These Weekly Tips are a reflective elaboration from my speech at the 2016 Muslim Women’s Literary Conference: “Just Let Me Bee: Finding Your Creative Niche” A couple of weeks ago, I called my insurance and said, “I need a therapist.” When we don’t take care of ourselves–when we can’t just bee–our mental and emotional state suffers.…
These Weekly Tips are a reflective elaboration from my speech at the 2016 Muslim Women’s Literary Conference: “Just Let Me Bee: Finding Your Creative Niche” I’m gonna do me. How about you? Be your diverse you that makes the world a better place because you’re in it. You help our world go around. You help us…
These Weekly Tips are a reflective elaboration from my speech at the 2016 Muslim Women’s Literary Conference: “Just Let Me Bee: Finding Your Creative Niche” Subhanallah. It’s amazing that as I rewrite these posts to you from my lecture, my life’s song plays on the same melody as the slide. Did it hurt you that I…
These Weekly Tips are a reflective elaboration from my speech at the 2016 Muslim Women’s Literary Conference: “Just Let Me Bee: Finding Your Creative Niche” Dance out of joy. Do a joy jot, as Anse Tamara would say! If you can’t physically dance, can you dance with your pen? your voice? your heart? The bee’s dance…
These Weekly Tips are a reflective elaboration from my speech at the 2016 Muslim Women’s Literary Conference: “Just Let Me Bee: Finding Your Creative Niche” The bee flies far away from her hive to pollinate the flowers. She’s a forager…a gleaner. She comes bringing the dawah; she doesn’t wait and say “bring the flower to me”. She…
These Weekly Tips are a reflective elaboration from my speech at the 2016 Muslim Women’s Literary Conference: “Just Let Me Bee: Finding Your Creative Niche” This week I’m taking it easy…easy like Sunday morning. I don’t think I’ve been very easy on myself lately. Because I’ve been sick about three times in the past 30 days.…
These Weekly Tips are a reflective elaboration from my speech at the 2016 Muslim Women’s Literary Conference: “Just Let Me Bee: Finding Your Creative Niche” The bee is a creative individual who is determined and does not give up. She is an artist. And she knows her place. What’s your place? What job can you do well, and…
These Weekly Tips are a reflective elaboration from my speech at the 2016 Muslim Women’s Literary Conference: “Just Let Me Bee: Finding Your Creative Niche” When the bee does a job, she does it fully. She also recognizes that she will have different jobs at different stages. What would happen if the bees didn’t do their…
These Weekly Tips are a reflective elaboration from my speech at the 2016 Muslim Women’s Literary Conference: “Just Let Me Bee: Finding Your Creative Niche” I really love Wednesdays. It means I must force myself to honor our agreement and post to you. But it doesn’t feel forced. It’s warranted…it’s wanted…writing is something I need to…
These Weekly Tips are a reflective elaboration from my speech at the 2016 Muslim Women’s Literary Conference: “Just Let Me Bee: Finding Your Creative Niche” Always, Beginning in the Name of The Creator, The Original It has been exactly one week since my boat was rocked here in this dunya. If I told you everything that…
These Weekly Tips are a reflective elaboration from my speech at the 2016 Muslim Women’s Literary Conference: “Just Let Me Bee: Finding Your Creative Niche” Happy Wednesday everybody! It’s the middle of the work week, so it’s time for another tip! The forager bee is a master of avoiding diseases of the heart. She only goes…
November and I have a love-hate relationship. Well, it’s not exactly hate but eh….On the one hand, there’s that flamboyant pop of color from the trees right before they give up their modesty. Or are they becoming more modest in their discarding? Whichever way, I love seeing them wave their gold, purple, red, and orange…
These Weekly Tips are from my speech at the 2016 Muslim Women’s Literary Conference: “Just Let Me Bee: Finding Your Creative Niche” Despite what we like to believe about ourselves, we aren’t born queens. Or kings. We must create our own narratives. We must nurture and raise queens just like the bees. The bees have an…
Today was a good day. But isn’t it always? It’s just our perception, perspective, and attitude about the day, during the day, that changes. A circle is a circle no matter where you stand in/on it. No matter your vantage point. Today, I saw the circle instead of imagined sharp edges. I felt some shame…
These Weekly Tips are from my speech at the 2016 Muslim Women’s Literary Conference: “Just Let Me Bee: Finding Your Creative Niche” What are you thankful for today? What are you celebrating? What are you harvesting? What is your life for? What are you here for? The worker bee is a female. The queen is…
“[…]A heart that does not contain the beautiful light of knowing Allah, like a bee without honey, becomes a hornet with a poisonous stinger, stinging whoever comes close by.” (Sh. Tosun Bayrak commenting on the Blessed Name “Al-Latif” in The Name and the Named, Fons Vitae, 2000, p. 92) Wow, has it been this long?…
I took a leap of faith after Ramadan. I started painting again. I started doing real fine art, after a 6 year old hiatus. In thinking of Allah’s names, Ash-Shakur and Al-Khabir, I learned that we show gratitude to Allah by utilizing the gifts he has given us. We can all develop skills, but he…
Ramadan is almost all gone. There’s only a week left. And after the first day of fasting, I already started to see more of the real me. And I didn’t like all that I saw. I saw Elsa. Ice cold. Anxious. Afraid. With himm…fear over the future based on failures of the past which makes me dangerous…
بسم الله “When God wants to humiliate a servant, He conceals from him his faults, and when He wants His servant to triumph, He shows him his faults in order he may repent and relent.” Where do I begin? There is so much to say. It has been 3 years, but I’d love to start…
Have you ever tasted 1,000 tahlils? What about 5,000 istighfars? What about several hundred salawats on the Nabi (saws)? What about the taste of a surat you never thought you’d read in Arabic? Because it was too big? Too long? Too overpowering? This year, I tasted these things for the first time. I tasted…
Exactly one day after the retreat ended, on Tuesday, August 20th, 2013, I received this message from Anse Tamara Gray in a private group chat that I wanted to share with you: “The word joy is one of my favorite words. We can use it to say things like, “She cried tears of joy.” Or…
Always, Beginning in the Name of Allah, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful This post is dedicated to my dear husband, Hassan, who missed virtually every class of the retreat in order to give others the gift of knowledge, including myself and other volunteers. Without his vision for the retreat and undying khidma, there would…
“Whittni”, she said. A voice was coming from within my room, but everyone was asleep. It’s Thursday morning in the wee hours of fajr. My body ceased. I felt squeezed. I didn’t know what to do. I just looked. Hesitated. Waited. Didn’t move. Just looked in the direction of the sound. There was no one…
On Friday, a lesson hit home for me in secrets, but on Wednesday, the teaching began. The secrets kept being repeated by the shuyukh in different classes, even when they weren’t in contact with one another. But my first teacher was my husband…my knight in shining armor that rescued me on Wednesday. But let’s allow…
This Sunday marked two weeks since I left my residence in Oxon Hill, Maryland to travel to a place I only visited once in order to work in complete servitude to 250+ guests. Hesitantly. And this Monday marked exactly one week since I left that week-long residence. Bittersweet and relieved, yet longing. I imagine that inshAllah…
Peace be unto you! It’s with reluctancy and hesitancy that I write this message to you…I’m still grieving. But alhamdulillah. It’s a New Year, with new beginnings. And only with some endings do we have new beginnings…new openings. So help me welcome 2013/1434 with some new writing developments that make me smile…my article,“In Memory of…
“Verily, each one of you is formed in his mother’s womb forty days as a drop, then he is something suspended for a similar period, then he is a piece of flesh like a chewed piece of meat for another period of forty days, then the angel is sent to insert the soul. This angel…
Dhul Hijjah Mubarak!!! How are you upping your game these blessed ten days? Well, I’ve actually entered a “game” to up my anty. I don’t even know what the prize is. Well, I do, actually. An increase in ibadah and inshAllah, with the proper intentions, reward from Allah. Yeah, I’m serious about competing this Dhul…
Alhamdulillah. It’s only been a little over a week, but already, this Ramadan is starting out so much better than the last. It only took a nudging from a dear sister on Facebook and four or five of the same emails for me to get the sign of where my Lord was trying to send…
I wish that I could tell you that I am writing to you from another glorious retreat in Tennessee with SeekersGuidance, but alas I’m not. It’s been a little quiet around here because well…we have a new addition to our family! MashAllah, our second daughter, Safiyya Yusaira, was born on June 5th, and we’ve been…
…About my triple appearance in the current issue of Azizah magazine ((Vol.6 Issue 4)? If you haven’t already, please pick up a copy and see what I thought of the books Untold: A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad by Tamam Kahn and Hearts We Lost by Umm Zakiyyah, and see a SEVEN-PAGE feature…
Okay, okay. I have a confession to make. My Sandal has been flip-flopping all over the place. It’s been quiet over here for a reason. Well, two reasons. Firstly, I’m pregnant and tired if you haven’t read my ISRA Retreat posts. Secondly, I’ve kind of been cheating on you. Well, cheating just sounds so dirty…
THE SANDAL 