"You're Suhailah?"

Hello, I’m Suhailah. This is an evolving journal of my personal stories and reflections from my spiritual awakening journey. Here, I share thoughts and discoveries beyond my existing monthly newsletter as I explore life and consciousness from both human and spiritual perspectives. If you found this page on your own and just landed here, welcome. And thank you for being here.

It is a very strange, odd, unexpected, and sometimes utterly inexplicable and very lonely journey many of us have found ourselves on. This journey they call Awakening. I hope this helps someone know that they are not alone. And I’m one of the someones.🥹 🩷

And now, the story begins:

“You’re Suhailah?” he said. I looked closer, thinking maybe we’d met before, because he said my name with the kind of familiarity and precision that let me know he’d said it many times before. I am American-born and bred (NYC) and so where both of my parents, but this never happens in general - people getting my name right the first or even second time. Let alone an American white man.

Standing in between her, his wife, and me - only a few feet separating him from either of us on both sides of him - he turned his head from his left, looking at me, to his right to look at her. And while still speaking to me but referring to her, he continued, “She’s Suhailah.” Point-blank. Matter-of-fact sounding, as if to say and imply, “How can this be?…How can there be two of you walking this planet?”

Then, absolute stunned silence. Between the three of us. No one said a word. He turned red. I couldn’t identify what she was, and while she was light enough in skin tone to also turn red, I could see - even from a few feet away - her eyes started to water. So did mine.

My legs almost buckled, and I literally had to hold on to the highboy table - black, metal, and burning hot to the touch from the blazing sun - that was standing there beside me in order to get my bearings. It felt like lightning struck where I now stood. And the silence…as if we were waiting to see if you could hear the tree fall or split in half close by, that it must have certainly hit.

Unless you have a name like mine, and both a first and last name that you have never heard anyone else carry, you do not know what it is to go through your entire life and never meet a single soul at home, on an island, or in any other country you’ve visited with your name. Either of them…first or last. Except my five siblings and some of their offspring who also carry my last name. My first name? Never. - Ever.

Hell, I didn’t even know what a big deal this was until this day. This moment.

It was like, if you have skin color like mine, going your whole life and never knowing another Black or brown person existed, and then you finally see one. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to explain the level of sheer shock I felt in that moment. Like an entire other or new species that you belong to just appeared that you just became aware of. We both felt this. Her and I. You could see it, feel it, in the air that hung between us in that brief moment of silence, like time stood still, and we all froze at the sound of our name. Froze, like someone pausing a show on Netflix to go to the bathroom. And even in her husband’s face as he stood there with blood rushing to it, still red.

Crazier is - they are my literal neighbors. Literally. Never saw these two people in my life (been here five years), although she, who turned out to be Mexican (even odder for her to carry this name, which she was aware of as she explained to me why her father named her this), said she’d seen me before. Passed by me before. A couple or a few times.

What drew us out onto the same street near where we lived on this day, at the same odd time, right when morning turns to afternoon but when you’re not sure which it is, was another story unto itself.

We had talked for a good 20-25 minutes, this couple - the Suhailah with my name and her husband - prior to this formal introduction. First commenting and being drawn to stand and talk for a bit because of activities near where we live where a famous TV and film writer was getting his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

We both noticed that his ceremony seemed to have less hoopla, more reverence, more sophistication than other people we’d seen get their stars near and around where we live. I didn’t know who the writer was by face or name, but I recognized his work once the other Suhailah’s husband updated me on it, and I recognized some of the A-list actors and comedians that were there, crowding around him - the writer getting his Hollywood star - in cheerful support and celebration all standing no more than 15 feet from where the three of us stood and chatted.

It was like a black-tie event on the sidewalk under the white tents shielding those in attendance from the scorching sun...so different than glimpses of other walk of fame ceremonies here, which are frequent and which you get used to after a while living in LA.

This is the thing that made us all, this couple and I, stop and look, where we then started talking. The unusual quietness, calmness, and sophistication of the whole thing.

Our talk soon turned to where we lived (this is when we realized we were neighbors), our travels, her husband’s work, and small talk - I can’t recall what about now. But it wasn’t until we were about to go our separate ways that I turned around at the last minute, at the thought to say, “It was nice to meet you both…,” reaching my hand out politely, at first not realizing he was the one closer to me as I turned back around as they had just turned in the opposite direction to walk away.

So then he was the one my hand met, as he turned his head and half his body back towards me, as I extended it in a gesture to shake his. “I’m Suhailah,” I said. Another odd thing for me to do because I would normally say something more along the lines of, “It was nice to talk, what’s your name?” But I said mine first this time.

“You’re Suhailah?” he said back. And so it began. Something began, but I have no idea what.

I once dreamt about my name being said or used in a dream where I was off-planet on another one, looking at planet Earth. In that dream, I saw the earth as clear as day, like how we can look up and see the moon in real life, except it was directly in front of us maybe a half a football field’s length away in distance - gigantic and magnificent, spinning in her orbit slightly above but still in my direct line of sight from the planet I was standing on as I joined a crowd of others who were watching the same thing.

So if you just looked out and over directly in front, there was Mother Earth. I saw a ring around her. Golden. Ethereal in nature. In look. But also not that unlike the ring that held, as part of the stand, a physical globe that sat on desks in classrooms in schools when I was growing up. Do they still have these? Similar idea, except the ring that I saw was going around Mother Earth on a slant, more horizontally, kind of. The ring was proportional to her - our Earth - and it circled around her like a hug or like a multi-lane superhighway wrapping around her, keeping her steady or maybe moving when she did. Like a gigantic disc with a hole in the middle where she was. And it glowed, this white-golden ring. Or rather, it gave off a glow that also seemed to look like dust or haze dancing against the sky...or wherever we were.

In that dream, which I had 10 years ago in 2015 but I remember it like it was yesterday, a whole race of people were awakening - as grown adults, not babies - literally opening their eyes from standing and sloping body position. As they awakened, their eyes were blue. All of them. No matter the color of their skin, which I don’t remember. I mostly remember the eyes. They were a remarkable, stunning blue.

In that dream, I seemed to be a part of what was happening. One of the organizers of whatever was taking place, even though I too didn’t seem to know what was happening from the ground and on the planet where I was, as we heard a sound come from the planet I recognized from where I stood as Earth. Gaia. It sounded like she was calling to us. For us. A sentient being.

In that dream, a decision was made. It was first thought that all of these bodies and beings that were coming awake would be given my birthday. Then that was changed just as quickly, and it was decided that they would be given my name instead. Suhailah.

Back then, when I woke from my sleep that morning, I remember thinking this was the most epic dream I’d ever had, and I searched for the symbology in its meaning (and vice versa), or its message for me, as I always do with my dreams.

But a whole race of people named Suhailah was one of the things that I remembered about the dream the most, because in real life the opposite of this is true - I don’t meet people with my name, although three have been named after me, none of whom I’ve met except one (another coincidence and story from years ago), and also the woman I was named after, who I’ve never met either.

My mother only told me she was someone with this name in the mosque my parents belonged to before or when I was born.

Ummah. Community. Awakening. Mother Earth. Humanity. The cosmic realms. The universe. Me. My name - North Star is one of its meanings. It is Arabic.

Meeting this woman, Suhailah, in that moment, I somehow know all of these things are connected. And I’ve been on a journey - a mission - for years before this and even now, with a much greater and expanded awareness and more so than ever before, to find out how, what, and why.

This day was the first time I turned to ChatGPT to ask a series of questions starting with “What are the actual chances?…” like give me the stats, as I entered in all the things that led to that moment, in this year of 2025, in that month, that week, that day, that hour, that minute...this country, state, city, and exact street in Hollywood that day. A neighbor with my already very rare name.

Even in Islamic countries, this is a very rare name, I have been told this by many a man and woman from these places even though I have never visited any.

“1 in 444,000,000 is our central estimate based on reasonable assumptions” said Chat GPT. Using mid-range assumptions based on all the facts I knew and gave it about the other Suhailah and me, that day and location, and us being neighbors. More conservative: “1 in 3.3 billion,” it said.

So maybe now, in reading this, you understand how I felt.

It took me two days to feel like myself again after that encounter.

Have you ever had an experience like this? No about a name in particular, but in any other way? Feel free to leave a comment.

~ Suhailah 💙

Update, March 2026: Since writing this post last August, this Awakening Journal & Writings section has become a paid subscription section of Spark, my Substack publication. If this story resonated, here is where I go deeper. Dreams, reflections, and early excerpts from my forthcoming book. Subscribers receive them first.

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