About Our Guest

Sarosh Iqbal is the founder of Prezio, a personalized gifting brand rooted in meaning and creativity. After a career in Silicon Valley, she chose a different path. Her journey reflects resilience, uncertainty, and learning to trust herself.

Website: prezio.gifts

Instagram: @prezio.gifts

LinkedIn: Sarosh Iqbal

There is a kind of weight that builds quietly over time. Not because everything is wrong, but because everything has been held together for so long. By family expectations. By inherited definitions of success. By the version of you that learned early that belonging meant staying within the lines.

That is where we begin this month.

May is our series on resilience. Not as toughness or pushing through, but as your nervous system’s ability to return to itself after stress, without losing clarity or connection to who you are.

The brain does not distinguish well between physical danger and social risk. Disappointing family, stepping outside cultural expectations, or choosing a different path can register as threat. So when a woman chooses ambition or independence, her nervous system often braces. Not because something is wrong, but because it is doing its job.

In this episode, we sit down with Sarosh Iqbal. Raised in Pakistan with a clear path laid out, she followed it into a corporate career in Silicon Valley. When that chapter ended, she built Prezio.

What she shares is not linear. She was building a business while raising three children and navigating cultural expectations of motherhood. The guilt was real. So was the fear of judgment, which often lands deeper in the body than professional risk because it is tied to belonging.

We also explore the space between shame and guilt, what happens when worth is tied to roles, and what it costs to want something beyond them. Near the end, Sarosh shares a moment with her son that brings the conversation into focus.

This is resilience without performance.

If this conversation resonated and you want support, reach out at hello@therawonionpodcast.com.

Stephanie Ohannesian is the founder of Triage Coaching and Consulting, helping individuals and teams regulate burnout and shift inherited stress patterns.

Yoshie Barnett is the founder of Lotus Flower Journeys, supporting high-achieving women navigating life transitions and reconnecting with themselves.