In this solo episode of the Living Legacy Podcast, host Zaakirah Muhammad—cancer survivor, brand strategist, world traveler, and professional photographer—shares her personal experience with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). She recounts how moving between Florida, Washington, D.C., and Tennessee revealed a pattern of mood shifts as daylight waned, leading her to recognize SAD. Zaakirah outlines practical tactics she uses to mitigate seasonal depression, including installing bright daylight bulbs, seeking natural sunlight, engaging in boxing, maintaining photography as a creative outlet, practicing positive affirmations, and planning warm‑weather travel or staycations. She reflects on her life milestones, goal‑setting, and the importance of accountability, encouraging listeners to assess unfinished goals and seek support. Throughout, she promotes her coaching services, upcoming book, and community channels (Facebook group, email list, Instagram) for further engagement and support.
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My name is Zaakirah Muhammad, and you are listening to the Living Legacy Podcast. This weekly podcast features women of purpose sharing stories of resilience. They are wives, artists, entrepreneurs, they run businesses, and here they will share their stories of how they overcame obstacles and how they're juggling it all. If you're ready to learn about professionalism, entrepreneurship, business, travel, life, and love, you're in the right place. You will hear real and raw stories of survival. Now it's your turn to be inspired to step outside of your own comfort zone. I am a cancer survivor, brand cultivating strategist, world traveler, and a professional photographer. I'm your host of the Living Legacy Podcast. Let's get into it. I have been talking about seasonal affective depression or disorder for a couple of years now. I'm just repurposing content from those couple of years because the stories are relevant. The stories that I'm gonna share about my own experience are still very much relevant. I did want to jump in and just initiate with some couple of tips for you. Now that the sun has set, now that the temperature is getting a lot colder a lot earlier than we expected, I wanted to share some tips of how I am able to manage seasonal depression because it wasn't until I moved back to Tennessee Which you'll hear a little bit later about that story, where I realized that I, too, am affected by it. It maybe even started earlier when I did move to Washington, D.C. But one of the things that I do to make sure that I am okay, because depression is real, especially for those who already have mental battles, being a cancer survivor, being deafblind, which I've talked about in a previous episode. I talked about my experiences of wearing 2 hearing aids in both ears. One of the things that helped me definitely during the last season is having daylight light bulbs throughout my apartment.
No matter where I am, at least I have bright light bulbs.
That way it's not dim. It's hard because my husband is the king of darkness, Darkness as I call him, because he loves to have doors closed, curtains closed, lights off, the whole bit. But whenever I get the chance, I need sunlight. Of course, I try to be outside as often as possible. It makes it easier now that I have— I've been juggling 2 jobs that require me to leave the house at least. For example, I just got back into boxing. I used to love boxing. I first signed up for boxing in 2014. A friend, a family friend, went boxing herself and invited me to tag along. I fell in love with it, and it was my first time really finding a boxing gym that would work for me. So seasonal depression is real. And aside from also just writing and maintaining your goals, the positive affirmation, positive things about you, those things will also help. And hey, if you can travel and go to someplace warm, I highly encourage that. If I could, I would. But I've been in the process of writing a book about my story. A few of these stories you've heard in the previous podcast episodes. But I have been in the process of editing a book and that's finally coming into fruition. And of course, that will allow me to kind of get out and meet people as I, you know, have book signings and events. But yeah, this is an old but relevant, actually extracted from one of my Facebook Live. In the year of 2018, I did one live video per month. And I kind of tried to keep that up in 2019 where if you follow me on Instagram, you'll see a few Instagram TV videos. But I definitely did a video, one video live. And funny enough, I was looking back, I was like, okay, what do I say? What do I tell you about my experience of seasonal depression and what advice can I give? And then I found, you know, the Facebook video that I did. So I thought it's perfect. You know, I'll just, you know, use this as today's episode. So I hope you like it. And of course, as usual, let me know what you think of it. If you are in the Living Legacy Listeners Facebook group, Definitely leave a comment there. If you're on my email list, send me an email. If you follow me on social media or follow the Living Legacy Podcast on Instagram, do that there. Let me know how— what tips you use, if there are any tips that were not mentioned. And I hope that, you know, winter has come. Even though it's not officially the winter solstice, winter has come. And I hope that you are able to take care of yourself as well. Thank you.
If there are any goals that were not achieved, like at all during the year, it's not too late. Like now is the time to really do something. I kind of want to talk about that. I kind of want to, um, kind of help you to also be accountable for yourself because I know it can be hard. I know this whole year itself has been hard. Oh, but it's just never too late. It's never too late to work on those goals that you have wanted to achieve. It's not too late at all. So I want to talk about that. Let's start with, I was just getting settled into Florida. I'm originally, I was born in Fort Lauderdale. Even though I live in the Nashville area of Tennessee, I'm a Florida girl at heart. I moved to Florida and I'm just thinking back, you know, I have all this time to just kind of reflect as I'm getting older because it also means when we get to the last 90 days of the year, that also means I'm about to turn a new age because I'm a December baby. And I counted down, I started counting down my birthday. I started reflecting a lot more. I started to see what else I wanted to do. Like, what else have I achieved? What have I not achieved? And so I've just been doing a lot of reflecting. And let's see, when I graduated high school, I graduated high school, I had a certification program in partners— partnership, in co— you know, along with my high school diploma. And then that's when I moved to Washington, D.C. to expand my photography education.
Mm-hmm.
But while I was up there, I had a lot of firsts. It was my first time in a while living in a place with 4 seasons. It was my first time really living on my own as a young adult. So I was just going through a lot. I was just, you know, I was like, I can do this. You know, I'm not disabled. Because for those of you who don't know, I am a cancer survivor. And that too is a battle in its own. I'm healthy now. But there's all kinds of internal things that we just kind of have to process. Process of like, why am I not normal? Why am I not like anyone else? Why this? Why that? So, of course, there's always those battles. I had to deal with that when I was living in Washington, D.C. So I'm just thinking back to how, okay, the winter falls and the leaves change. That's great.
It's beautiful.
But it's a short, short time before it starts to get cold. Now, when it gets cold, it's a cold and dark world out there. Right? And I mean that literally because there is no sunshine. There's barely any sunshine. If the sun is even peeking out, it's behind layers of clouds, right? And again, I was born in Florida. I pretty much grew up in Florida. I need sunshine. I need water. So I started to notice things about my behavior. It would start to change as soon as October, as soon as those last 90 days would hit. Normally I'm excited because Yay, it's almost my birthday! But then at the same time, uh, October, November, December would roll around and I just would feel a shift in my moods. It didn't hit me until I moved back home to Tennessee because my dad is from Tennessee and that's where my parents decided to retire. So after I, you know, finished kind of building my network and finished school in Washington, D.C., I moved back home to be with my parents. And that's when I really realized, um, there was a period where I was not Photographing at all. Maybe I had, you know, I took a couple of, you know, nature landscape photography on my phone. But my mom even observed it. She was like, why are you like not photographing? I haven't seen you taking your camera out since you've been here, you know, something like that. And that's when I realized, well, I think I had to match it with, you know, Googling the diagnosis or whatever it is. I Googled it and realized there's a word for this. Mm-hmm. It's called seasonal affective disorder, also known as seasonal depression, and it's abbreviated as SAD, like S-A-D. How crazy is that? So I realized that that's exactly what I was going through when I kind of abruptly decided to, you know, move to Florida for 6 months, technically for the winter, because I knew I needed sunshine. I needed sunshine. I needed water. I needed To be around what's familiar. Like, traveling is one of the things I love. I love going to new places. So of course, you know, once I got married, I couldn't just necessarily travel out of country whenever I went. I couldn't just, you know, up and leave wherever I went. So most of the time I had to at least learn how to do staycations. You know, wherever you are, just find someplace new, find something fun to do. That also allowed me to kind of get to know myself a little bit more. I'm actually comfortable now with going to the movie theater by myself. That wasn't something I was always comfortable with doing. I love going to the movie theater, but I need to find one person, one family member. But now I'm able to do that. I think the whole point of telling you this is like, if you're going through it, you're not alone. If you think that's what happened to YouTube, now you know what it is. Um, but for me, I've noticed that I just have to do what I love to do. So of course that is photography, but I gotta make sure I'm, I'm doing the type of photography that I love, not the type that gonna add more stress. And also, just figure out whatever it is that's holding you back and keep in mind of what it is that you love to do and do it. You know, even if you are married, even if you are a parent, you need to take care of yourself. Mental health is important. So important. That's that on seasonal affective or sad— the sad disorder.
Seasonal depression. It's real.
It's out there. And be sure to Check on your friends and family around that time, around now, you know, beginning now. Make sure everyone's good. Of course, you know, since nobody is alone, I am here for you, okay? If you feel like you have a business and you have things you want to work on, go to my website, zaakirahnayar.com. Go to the tab under Work With Me and let's work. We can work together. I have accountability meetings. We can just kind of meet on a regular basis so I can help you to Stay on track, get on track, make sure you're on the right track.
Thank you for listening to the Living Legacy Podcast. Do you have any suggestions on a topic you want to be talked about? Send me an email or leave them in a review. If you love this episode, be sure to share it with your friends. Subscribe, follow, and download so you don't miss the next episode. If you want to learn more, you can visit zaakirahnyyar.com. That's Z-A-A-K-I-R-A-H-N-A-Y-Y-A-R.com.
