35 Rejections and a Funeral: How Losing My Dream Led Me to My Purpose.

Reflection: How has trusting God’s timing been a struggle for you? What might God be trying to teach you in this process?

Trusting God was never the hard part; remembering Him only in the quiet moments when I needed something was. I prayed every morning, but as the day unfolded, I slipped back into my need for control, control of my life, my career, my destiny. I would work, show up, pour every drop of myself into something… and still watch the outcome betray my expectations. That mismatch between effort and result is where the frustration lived, where the sting burned the most.

My real lesson came after I got married, while working on my first feature film. Thirty-five rejections. Thirty-five doors slamming shut. Thirty-five reminders that maybe I wasn’t the one directing this story after all. And I broke... not all at once, but slowly, painfully, day after day. There were mornings I couldn’t get out of bed, days where I cried like a baby, the kind of crying you hear at funerals. That’s exactly what it felt like: like I was attending the funeral of myself.

For someone who had once traveled the world, been accepted into dozens of festivals, won awards, given interviews, been praised, it was humiliating. I wasn’t giving up because I am resilient to the bone. I always believed the moment I stopped trying was the moment the opportunities would stop coming. So I kept pushing. But every “next chance” became another “no,” and psychologically, it shattered me.

It wasn’t just filmmaking that broke me. It was adulthood landing on my shoulders all at once moving into a new home, navigating a new marriage, holding a full-time job, carrying responsibilities I had never carried before. At my parents’ house, my mother protected my creative world; now it was all on me. Even when I stayed up until 1 or 2 a.m. working on my project, it still never felt like enough.

My marriage suffered. We fought. I withdrew. I felt misunderstood, ashamed that my husband in our first year of marriage witnessed my darkest moments instead of my brightest. I didn’t recognize myself anymore. I hated the woman staring back at me in the mirror.

My doctor suggested I see a psychiatrist and consider medication. I said no not from strength, but because a voice inside whispered, “This pain has a message. Don’t numb it. You’re not broken. You will get through this.” But the truth is… it became toxic. I was losing myself, one rejection at a time.

The wake-up call came like ice water: my manager asked, “Hala, what do you actually get out of these festivals? Do you get paid?” I froze. In that moment, I realized something brutal: twelve years in cinema never brought me financial stability. Cinema gave me recognition, not security. Respect, not safety. And because I refused to enter the entertainment world because it defied everything I believed in I had to work other jobs to survive. That’s why I am teaching today: a prestigious school that pays the bills, but not my purpose.

I couldn’t keep living like that.

Pottery became my refuge. For six months, clay was my medicine the slowness, the presence, the silence. Feeling the clay move between my fingers reminded me what it meant to create something from nothing. It made me feel feminine again. It made me feel like an artist, not a product. But even then, a quiet ache remained. Pottery was a bridge, not a destination. Before pottery, I even tried painting. I was reaching for anything that could hold me together, anything that could quiet the noise in my head long enough for me to hear myself again. And one day, while painting, something rose inside me a sentence so clear it felt like a warning and a prophecy at the same time: “One day you’re going to do something for the last time… and not even know it.” I carried that line like a stone in my pocket. It haunted me, but it also prepared me. Because deep down, I knew the last time I would call myself “a filmmaker” had already happened, I just hadn’t honored the truth yet.

Then I started studying herbal medicine. I started oil mixtures, testing, failing, kept trying. Then? my nails healed. My sister and I posted the before-and-after photo, just to see if anyone cared. Within hours, twenty women messaged us women who were hurting, desperate, searching. “Please tell me when the product is ready.” “Where can I buy this?” “I’ve been struggling for years.” And in that moment, I felt it a spark, a shift, a divine alignment. This was bigger than me. This was purpose. This was calling.

Almost 11 months later, I know this with certainty: this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Because here in this business I get to be everything I once tried to separate: the filmmaker, the writer, the artist, the healer, the woman who creates space for others to love themselves again.

In this business, I became the person I didn’t have growing up. To my sister: never let anything or anyone destroy the soul God gave you. To my mother: I wish you could meet the version of you who chooses herself. To my past self: I wish you recognized your worth and never placed your heart in the hands of men who couldn’t see you. With them, it always felt like I was trying to give them an experience I was dying to live myself.

SelfLeuv didn’t replace my film, it fulfilled it. It became the continuation of the story that thirty-five festivals rejected. A dedication to my sister, my mother, my past self, and every woman who needs to hear: you are allowed to begin again. You are allowed to reinvent yourself. You are allowed to want more.

God was teaching me that nothing is wasted not the pain, the detours, nor the silence. What feels like an ending is often the doorway to what is real. If something feels off, it is off. Your spirit knows long before your mind does. Everything in life is pre-written, arriving only in its appointed time. You cannot force what isn’t meant to come just as you cannot bring your death date sooner. Forcing destiny only destroys peace.

I understand now: I was never meant to stay small. I was never meant to be one version of myself. I was never meant to shrink to fit a life too tight for my soul. God’s plan for me was always bigger than anything I was desperately holding onto. His timing over mine. His path over mine. His plan unapologetically, fiercely, eternally, over mine.

There is no such thing as ‘too late’ when God writes the story.

-Hala El Kouch