ‘I’m doing this’. I thought to myself, ‘okay you’ve been underwater, you’ve faced the worst. Do it.’ And I mean, why not? You only live once, so why not make it a good, memorable life?”
And so she jumped into a practically frozen sea, with exhileration, trepidation and fear, washing over her. “It was really, one of the best experiences in my life. And I’m so glad that I did it,” she says. It was one of the many ways of reclaiming control over her life, and herself.
Yet, Ali is far from done with her share of adventures. She was just warming up with the plunge into the Arctic sea.
‘Why not Mount Everest?’
Sometimes, grief still tries to drag you back into the rut. Despite her wave of exciting experiences, travels and finding herself again, Ali would often find herself in these ruts, which had the tendency to leave her drained and tired. Her health would fail her at times, and she needed a concrete plan on how to work her way out adversity. “I needed a big goal, a dream, to snap me out of this,” she says.
And so, a chance came in the form of a Bollywood film, where senior citizens decide to take a trip to Mount Everest. “I was watching it, and it suddenly hit me, why not? I can do it, too,” she says. And so it became a goal, and a vision that she was determined to achieve. A trip to the base camp in Mount Everest. A simple Facebook request on her groups, calling like-minded friends and acquaintances, led her to a company who could plan this expedition. And so, she and her group of nine women, decided to train every day, through planned workouts, and indulged in simple long walks during the day. A sense of community and strong sense of bonding emerged, which encouraged them to continue with this rather daunting task that lay ahead of them.
One adventure had paved the way for the next. With the help of guides, classes, detailed nutrition plans, they worked out, focused on their fitness. “I realised how important it was, to watch my health carefully. You just have to be careful with it; you can’t take it for granted anymore,” she says.
And with this expedition in mind, Ali reframed her entire perspective on life and its challenges. “I worked on sleeping at the right time, cut out staying late, and more importantly learnt to say no to friends, who wanted me to do so,” she says. Ali admits that she ‘could have gone the other way’, in the sense, just relying on unhealthy eating and sleeping habits, and staying out till early morning. “And many a times, it felt tempting. But I didn’t want to; I didn’t want to just ruin and destroy myself like this,” she says. She wanted to be an inspiration to other women in their fifties and sixties too. “You can always restart your life, in so many ways. You don’t have to just think that you’re too old and you’ve lost your shot. That’s hardly ever the case. It’s all about learning new things and experiences. Materialistic things will only get you so far,” she says.
Essentially, it’s not over, till you say it is. Whenever life tries to drag you down to the trenches, you can still find a way to claw your way out, she adds.