I’m Babak.
I came to the Netherlands at eleven. Not by choice. My family left Iran under the pretense of a vacation and applied for asylum. I never got to say goodbye. Not to my country, my family, or the life I knew.
My father didn’t come with us.
At eleven I became the man of the house. Nobody asked. It was just expected. The carefree years — being a child, being a teenager, making mistakes without consequences, being guided by a father — gone before I knew what I was losing.
A voice settled in early: make something of your life. Otherwise everything your mother sacrificed was for nothing.
That weight followed me for decades.
I built a company with my sister. Multiple stores, a webshop, a wholesale operation, our own clothing line, dozens of employees, millions in revenue.
Then I lost it all. Bankruptcy. Debt. Shame.
At 33 my mother died. She was 55. Cancer. Fast.
Shortly after, my relationship with the mother of my children fell apart. I became a co-parent — 50/50 — grieving and fathering at the same time.
For twenty years weed was my answer. Every day. All day. Gambling, sex, cigarettes — addiction showed up in many forms. Because the pain had nowhere to go and no one ever taught me how to carry it. So I survived the only way I knew how.
I stopped. Not heroically. Millimeter by millimeter.
Sport became my anchor. A therapist helped me see what was underneath. Slowly I started coming back to myself.
I’m a father. An ex-addict. An entrepreneur. A son who still misses his mother every single day.
I have a temper. I love deeply. I laugh loudly. I have an inner child who was silenced for too long and an inner teenager who still shows up uninvited — and sometimes exactly when needed.
I’m learning to let all of them speak.
That’s what ALL OF YOU is about.
My mother spent her life helping others. She built schools in Iran. She drove to villages with food and clothing. She helped immigrant women find their footing in a country that didn’t speak their language.
She never got to see this platform.
But I think she’d recognize it.