In this week’s episode, “The Girl With the Key,” Maryam talks with Kimmah about the truths we inherit early, the power of being a woman who always knew, and the way identity keeps expanding even when you’re already grounded. She shares the quiet certainty that followed her from a childhood refugee camp to Hollywood boardrooms. A certainty that shaped every bold move she made.

Her journey is a reminder that transformation isn’t always a rupture or a reinvention. Sometimes it looks like honoring the instincts you trusted as a girl. Sometimes it looks like choosing your life before the world tells you how to live it. And sometimes it looks like realizing the key you hold today is the same one you’ve carried all along.

Here are the five Glow Notes from the episode and your takeaways to sit with, return to, and carry forward.

1. Becoming Rarely Follows a Straight Line

Before Maryam ever became a Hollywood executive, she was a young girl fleeing Iran with her family and living in a refugee camp in Eastern Europe. From Iran to Eastern Europe to Canada and eventually to the U.S., her path looked nothing like the polished success she lives today.

She even learned English by watching Disney movies on repeat, long before she ever walked into Disney Studios as an executive. Her life proves that becoming rarely looks linear. More often it looks like survival, reinvention, and unexpected doors you did not even know you were walking toward.

Try this now:
List one detour in your life that frustrated you at the time and one thing it eventually taught you.

2. Say Yes Before You Feel Ready

In the episode Maryam laughs about how she never technically qualified for the big roles she stepped into. She grew into them. From early agency days to billion dollar entertainment companies, she said yes long before she had the confidence to match the opportunity.

She did not wait to feel ready. She moved toward roles where she did not check every box and did not know every answer, learning the job by doing it. Success often looks like shaky hands and whispered courage.

Try this now:
What is one opportunity you have been waiting to feel ready for? What would saying yes anyway look like?

3. You Hold the Key

As a child, Maryam ran her first business at six years old by giving rides on an electric horse outside her family’s store. She kept the small key to the coin box and learned something early. The key was not just for the horse. It was a symbol of ownership. A symbol of access. A symbol that she already held the power to shape her future.

Throughout her life that lesson repeated itself. Whether through her father’s belief in her or her own clarity about what she wanted, she learned that no one was coming to grant her permission. She was already holding the key.

Try this now:
Write down one area of your life where you’ve been waiting for validation. What would change if you let yourself turn the key?

4. Trust Your Body’s Signals

Before her mind caught up, Maryam’s body was already speaking: fatigue, tightening, intuition, ambivalence, even the subtle tug of desire. She learned to listen, and in that listening, she learned to lead herself.

Her body never betrayed her. It protected her. It told the truth before she knew how to express it.

Try this now:
Notice one physical signal your body has been sending you lately. What might it be asking for?

5. Motherhood Is Not a Pause — It’s a Training Ground

Maryam rejects the narrative that motherhood sidelines ambition. She names it as one of her greatest teachers. Motherhood sharpened her intuition, widened her capacity, softened her edges, and strengthened her discernment.

It did not take her out of the game. It prepared her for bigger stages.

Try this now:
Reflect on one way motherhood (or caring for others) has made you more capable, not less.

Gentle Close

Maryam’s story is not about waiting for clarity. It is about carrying it quietly, even when the world tried to convince her otherwise. The refugee camps, the cross-continental moves, the early agency days, the Hollywood boardrooms. Every chapter revealed the same truth. She has always been the girl with the key.

Her becoming is not loud or hurried. It is intentional, rooted, and led by a knowing she has trusted since childhood. And that is the invitation for you too.

You do not need permission to step into the next version of yourself. You already hold the key.