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 be well-rounded. Put your blood, sweat, and tears on the page in the form of art that you desire…whether it be visual art, literature, music, or dance. Make a mark. Make the world more colorful by being in it…authentically and unapologetically.
Find your niche in the worldwide ummah by living your passion and investing in yourself. “Doing you” and living your passion brings joy. It brings you joy. You beeing you brings the world joy.
Allah swears by the Pen. Everybody and everything has a story to tell. Listen to the message of the bee and what story life is telling you to spread. What story is your story? Don’t just regurgitate the story you think you’re supposed to tell, or the story you’ve been told. Don’t tell the story you have been telling all along. Change it. Rewrite it. Write you. We should never underestimate the gifts that Allah has loaned us. A bee can carry its weight in nectar and honey…and still fly. And so can you. Even in the bee there is so much giving. We should give more than receive and in that giving know that we are giving to Allah what is rightfully His. What He loaned to us. Your writing is a dawah. Allah has given you a special revelation too…in the Qur’an, in the Sunnah of our dear beloved prophet (saws), and in your DNA and all that makes you beeyoutiful you.
THE SANDAL 