Today we’d like to introduce you to Sirel Rayburn.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My story did not start with clarity or confidence. It started with survival.
I became a mother young and learned early how to carry responsibility before I truly knew myself. For years, my life was shaped by reaction rather than intention. I moved through seasons of instability, addiction, incarceration, and deep identity confusion. On the outside, I learned how to keep going. On the inside, I was disconnected from my body, my voice, and my sense of worth.
There were years where I made choices from fear and unhealed pain. Those choices came with real consequences and eventually forced me to stop running. What changed my life was not a single moment or breakthrough, but a slow and honest reckoning with myself. I began learning how my nervous system worked, how to feel instead of numb, and how to take responsibility without drowning in shame.
Motherhood became both my greatest challenge and my greatest teacher. It asked me to look at the patterns I was living and decide whether I wanted to repeat them or end them with me. That decision changed everything.
Today, I am the founder of Surreal Life Productions, a platform rooted in self discovery, embodiment, and truth telling. Through the Surreal Life podcast, Surreal Mirror sessions, events, retreats, and experiential spaces, I create environments where people can slow down, feel, speak their truth, and live from a more aligned place. My work is guided by the framework feel it, speak it, live it, not as a concept, but as a lived practice.
I am also a wife, a mother of six, and a woman who understands that transformation is not about bypassing the hard parts of life. It is about integrating them. My life and my work are shaped by contrast. The breakdown and the becoming. The past and the present. I am here because I chose to stay present through all of it.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No, life has not been easy. But everyone carries a story.
Mine began early. I was taken from my birth mother at seven and adopted at twelve. By adolescence, I had been labeled a runaway and a problem child, long before I understood who I was or who I could become.
I entered adulthood carrying those labels into single motherhood, alongside the weight of becoming a three time felon. On paper, it is the kind of story that convinces people your path is already decided. That you will stay in the system. That you will never break the cycle.
But this is where the contrast cracked me open.
Even in the middle of chaos, I knew there had to be more to life than suffering. I could not choose the family I was born into, but I could choose how I lived. That knowing stayed with me.
I worked to create stability for my children and to show up differently in motherhood. After COVID, I opened my first business. A year later, it failed, and I found myself rebuilding from the ground up again, including a season of homelessness.
When I look back now, the pride is not in what I built. It is in the fact that I stayed. I did not give up on myself. I kept choosing forward, even when the path disappeared beneath my feet.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Surreal Life Productions is a creative and experiential platform rooted in self discovery, embodiment, and honest storytelling. The work exists to create spaces where people can slow down, reconnect with themselves, and live with greater intention.
The work spans multiple expressions, including a podcast, a magazine, one on one Surreal Mirror sessions, live events, retreats, and immersive experiences. Everything we create is guided by a simple but lived framework: feel it, speak it, live it. This is a practice embodied in real time.
What sets the platform apart is its commitment to truth over performance. There are no quick fixes or polished transformations here. The work honors the nervous system, welcomes the full human experience, and allows growth to unfold without force.
What I am most proud of is the integrity behind the brand. Surreal Life was built through lived experience, shaped by contrast, and rooted in presence. It continues to expand into new creative expressions, including long form storytelling and live performance, as the platform evolves.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
The most important quality behind my success has been my relationship with my nervous system.
For years, I did everything I was taught to do. I read the books, learned the strategies, hustled, chased, and pushed myself into constant burnout. There were moments where it made no sense. I was doing all the right things, yet nothing was working. What I eventually realized was that strategy means very little if your nervous system cannot hold it.
I was disconnected from my body and leading with masks. I lived in a fake it till you make it mentality, trying to build a life my system was not resourced to sustain. The shift came when I stopped trying to become someone else and began owning my own being and identity.
Building a relationship with my nervous system taught me how to be present, how to ground into gratitude, and how to understand my true capacity. When my body felt safe, clarity followed. Alignment became sustainable.
I now treat my energy like royalty. I move with reverence for my capacity, I choose alignment over urgency, and build only what my nervous system can sustain. That relationship is the foundation beneath everything I create.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.surreallifeproductions.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/becomingsirel
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1GDw68rwft/
- Other: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/its-a-surreal-life/id1753864123
