so I changed the name

If you've been here a while, you noticed something different.

This newsletter used to be called The Superpower of Self.

And I meant it. I believe in the power of the individual. The
work you do on yourself. The inner transformation that changes
everything.

But here's what I've learned after 19 years of marriage, 16 years
of parenting, and a lifetime of trying to figure out who I am:

The self doesn't exist in isolation.

You don't become powerful alone. You become powerful through the
people you build with. The family you create. The vision you
forge together. Even when "together" feels like a war zone.

The superpower isn't the self.

The superpower is what the self can build with others.

That's why this is now The Family Launchpad.

Because family is where you actualize. Where you're tested. Where
your philosophies meet reality and either hold up or fall apart.

It's the ultimate collaborative enterprise.

And like any enterprise, it requires intention, systems, vision,
and two (or more) people willing to merge their entirely different
operating systems into something new.

Which brings me to the pilgrim hat.

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My daughter Kaja was 3 years old.

She was in a 2-day-a-week, half-day preschool program. The kind
you put your kid in when you've done everything right. Good man,
check. Marriage, check. Kids, check. Move to a good school
district, check. Do what the doctors, teachers, and experts
say, check.

I had followed the script perfectly.

I grew up in Brooklyn. In the hood. Collard greens, mac and cheese, and "stay
in school" sermons. I did stay in school. I “made it out.”

We had two beautiful girls. We moved to the suburbs. We were
living the dream.

And then Kaja came home with a pilgrim hat.

It was almost Thanksgiving. They'd done the whole "happy pilgrims
and Indians" story. You know the one. The friendly feast. The
grateful natives. The wholesome beginning of America.

A lie.

But that wasn't what broke me.

What broke me was that Kaja had declined the Indian hat.

And I wondered: Was it because the pilgrims were the heroes of
this story? Was she already learning which side to be on?

I sat there holding that construction paper hat and thought:

Oh no. No no no.

I got all the way here. From the hood to the suburbs. For THIS?

This "easy living" doesn't feel quite right. Why is everyone else
already telling the stories they think MY family should know?
Where are OUR stories? Our visions? Our values?

Because this ain't it.

That evening, Ole came home from work.

"I want to homeschool," I said.

The look of horror on his face said everything.

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I wish I could tell you it was easy after that.

It wasn't.

Ole is Norwegian. Logical. Systematic. If you can't prove it with
data, he's skeptical. He was raised in a country where the schools seemingly
work Where "homeschool" sounds like something people do
when they've joined a cult.

I am not, well…logical. I'm intuitive. I feel things before I can
explain them. I know something is wrong before I can prove it.
And I was asking him to bet our children's future on my gut
feeling about a pilgrim hat.

The very things that attracted us to each other, his steadiness,
my fire, became the things we clashed over the most, once we became parents.

It would take three years before we were both fully on board, on the same team.

Three years of battles. Some big, some silent. Three years of me
doing more than objecting. I started building. Creating systems
he could see. Showing results he couldn't argue with. Proving
that this wasn't chaos. It was intention.

He didn't need me to be right. He needed to see it work.

So I built something that worked.

And slowly, we stopped fighting and started merging. His logic
met my intuition. His systems met my vision. We stopped trying
to win and started trying to build.

That's when our family became a launchpad.

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Fast forward to 2022.

Kaja is 12. We're choosing curriculum for 8th grade. By now, we'd
been homeschooling for years. We did piecemeal curriculum,
choosing what aligned, discarding what didn't.

I opened the grammar curriculum we were considering.

And I saw it immediately.

The same energy. The same stories someone else decided my daughter
should learn. The same subtle programming dressed up as education.

It took me right back to when she was 3.

I closed the book and said: "No thank you. We'll take it from here."

That year, instead of their grammar curriculum, Kaja wrote a book.

She was obsessed with scuba diving and couldn't believe more kids didn't know they could get certified. So she wrote "Because Kids Can Scuba Dive."

She published it at barely 13. She released an album on Spotify
just after 14. She's 16 now, freelancing for other writers, doing videos and content.

Her sister Kamilla is 14 and writing her own book series about food history. The first one is called "Captain Compass and the Tomato Trails." It explores the real story of how popular foods ended up on our plates. We live in Mexico right now, where tomatoes actually come from.

Most people think tomatoes are European. The winners write history. Kamilla is rewriting it.

Neither of my daughters is a prodigy. We're not special parents with special kids.

We just stopped waiting for permission to write our own stories.

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Here's what I've learned:

Family isn't something you have. It's something you build.

And building requires two things most families skip:

1. A rejection of the default script

2. A vision worth fighting for (and fighting through)

That pilgrim hat didn't just change my mind about preschool. It
changed everything. It was the first time I asked:

"Who decided this is how we do things? And do I agree?"

Once you ask that question, you can't stop asking it.

About school. About food. About success. About what your kids
should know and believe and become.

That's what The Family Launchpad is about.

Not tips and tricks. Not "10 ways to get your kid to listen."

It's about building a family worth launching from.

A foundation you create together. Even when "together" is hard.

An enterprise where everyone grows, contributes, and becomes
more of who they're meant to be.

Not through isolation. Through interdependence.

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🛠️ THIS WEEK'S IMPLEMENTATION

I want you to find your "pilgrim hat moment."

The moment you realized the script wasn't working. The moment
something felt off and you couldn't unsee it.

Maybe it was a school assignment that didn't sit right.
Maybe it was advice from an expert that felt wrong for YOUR kid.
Maybe it was looking around at "success" and feeling empty.

What was the moment you started questioning the checklist life?

Hit reply and tell me. I read every response.

And if you haven't had that moment yet? Maybe this newsletter
is it.

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🚀 FROM THE LAUNCHPAD

What I'm building right now:

🌱 Wee Wise Tales
An illustrated video series teaching kids that their thoughts are like
seeds. Based on a book I could recite by heart. Because kids
can't afford to wait until adulthood to learn this.
→ Watch Episode 1 on Youtube now: [link]

📥 The Family Launch Plan
A one-page worksheet to get your whole family on the same
launchpad. Free.
→ Download it: [link]

📚 Because I Am Books
My picture book series for building kids who believe in
themselves before the world tells them not to.
→ See the collection: [link]

Here is Kaja’s book Because Kid’s Can Scuba Dive [link]

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Welcome to The Family Launchpad.

Formerly The Superpower of Self. Now something bigger.

Because the real superpower was never just the self.

It's what the self builds with others.

Let's build something worth launching from.

See you next week,

Azizi 🚀

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The Family Launchpad
"The foundation you launch from, return to, and grow from."