'There are gems in people'

"You need to break yourself to make yourself," says Nada al Bustani. This is something she knows a lot about, having been born with osteogenesis imperfecta (sometimes known as Brittle Bone Disease), a disorder that caused deformities in her legs and left her wheelchair-bound.

"When I was growing up, especially through puberty, I had broken bones every other month. Most of my baby pictures are me in a cast." Nada, 30, is small, but her personality is large and fills the room. "People say I am too friendly," she confides, "I don't think that is possible." Born and raised in the UAE, she has witnessed changes that have been made to accommodate the disabled. When she used to visit the shopping mall she would have to rely on the freight elevator to get from floor to floor.

"It wasn't for customer use but it was the only way I could get up there. It was filled with trash and boxes of merchandise," she says, grinning. It may be easier for her to get around now, but Nada has never limited her world to the flat, smooth surfaces that she can roll along with ease. Although her schools were chosen carefully, with family members or friends on staff for extra support, it is almost as if she went out of her way to ensure that obstacles would not shape her life.

"Me being me, I had to take science, and all the science classes were on the second floor. Every time I had a class they had to pick me up - carry me physically. The first time it was embarrassing but I got used to it." Some things about her make life a little more complicated; she is a woman, a UAE national and is confined to a wheelchair. None of which stopped her from moving to the United States, by herself, at 19 to pursue her education.

"The next thing I knew I was in the States. There was rent to pay, I had to do the laundry, cooking, I had to balance the finances. "I had a manual wheelchair because I wouldn't use anything motorised, but the first time I used the metro on my own I got so exhausted. I got lost and couldn't make it to class." But she figured it out and when her parents went to visit they deferred to her. Being in the US gave her an opportunity to immerse herself in the needs of the disabled. Although she can hear, she fell in love with deaf culture, learned sign language and translated for a deaf professor. She took classes at Gallaudet, in Washington DC, the only university in the country dedicated to the deaf and hard of hearing.

"I always felt like I was getting culture shock, going in and out. There was noise, but not the noise that we are used to. It was one of those experiences where you look at different perspectives on life." Nada graduated and moved back to the UAE, where she found a job in banking. Many people are surprised that she works. "In my job I am the manager of service recovery and I deal with customers who are angry, frustrated and mad. When they call me I am just a voice, but then they come and see me and they learn that I am in a wheelchair. They think, 'she's in a wheelchair, can she help me?'."

While she enjoys her job, it is not her passion. Nada loves helping people and, more specifically, she hates to see lives wasted. Her sunny voice becomes vehement when she talks about people floating through life. "Sometimes people have become so busy that they have lost themselves. I hate waste, in any type of way, but human waste is the worst because there are gems in people." She talks about a colleague whose fiancé constantly put her down. The woman felt worthless as the man blamed all his problems on her.

"I wanted to shake her," says Nada. Eventually the woman decided to leave her fiancé. "I thought, 'thank you God'. When she realised the truth it made her sparkle." In 2004 Nada took a course in life coaching on a whim, after it was recommended to her by a friend. "I didn't read about it before or look into it at all. I just thought, 'hey, it's an experience.' I like learning things. Knowledge is wonderful."

After the course she was hooked, and eventually took nine more dealing with different types of coaching. Life coaches try to help people accomplish their goals. They are not counsellors or therapists, but they use their training to motivate people to make the changes in their life that they need to be happy. "Life is an experience to be cherished and enjoyed. It's normal for people to feel sad, normal for people to lose their way, but I don't feel it's normal for them to want to be lost."

She speaks the cliches often found on motivational posters: "People sometimes have a lot of dark, but you have to pass through it to get to the light; "Every day is an experience; "I've never met someone I didn't get touched by; "There are no obstacles, there are no boundaries. That is only perception." But Nada believes it, and she cares. Her voice is warm, she looks you in the eye and suddenly it all seems possible.

"People say that they want to be happy and I say, 'define 'happy'.' Some people don't even know what they want. They have lived their lives based on others' expectations and they have lost themselves." Nada has not lost herself. She knows exactly what she wants and is patiently waiting for her opportunities to unfold. So far it seems to be working. "I decided to start my own coaching business because, while there is a lot of training about professional etiquette, I don't think there are enough people talking about finding themselves."

After she was invited to give a motivational speech at a forum, many members of the audience became her clients. She has kept her job at the bank and is waiting to see how everything unfolds. "Looking at current conditions where everyone moans about the economic crisis, sometimes I think it is a blessing. People have to stop and look at priorities. Money is gone with the wind, but security is who you are."

That Nada is in a wheelchair is the least interesting fact about her. "People see me for the first time, see the wheelchair and then they see the person," she said. "Then the wheelchair disappears and the person remains."

amcmeans@thenational.ae