Stella Polare Boutique Events.

Amina L./STELLA POLARE

Follow Your Heart and Happiness Will Follow You…

I was born as an Aquarius in the middle of the coldest winter in the land of the Northern Star into a Christian (Lutheran) family. From an early age my life has been filled with a love of music. In my childhood I was always a bit different and lived in my own world. I felt loneliness.As a teenager, I had a lot of written correspondence with many teenagers from around the world.
I loved to write letters to pen pals talking about my life and I was so excited to receive letters with interesting stories and photos from the other teenagers around the world. Not forgetting the exotic stamps on the envelopes, I received, which each had an interesting story of their own.

This was the time without smart phones and computers where one would express oneself through handwritten letters and photos. I loved that time! Being in contact with all these wonderful penpals, I didn’t feel loneliness anymore! When I look back to this time, it was a real connection time.

It was nice to write letters with different pens and trying to have nice handwriting. Today we are so used to typing our letters and then signing with our handwritten signatures.

It was through the many pen pals from so many countries around the world that made me love our colourful Planet Earth and inspired me to want to see all the beautiful countries and learn many different languages. It also gave me a good chance to learn about other cultures and traditions!

When I was growing up, I started to travel and visit all these countries where my friends lived. I really enjoyed travelling and many times I travelled alone, as I loved my own peaceful space to explore every country not as an ordinary tourist, but I wanted to get to the roots of the country, people, culture and traditions I visited. I loved every country I visited as every country has its own unique people, culture and beauty.

Time passed by, I got married, gave birth to my 2 sons. got divorced, raised my sons to be educated and to be cosmopolitans, to respect and value people from all the different nationalities, cultures, and backgrounds. I wanted them to be able to speak many languages. I did manage to succeed in all this. I raised sons who respect all human beings and who can speak many languages.
One day it was time for me to understand that my sons were grown-ups and they wanted to get on with their own lives. My eldest son got married and my youngest decided to move into his own apartment. It was a big shock for me as my life was focused only on my sons. I did not know how to continue, how to get on with my own life not having them beside me all the time.

I started to search within myself and what goals I wanted in my life. I travelled alone to many places searching for myself, and the goals I wanted in my life. I travelled to Greece, where I spoke to a Greek Orthodox Priest for a long time under an orange tree. I travelled to the Vatican City in Italy, hoping to find my connection over there, but no, it was not meant for me. I travelled to India, but I didn’t find what I was searching for their either, however I learned from this trip that you can be the happiest person in the world even when you don’t have very much.

India was for me a great turning point. While I was raised in a country, where you take all things for granted – home, food etc. I saw the real life in India, where neighbours helped each other, where they lived in harmony with each other even though neighbours were from different religions. One neighbour was Hindu, another Muslim and another Christian, there was no difference! All of them respected and helped each other. Being kind to each other! One day some of the neighbours cooked and shared it with others… and the next day other neighbours did the same.

People had hardly anything, but they shared what they had and cared about each other and always had a beautiful smile on their faces. They were always there for each other!

All this goodness reflected my life a lot and I started to understand that we don’t need much. Being good to each other, this is our richness! Caring, helping each other, this is what is most important.

Meanwhile during all this period, I was reading a lot about different religions. Somehow when I started to focus on reading about Islam, I felt the logics of this religion was very close and understandable for me. I started to focus more on reading about this religion and I ended up listening to a Quran reciting. I did not understand Arabic at this time at all, but there was something which found its way into my heart and I felt that I wanted to become a Muslim. I did not know any Muslims at this time, so I got all my information about Islam from the internet.

I have to mention here about my first connection with Bahrain!

My very first visit to Bahrain was really by chance! I had a four-hour stopover in the kingdom. At the time my knowledge about Bahrain was very limited, so to get to know the place I decided to take a quick tour, grabbed a taxi from the airport and drove around. I do not know what happened exactly, but I definitely fell in love with the country from the first moment I landed. I deeply felt that it was a place where I would love to return and stay for a while where I could get to know this beautiful country and get more knowledge about Islam!

I fulfilled my dream and returned to Bahrain in August 2009 for one month as I decided that this would be the place for me to get more knowledge also about Islam.

I arrived in Bahrain and to be honest, I did not know anybody in Bahrain. Somehow, I had a good feeling and strong trust for this country.

I felt secure to walk and drive alone as a woman in Bahrain. Nobody ever disturbed me. The only thing that happened, was that the local people stopped me and asked if I needed any help. It was something totally new for me!

I became a Muslim just one day before Ramadan and started my first ever fasting as a Muslim in my life. I was a bit worried how I would manage, as my mornings always started with drinking water and coffee.
Fasting was much easier than I expected, and my first Ramadan passed by very quickly!

When Ramadan was over I felt I knew almost all the people of Bahrain as during Ramadan time I got acquainted with so many nice people who invited me to their homes for Iftar and took care that I had all and everything I needed.

My one month passed by too quickly and when it was time to travel back home, I felt, that I couldn’t leave this beautiful island. The hospitality of Bahrainis people, their caring and generous souls, welcoming open arms, especially towards guests and their big hearts is enormous and irresistibly. I felt this is my place where I want to stay!

I took a decision to prepare for my move to Bahrain and I returned back home to finalise everything over there. When I returned to Bahrain after a month, the new page of my life began. It is now the eleventh year I am living here on this land of the Two Seas and I have loved every single day living here.

When I returned to Bahrain, I became a local tourist guide as I loved to show the beauty of this country to all the other guests who came to visit this island. The beautiful Land of the Two-Seas drew me to become deeply attached to the island. From that moment onwards I had an urge to tell the whole world what a beautifully diversified country Bahrain is! It was like I started a beloved mission; to share my story about Bahrain with the rest of the world and tell a tale that has flourishing details in every single page. To make my dream become true, I established my own company and called it Stella Polare Boutique Events.

The name Stella Polare means a Northern Star which is famous for staying still in the sky while at the same time the entire northern sky is moving around it.

England’s national poet and famous playwright, Shakespeare made a reference to it in his quote “I am constant as the northern star.”

I truly hope Stella Polare Boutique Events will have an abundance of bright light to connect Bahrain with all the world and to globally reach every single spot in order to open unlimited channels of connection and communication while unleashing many opportunities.

I started to organize events in Bahrain and international events outside of the country and have a few successful events in Finland. On my last event in Finland, we had a group of Bahraini ladies talking about the status of women in Bahrain and GCC. I did not expect that this would be such an interesting topic for the Finnish audience, as the thinking about the women in the Gulf was very different from the reality.

From this event I understood that I have to organise more events with and for women to bring more awareness about each other, to know each other better, to understand each other, to learn from each other, and to inspire, motivate and support each other. By understanding and supporting each other we can make this world a much better place to live!

I established Stella Women Around the World organization. My first event in collaboration with 2 amazing women from Estonia was totally about women and was held in Estonia, Tallinn in March 2019. We had a group of fifteen ladies from Bahrain and one lady from Saudi Arabia representing the Gulf region. There were three topics on our symposium – Women in Three religions, Women in Crises & Women as Entrepreneurs. The event was a huge success and it proved to me that these events for women are so needed and should go on every year in a different country to involve more ladies.

Following on from this I started to prepare a new event – International Conference “Women in Innovation & Creativity Globally” in Bahrain, hotel Sofitel in March 25.-29,2020. There was immense interest and I had over 100 ladies joining this event from outside the Gulf region from 40 different countries all around the world. We prepared a unique international program with a 2-day Conference, a Fashion Show and a Gala Concert. All of us were so excited about this upcoming event and we were counting the days for the event to begin.

But what happened next was that Covid-19 destroyed all our plans. Our long- awaited event was postponed to September 16.-20,2020 and now the second time postponed to March 31. -April 2021.

It was shocking news to all of us. Especially at the beginning, as it seemed not possible what was happening in our lives! All countries closed their borders and all the people got stuck in their homes. Many businesses got hit from this lock down very hard and many people lost their jobs, many people got sick, many people recovered, and some people did not make it.

COVID-19 pandemic has completely changed our lives. Here we see how quickly all can change. We never know what can be next.

Now living over seven months with this virus, I think we all have learned a lot! The most important message is for all of us – never take anything for granted.

I can also find many good points from this hard time.

Suddenly we all got TIME.

Time to notice that Nature is sending us a message! We must take care about the nature as the past has shown what disasters have happened due to the wrong behaviour of the human beings. During the lockdown, our Planet Earth become more cleaner when the people stayed home.

We got Time to think, time to listen, time to spend with our families, time to organise many things we had no time to do before.

Time to become a better person. Time to ask forgiveness from the people we have offended. Time to care about each other. Time to drop arrogance. Time to drop jealousy. Time to drop envy.

Time to unite and stop hater for the religion, skin colour, ethnical background.

Time to LOVE each other and do all to make this World a much better place, where we can live in harmony.