Breaking Vases: Shattering Limitations & Daring to Thrive: A Middle Eastern Woman's Story

Breaking Vases powerfully and vividly captures the rich heritage of one woman’s Middle East, along with its brutal realities, which followed Dima Ghawi from her native Jordan to her adopted country, the United States. Brought up in a small, conservative Christian community in Amman, Dima learned to be quiet and subservient to her elders and to men. When she was just five, Dima’s beloved grandmother warned that a woman’s greatest responsibility was to preserve her image—one as fragile as a glass vase—and the honor of her family’s reputation. Anything less was shameful. Yet her grandmother also planted a seed: the simple hope that Dima could graduate from college and become the first formally educated woman in her family.At nineteen, hoping to free herself from cultural constraints and her father’s turbulent temper, she accepted a traditional marriage proposal from an older, affluent, and seemingly Western-minded jeweler. Newly married and in a state of naïve love, she happily uprooted her life in Amman and moved with him to California. But San Diego’s “Little Middle East” was not her American dream. She soon realized that her husband was more traditional and controlling than she had imagined. Changing her circumstances would be dangerous and require courage Dima had never known before. Nevertheless, she was determined to transform her destiny, even if it meant standing alone and facing life-threatening consequences. Her memoir captures the terrors and joys of escaping confinements, crossing continents, and daring to discover and create a bold identity and life purpose.

Dima Ghawi is Middle Eastern in her genes and a global citizen in spirit. With two decades of experience leading cross-cultural teams, managing client relationships, and developing talent for companies like IBM, Merrill Lynch, and Intuit, Dima combines corporate expertise with her inspiring personal story to captivate and motivate audiences. Through keynote speeches, interactive workshops, dynamic training programs, personalized coaching, and an online community, Dima shares her leadership journey with one goal in mind: to ignite others to reimagine their potential and take daring actions. Dima speaks to the leaders, the visionaries, and the rebels who are ready to shatter their limitations.