If I Were Single

Salaam,

Insha'Allah, my fiance and I are to be married in less than a month and a half. While I make the final preparations for this stage of the wedding (a larger reception with family and friends will be held later), I also make preparations for the rest of our lives together.

Will I continue to take medicine call? Will I take OB call, even? How many hours will I work? It'll be perfect to transition out of doing urgent care during maternity leave if we try for babies soon, insha'Allah...

I also have begun to lament the things I have lost. I'm no longer singing as much and I haven't written seriously nor thought about my novel in many months. Part of me doesn't even feel like a writer anymore, and it's startling.

I've started to question everything else about my life, including my career choice, while I bring my family life into focus. I'm afraid I'm losing myself.

I don't want to.

There are things that used to be meaningful to me, and probably still are, but I haven't had time to explore them. And necessarily, we change with time, I do believe, but...in the case that, God forbid, I'm left to my own devices again, I want to make sure that I am true to myself and make time for the (other) things in my life that bring me joy.

So I wonder--what would I be doing right now if I were still single? What would I be planning, in contrast with what I'm doing now? And don't get me wrong, I don't wish to be single. As a perpetually single woman in my 20s, I did long for companionship and I've been happier than I've ever been in my adult life once I attained it. It just happened that the advent of this companionship coincided with the final stage of my medical training, so there are a lot of confounders at play.

For example, I perceive I have less time for myself in my relationship, but is it perhaps that I had less time for myself as a busy resident and as a first-year attending? I feel like I have changed, but is that perhaps because now I am a practicing physician, and before the relationship, I was not?

Anyway, life would be different, if I were single:

• I'd still be living in Seattle proper, instead of living in the suburbs to be closer to my fiance. Our family home is purchased, has 5 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, and insha'Allah after marriage I will add my name and it will be our home. I'll be a sudden home owner. But for now, I commute 20 miles to work, which is 40 minutes at best during rush hour and paying 75 cents on the express toll lanes. In my old apartment, the hospital was a 7 minute walk away and my clinic was a 3 minute drive, about 1.5 miles away. 
• Obstetrics call would be easier. I'm on OB call this weekend, and I'm dreading it. The last time I was on OB call, I managed two labors and attended one delivery. I had to leave clinic a little early and ended up sleeping in one of the uncomfortable call rooms (beds aren't so comfortable for me anymore, after having lost a bunch of weight).  If I had been living 7 minutes away from the hospital like I used to, I would have gone home after the 11pm delivery and slept in my own bed for a while. But since my own bed is now 20 miles away, I often make the decision to sleep in the hospital if I'm uncertain of someone's labor course. On OB call weekends, that means that I'm potentially spending 48 hours in the hospital. It means that I could drop whatever I'm doing over the weekend with my fiance to drive into the city just to potentially miss a delivery. There's also the stress of his disappointment of not seeing me over the weekend because of my call schedule.
• I would make more of my own continuity deliveries. Two of my patients delivered over the weekend. One I wouldn't have made anyway, because it was precipitous. The other one, I could have made. It was on a weekend night. Again, if I were 7 minutes away from the hospital and single, I would make an effort to make more of my patient's deliveries. But my fiance and I had a bit of an argument a few months ago when I told him all weekend that one of my patients was in labor and that I wanted to go be there for her during delivery but he still ended up feeling like I was sacrificing our time. I was already on call enough, then I would sacrifice our time together when I wasn't even on call to be there for my patient? "All of your patients are special to you," he shot back when I argued that this patient was special. So when a patient goes into labor, I have to take him into consideration as to whether I'll go in for the delivery...which is fair. One day, insha'Allah, I'll also have babies to take into consideration, so maybe I'll stop giving my patients the impression that I'll be in for their deliveries. ...but if I were single, I would be all about dropping everything to make my patient's deliveries.
• I might be singing more. There is a family medicine band that invited me to sing with them, but they have practice on Thursday nights. Because I work late on Wednesday nights (until 9pm or 10pm or sometimes later, depending on urgent care), I usually do not want to spend any more time in the city than I have to, and I rush back on Thursday nights. I would like to sing with them eventually, but not with this schedule.
• I might hang out with Seattle people more. Again, not living in Seattle makes meeting up with Seattle people challenging at times. I factor the commute in prior to every get together now.
• I may go back to dancing samba. I still may check out the Monday night class at some point, insha'Allah in the New Year, but it'd be something to fill my time with.
• I might be planning a trip to Nigeria with my Dad in the upcoming year. My Dad got to travel to Nigeria after an over 30-year absence this year. I would love to travel with him, but not only are there the concerns of who will then be my husband, insha'Allah, but also, if I am pregnant or with small children, I definitely won't be able to travel for some time.
• I might be planning a trip to Salvador. I love Brazil and it's been 8 years since I've been (incredibly!). I would go with my new husband, insha'Allah, but...zika. Cases of microcephaly have happened more in the Northeast of the country. And even if I don't get a zika infection, I don't want to have to worry about that 8 week period in which he could carry it in his semen for family planning...

The rest are all big maybes. I don't know if I'd be writing more if I were single, if I'd get back to drawing, if I would be reading more or keeping up with medical literature more. There are also some potential negatives, like I may not have embarked in this body-transforming fitness journey (I've lost 40 pounds!), I may not have started running races, I may not be cooking nutritious food for myself--I may not have been taking such good care of my emotional, mental and physical health as well as I have been relating to someone else.

It is true that I'm not working as many hours as I imagined and minding my hobbies as much as I used to, but that's not a bad thing. I'm also taking care of myself much better than I ever have in my adult life. And those hobbies are not going away. I just came to a critical moment in which I am reassessing what I want to be in medicine, and my practice may change in a way such that I have more time to be all the other things that I want to be in medicine.

Mainly, now that insha'Allah I can now start planning a family, I realize how much this has always been a top priority for me that was for much of my life out of reach and how much I want to prioritize it now. It's more important than my career. I find myself putting some of those medical aspirations aside for a moment, thinking about the women who have said, "You can have it all...just not all at the same time."

But now that I am marrying, there are things that I want to bring back into my life. I want to bring writing back into my life first, and fiction-reading. This year, I have been reading only non-fiction. Literally, I have not read one piece of fiction this year, which is odd for me. I wanted to be a physician and a writer on the side, but I'm finding that I'm also a person who wants to do all of her jobs well, and I can't be a good physician right now with the hours that I'm working and also write on the side, and I'll be a horrible writer if I'm only writing on the side and not devoting more time to it.

I already don't feel like a writer anymore, and that's devastating for me.

And it's hard to to do either of those things well while making a family.

But I can have it all, but not all at once. Right now, the thing that I put on hold is writing. For years, what I put on hold (in theory) was family life. Next, what I'll put on hold is medicine.

That is the topic for a later entry.

My Own Sadie

As salaam alaikum,

My grandmother passed yesterday night. I think I felt it coming when I couldn't get through singing "Sadie." She was my own Sadie, though she was my grandmother. She was a woman of a different time whose purpose of life was her husband, children, grand-children and great-grandchildren. She lived to see several great-great-grandchildren, alhamdulillah. I learned from her to nurture and love fiercely. She was my model of a hard-working woman of the home and one of my first models of a Muslimah outside of my mother. Even as a little girl, I admired the woman, rising for fajr and continuing her day from there, preparing meals for my grandfather, for me (and my brother, if he was there) and herself, leaving my grandfather breakfast and packing the meals for us as we went to FIS, Flint Islamic School where she taught with my aunt. I don't remember her ever complaining about the work she did around the house, for us, or even so much as groaning. This is how she lived out her chosen destiny, purposefully.

Grandmother did not suffer fools, though, nor did she suffer unruly grandchildren. I was just telling my fiance stories of various happenings in my grandparents house, from running over plastic runners that Grandmother turned over while cleaning, just to hear in my mind her injunction, "Don't run in the house!" as I nursed my hurting feet, to falling from upstairs to downstairs and landing on my but to imagine my Grandmother chastising, "I told you not to play on the stairs!" Another favorite of hers, when a group of cousins congregated in the TV room, was, "Don't y'all close that door!" She was not the coddling grandmother other people had, but I can see it no other way. I had soft in my life. She was my strong when I needed it.

Grandmother had the scoop on all family gossip for most of her life, and now she is delighting to know all the details of things as she transitions, insha'Allah. I miss her, I love her, but I've missed her a long time, through several years of the distance dementia creates, and I am happy that her soul can now be at peace, insha'Allah.

Learning to Love Myself by Loving Someone Else

Salaam,

The fiance is out of the country for two weeks, so for the first time in several months, I truly have all of my time to myself. Instead of commuting to see each other and dedicating slices of time that used to be dedicated to writing and music instead to our growing relationship, our daily interactions consist of 30 minutes total text breaks.

It was glorious this morning: waking up when my body felt ready, lounging around in my pajamas for the first half of the day, leisurely completing charts from clinic while simultaneously documenting ideas for future writing projects. This instead of my usual Friday fare of hurriedly completing any charting left so that I'll be ready to hang out with him when he gets off of work.

He works half days on Friday, and I have Friday off for that specific reason. It makes up for Wednesdays where we have lunch together but I work until 9 or 10pm and otherwise wouldn't see him that day.

I got to spend nearly 30 minutes on the chart of a complicated neonate I'm caring for. I carefully documented the birth history, and my plan, and I was about to finalize the document, I remembered something essential I wanted to add to my plan. I went back to the assessment and plan tab and saw that I had already documented that very thing.

I instantly felt that warm glow in my heart space I get whenever I'm proud of myself. Good job, you're pretty sharp! Look at you, way ahead of the game...

...and that gave me pause. How long have I been feeling that way? For a while now, I haven't been counting. I feel particularly accomplished after complete, well-rounded patient visits where our plan for their health worked, or a treatment helped more than either of us expected, or the patient felt listened to like they had by no other provider. That heart space swell happens there, too.

It wasn't always like that, though. And that's what gave me pause this morning. There was a time where I had to imagine someone else being impressed by me before I could be impressed with myself.

Rewind to ten to twelve years ago, and that was exactly the case. I was in love with a man I imagined to be different from who he actually was. Whenever we interacted, he was impressed by me. And I mistook that for interest. And I fell in love with this man, who was so outside my realm, who could enter my world and like me.

He was not that courageous, but I wouldn't come to terms with that for a few years.

When I met him, I was knee deep in depression. I had to have friends talk me down from self-destructive behaviors and plead with me to start medication, which I never did. I prayed and God didn't seem to listen. I had convinced myself that the reason was because I was actually one destined for hell, one whose heart God had hardened. I felt doomed. I was a high functioning severely depressed college woman who earned a 4.0 GPA her freshman year.

And then I met him, and I had a reason for living.

Not only living, but thriving. I had a reason to get better. I wanted to be worthy of his love. I didn't want to be depressed, damaged. So like a whining child who struggles to wipe away signs of crying with a parent's reprimanding, I quickly tried to become normal. I tried to become the full person my depression was keeping me from becoming. And it had to be convincing, so he wouldn't become disconcerted and take his interest elsewhere.

It was often emotional whiplash and I wasn't ready. Depression became neurosis. I used to walk around his dorm late nights, hoping I'd chance to run into him, sometime taking those walks past midnight alone on campus, absently singing "Love's Train" to myself.

"Now if by chance, you'll let me come over. Down on the street, I wanna see you, baby."

I just wanted to see him, to have one of our 2 minute awkward interactions and be on my way, fill myself with the hope that would keep me going.

Long after the time I realized that we would never be and he met the woman that would be his wife, my brain was still stuck in this circuit. I met him in a science class. So, whenever I solved a difficult problem in my science problem sets, years later, I imagined him being impressed with my prowess over the tough material, and I'd get that glow in my heart space, and it would inspire me to keep going.

It took me a while to realize what I was doing, and a while longer to break it.


Sitting here, doing charts, congratulating myself on making a clever plan for my complicated baby patient, I realized that I had to learn to love myself by loving someone else. And isn't that backwards? Isn't that exactly what all of the smarmy advice articles tell you not to do.

Oh well.

My life was close to losing all meaning for myself. And since I was a child, I lost myself in love for others. So it would just make sense that I'd have to lose my self-destroying persona in the love for someone else in order to start over. It may not have been ideal, but it was an emergency!

And through prayer and time, I've come to fully love myself without needing the love of someone else. There are things about me that no one else appreciates that I love. My love for myself is far beyond my fiance's love for me, so I don't have to imagine his pride to be proud of myself. I don't need his love to fill my heart space with warmth.

Although, I must say, having people who love you, including a partner, does wonders to validate your own great love for yourself. It's not everything, though.

All this being said, I don't recommend this way of learning to love oneself. I'm just so grateful that, after years of despair and desolation, I finally do.

Make Way for Compassion, Part 2

As salaam alaikum,

Lack of compassion and self-compassion can lead to hatred.

Some of the ways that I practiced Islam lacked self-compassion.

I can only speak for myself here, but I do predict that there are very many who will identify with me in their own practice and understanding of their faith, and not just among Muslims.

This entry is not meant to be a vendetta against Muslim scholarship or a commentary on ahadith. I am not on par with any authority to speak to that. I really just want to look at commonly held beliefs and rules at face value.

The moment I realized that my practice lacked self-compassion is when I wondered if my day's fast had been invalidated by a mistake.

Invalidated.

This is the language that was used, that was taught to me and has undoubtedly been taught to others in the rules of Muslim fasting. Without going through the list of actions and events that will invalidate your fast, I want to highlight vomiting. Vomiting invalidates one's fast.

I never thought of it that way. I thought of it as--if you vomit, you are sick and it is better for you that you don't fast. To say it is invalidated with vomiting makes harsh self-judgment implicit.

Oh, stupid me, I vomited. Now the whole day's fast doesn't count!

Instead of, oh no, I guess I'm sicker than I thought. I'd better take a break and take care of myself and get some fluids in me in preparation for the mud butt that is about to ensue.

Or something like that.

I pause on invalidated because that's such a strong word. Not counting is duly a strong concept, not to get stuck on vocabulary. I'd like to believe that intent would have something to do with it, so if someone put something in their mouth or ate it accidentally and were not, say, sneaking food while no one was watching, that a pure intention for fasting would supersede the accidental ingestion.

I don't know, but I don't care to look up fatawa on the subject because those things are often traumatizing for me.

My mentor in residency preached self-compassion for physicians as we trialed the very restrictive elimination diet. For three weeks, we eliminated major foods that are often the culprits of food sensitivities through leaky gut pathophysiology -- corn, gluten, dairy, eggs, peanuts, sugar, artificial sweeteners, red meat, oranges/grapefruits, vegetable oils -- effectively reducing us to a home-cooked diet. We had to be abstinent from these food groups for three weeks in order to reduce the inflammation in our guts enough to trial the possibly offending foods. For example, no seasoned salt, as it has both corn starch and sugar in it. Even with these restrictions necessary to make this health experiment work, she implored us to practice self-compassion if we slipped up in our diets midway.

I scoffed at that recommendation. I fasted Ramadan for over a decade and dietary restrictions were my way of life. It was easy for me to adhere to the strict diet.

In the end, I had no food sensitivities besides gluten making me really low energy, but I've approached every other diet I've had with a self-compassion script, and its made it even easier.

The Islam I learned is often devoid of a self-compassion script. Or, if there is a self-compassion script, there is often a caveat. It is human to err--but you erred, so you have to make up that whole day again. Sorry.



Of course, the fasting SNAFU was not everything. It was the turning point, the moment of recognition, the catalyst. It helped me to intellectualize what I has been evolving over the last 4 years, from the time I was still a fourth year medical student in Boston attending those conferences on woman and African American Muslims. This reminds me of my father, who, in his last attempts to convert me to Christianity 2 years ago, told me that Islam was a religion devoid of love. That Christianity taught love more than Islam did. I argued him down with Qur'anic citations of my own, but at the end of the day, while Islam is not devoid of love and compassion, the individual practice of Islam is many times lacking.

Again, I can only speak for my own, what I saw modeled, what I was exposed to. Others may identify, some may not. Feel free to counter me.

The Islam I learned was full of judgments, shaming and guilting from human beings. The Islam I learned was rigorous and sometimes unforgiving. A lot of my practice was based on God's obligation, not God's love.

And I know, God obliges us because God loves us, but obligation is heavy.

Obligation is heavy, invalidation is heavy. Both of those terms feel punitive.

Obligatory or what? Obligatory or you will be remote from God's mercy and excluded from Jannah? This does not breed self-compassion. It breeds self-critique and self-judgment.

To which someone may say, yes, self-critique is necessary. It's crucial to keep someone on the straight way. Whereas I feel like we kill our souls a little bit with that.

This is not my announcement of leaving the faith. As long as I believe in one God and submit to God, I will always be Muslim. That has not changed. I just find the level of self-compassion that I am currently living in my life at odds with my practice of Islam, and I've decided that the latter has to change.

Make Way for Compassion

As salaam alaikum,

It's been more than four months! It's about time for another entry!

This one was a long time in coming, and perhaps more is coming. The Orlando shooting generated a flurry of emotions that are hard to contain and hard to enunciate. The overarching feeling is hurt. Pain. Mourning, dread, anger. Frustration. Anger.

Fear.

As a human being, I mourn the loss of innocent life at the hands of Hatred armed with an assault rifle. As an ally and a person of color, I hurt for the attack on one of the few safe spaces for this very marginalized group of the community.

As a Muslimah, I am the most angry and the most afraid. I was of age post-9/11. I'm even more angry and so much more fearful than I was back then, and this is not because I've shed the ignorance of youth.

I remember going to a college football game with my high school band director, and I didn't know that I could not bring my purse into the stadium. I cried as they made me throw away my new purse, stuffing my belongings into my down coat pockets. I thought the whole exercise was ridiculous, because everything in my purse was in my coat pockets now and the leather posed no additional threat, and besides, who would want to attack a college stadium in the breadbasket of America? I thought terrorists had bigger fish to fry.

Flash forward 14 and 15 years, and this is precisely what these terrorists are doing. They are attacking stadiums and busy tourists squares, office Christmas parties and night clubs. Especially with these American sympathizers, their motives are random and no where is safe.

As an American Muslim, I am angry in some of the same ways that the non-Muslim population is angry, and then some. Terrorists are the foremost attackers of my faith. With each act of terror, with each vitriolic sermon, with each evil intent, in addition to their murders they are smearing the religion of millions of peaceful worshipers as well. Idle American Islamophobia have nothing on the years of heinous activity of these groups.

I am also afraid in some of the same ways as non-Muslims are, but I also fear retaliation. Two mosques in my community were threatened within days of each other after the Orlando shootings and one arrest was made. This is the first year I'm actually afraid for Eid.

Hatred abounds in so many ways, and fear is paralyzing. So I implore everyone reading this to counter with the best self defense: love. Love and compassion.

There are a lot of ways how, and I won't get to them all in this entry, but I'll share a bit of my personal journey.



It wasn't just because of residency and HIPPA that I strayed from this blog. A lot of things changed in 2012. The primary event was the beginning of the relationship with my now-fiance, who likes the term "culturally Muslim" for himself. This relationship transformed the way that I think of myself and the way I envision my religion, and for the sake of our privacy, I have not included details here.

It's mainly in positive ways that the relationship has changed my blogging. I am a lot happier and many of the writing topics born out of angst have no longer come to be.

But the ways in which I practice and believe have changed so rapidly at times, it's like whiplash. Sometimes, I couldn't put it into words.

Residency itself was still a major reason I have not been as prolific as earlier. I struggled my intern year, not only with the rapid changes in my faith but also in tussling with impostor syndrome and not feeling supported in my residency program. In spite of this, one of the gifts of my residency program was a curriculum in self care. "Heal the healer," I often remind myself, which not only reminds me that I need to take care of myself before I can fully take care of others, but that I am a healer. Or at least a healer in training. Not all physicians think of themselves as healers. I certainly didn't for much of residency and didn't intend to when I started.

With the curriculum came teachings on compassion, among many other things. I listened politely as my mentor presented data from randomized control studies showing the power of prayer. I was smug. I didn't need a study to tell me that. And as she taught us about the different types of meditation, I reflected on the aspects of salat that corresponded to each type of medication. God, indeed, knows best.

The study of compassion, particularly self-compassion, was more challenging for me. I learned to quiet the nay-saying voice that rejoiced in my perceived inadequacies and replaced my despondent negative self-talk with mindfulness and the RAIN technique. Until last week, I thought that I was primarily rid of negative self-talk.

Then, I accidentally put something into my mouth during Ramadan.

I have fasted consistently since I was 18, and that first Ramadan I accidentally put a piece of candy I was offered by a well-meaning friend into my mouth. Realizing one second later what I had done, I spit it out and drowned in guilt and shame the rest of the day, wondering if my day's fast had been invalidated.

That happened last week, as my clinic was celebrating Juneteenth and I had painstakingly avoided offers of food all day and reminded each person I was fasting, from the staff meeting breakfast in the morning to the barbecue, at which I was a scheduled speaker. I packed food that I would be eating 6 hours later when the sun set, and somehow, in the midst of that, I was offered an edible flower and I placed it into my mouth before realizing...

...and all those same feelings came back to me as that day 13 years ago.

And I realized why I had imperceptibly started to feel distant from my religion. I had cultivated a personal religion that was often devoid of self-compassion, and it was no longer nurturing me.

And it's lack of compassion and self-compassion that can breed hatred.

I realize this is a weighty claim. More on this later.

"It Wasn't Meant to Be" Takes New Meaning

Salaam,

"It wasn't meant to be."

Intellectually, I could get with that, but emotionally, I could not. As a several-year sufferer of unrequited love for much of my young adult years, the phrase seemed cruel, a hackneyed trope offered by people who didn't have answers but were well-meaning nonetheless.

Years after getting over the love that never would be, I still couldn't really understand that. Yes, obviously it was not meant to be, because here I am and there he is, living two separate lives, probably never chancing to meet again and, because of Facebook, I know too much.

My last entry shows how I couldn't understand it.

And to be clear, part of me will still wonder. There were so many signs that I interpreted as meaning we would end up together after pointed and plaintive prayers. These signs from hearing a random string quartet practice the wedding march in my dorm to him being down the hall in my friend's dorm, hearing me as I cried. Why would God tease me with these signs if we were, in fact, never meant to be.

Because we weren't. We existed in each others' lives exactly as we should have.

Before I fell for him, I had prayed specifically that I would not do such a thing. I prayed to God not to allow me to fall for a man who was not meant for me. But I did.

Most other prayers I have prayed in my life have been answered, from small things like praying that the rain would let up so I could take pictures for a summer project in high school, to big things like medical school acceptances and residency matches. But my faith remained shaken after the man I prayed for so long would be my future husband ended up to be someone else's.

I used to wonder why, and then for a long time, I gave up. I just didn't think about it. I reasoned, there are probably people who pray for more important things, like being able to feed their child, or to save their dying spouse from the wrath of disease, or any other number of situations who are now sitting on the other side of things, wondering why their prayers weren't answered. For me, the only thing not answered for me is that some dude I had a crush on in college didn't like me back. Big deal.

But then, thinking about the turmoil my fiancé has had to go through because of his family's disapproval of me, I realize something...

...well, for one, it likely would have been several times worse with my college crush. My fiancé has a small family. My college crush had a large family that was apparently invested in him ending up with someone from their own community. And that he did, and their families get along well.

Whereas, my future in-laws will likely have little contact with me...thankfully, as the case were.

I would love to be part of a family that loved me as I feel I deserve to be loved as an excellent future-partner to their beloved son, but it looks like I'm not going to...just as I was prepared was a distinct possibility with my college crush.

I said I was ready for anything back then, now I get to eat my words. It is hard. It's harder to see your fiancé essentially disowned from his family.

But more than realizing that, rationally, it was not meant to be, I also recognize that...sometimes, even if certain traits line up, there is mutual attraction, interest, fascination...whatever...it wasn't meant to be.

Yes, so many other prayers in my life have been answered, and easily. Of course this prayer would be the hardest. Yes, I have a friend who claims she prayed to find a husband and then met her husband the next day, but a lot happened before he became her husband that did not seal that prayer as answered for her. She made it sound easy, but it wasn't.

It's easy when a prayer only involves you, or your personal protection, or something like that. It's easy when a prayer is about a career path, or a housing option, or safety on road or in the air while one travels. It's not easy when a prayer involves a whole other human being who is just as complex as you are, with their own desires, needs and prayers.

The man that you see who you decide must be the future husband of your prayer and desire may have congruent desires but perhaps incongruent needs, for example. People are not ready to order. I have yet to hear anyone say that someone came and was perfectly equipped to be their future spouse when they met them.

So as much as I may have loved my college crush, I could not pray him into being for me. As much as I felt I could "deal with everything going through [his] head," I was never in his head. We existed together in the same realm for just a little bit. His path was other, and I had to steer away. It wasn't meant to be.

Relationship prayers are the hardest to pray and the hardest with which to wait for the answer. The answer is sometimes quite unexpected. Whenever our desires and prayers are directed at a thing that necessarily involves another complete human being, so many things have to line up to make it work. And while certainly nothing is impossible with God, it will take a little bit more time than...driving under a bridge to see the rain stop instantly to allow you to do your high school summer project.

So for me, it wasn't meant to be takes on new meaning. It's no longer hackneyed and frustrating. It's a simple truth. It's not a term of resignation; it reminds me of my submission. Submission to the Truth.  For all I prayed, God knew that my college crush was not actually who I thought he was or what I wanted, and if he was, he knew that I was not what he needed. It was never a prayer unanswered. It was a prayer answered, but I didn't leave space or understanding of that being possibly the answer.

And with the tincture of time and experience and the prospect of assuming a family name of a family that will have nothing to do with me, I see...I come to understand. Love can conquer much but you have to decide if it's worth it.

In terms of the signs I got after pointed prayers...I still don't understand those. Maybe it's like the movie Mr. Nobody, and I could have lived a life where I ended up with my college crush if I took precise actions earlier on, actions I was not ready to take at 19. Maybe that piece has some meaning that I'll uncover later in my life. This little epiphany about the whole situation only took 11 years, after all.

Without Shame or Patronization

As salaam alaikum,

I'm baaaaaacckk!

Apparently, when I finished residency and took a 2 month vacay before returning to work, so did my brain take a vacation.

But really, life has gotten busy, I had a lot of things to do in preparation for my new job as an attending and a non-resident PCP, and I've been knee-deep in my own spiritual journey, which has taken a much more personal spin such that I haven't been writing very much about it on the blog.

But I just had an epiphany that I thought would bring me back into the world of blogging.

I know what I want in a mate now.

Let's rephrase. I know what I want in a Muslim mate now.

No, I am not again single and my SO is the same. Born Muslim in a communist culture and I wouldn't even call him nominal at this point.

He grew up to think that all a Muslim had to do was fast the Night of Power and that would satisfy the entire month's fast. That is who my SO is.

But he came to be my SO because--I was afraid that I couldn't be Muslim married and he was the closest thing I thought I could get to it.

But this is not going to be about my SO. This is more about me and my epiphany.

There was something that seemed impossible, intimidating, and admittedly undesirable about getting Muslim married. Namely, I never obtained a wali, so the process was sketchy and I felt unprotected, making up an online dating profile and searching for eligible Muslim men in a list of unknowns. Or, I could obtain a wali who may or may not have my best interests at heart and certainly would not be my Christian father. Neither option sounded secure.

And besides, I was unsure if that was what I really wanted. Like, of course I'd love a husband I could pray with, who was at a similar level of practice as me, but that didn't feel like what I really wanted.

And then, as I was going through the motions of a personal exercise of fleshing out what my ideal self would look like (religiously, spiritually and physically were the realms that I wanted to idealize), I wrote out a sentence that described exactly what I was looking for:

"I'd love to have a partner whose Islam inspires me and doesn't shame me."

After which I wrote, I think this is it. I think that is what I want.

...before realizing, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I want and have always wanted!

I added to it later, adding that I did not want to be patronized, either.

I liken it to training and running a race. Of course, one can do both of these alone, or they could have a buddy. If the buddy's pace is faster or the buddy's form is better, I'd be the one to prefer to jog behind my buddy and be inspired by his pace and form. Maybe my buddy would give me a few tips if I asked or if he saw me doing something to hurt myself.

My buddy wouldn't taunt me for my pace, push me to go faster than I was ready to go, or give me unsolicited advice as if presuming incompetence. He wouldn't ask me how have I been alive this long and never run X distance.

Similarly, my partner in Islam may be ahead of me in some aspects, but I would pray for the type of partner that wouldn't shame me for ways in which he felt my Islam "deficient" and wouldn't be patronizing in our discourse.

And that, I think, is everything. That describes my fears and my hopes.

Because really, my ideal partner doesn't have a body type or hair color. This is who he is, written in that one line above. That is what I want.

Let's worship free of shaming, patronizing and judgment. Let's inspire each other instead as we join together in the mutual teaching of truth, as it were.

No longer a resident

As salaam alaikum,

I've been busy but not busy, if that makes any sense. I've been mentally and emotionally busy, preparing myself for graduation for residency. This included taking (and passing, alhamdulillah) my boards, getting my work schedule arranged for when I start my new job in September, tidying things up for my patients before I hand them off to the new resident, moving...

Ya girl's been busy.

There is also a lot of background noise right now, honestly, that has gone on for the last three years. My faith has been challenged in a very specific way that I have not shared on this blog, because it is a moment in progress. When this metamorphosis of sorts is complete, I will speak more openly and frankly about it. For now, sorry, you just get tidbits.

But alhamdulillah, I have completed residency and I am now a family physician practicing family medicine with obstetrics. This morning, getting up and not going to clinic, I felt starkly naked in a way I never have before in my life. I said at first that I felt naked because I was no longer a resident, but in truth, I've been a resident for only 3 years. It seems like nothing and it seems like forever at the same time.

I gaze at pictures of my co-residents and feel like I miss them already and that I never truly got to know them at the same time. They are a group of 11 people that I love and with whom I have experienced something unique that will not replicate. I feel like I've known them forever and for not that long at the same time. They are excellent people and I hope we continue our road to excellence.

I went in three years from being an insecure medical school graduate, not ready to embrace myself as a physician, to a board certified family physician with no insecurities about my capabilities. Again, alhamdulillah.

This moment, however, reminds me of a song Elis Regina sang, called, "20 Anos Blues."

Ontem de manhã quando acordei / olhei a vida e me espantei. / Eu tenho mais que vinte anos. / Eu tenho mais que mil perguntas sem respostas. / Estou ligada a um futuro blue.

Yesterday morning when I woke up, I looked at life and I startled myself. I am more than 20 years old. I have more than a thousand questions without answers. I'm tied to a blue future.

And while I do not believe I'm tied to a blue future, there were all of those ways, over the past few years, that I realized that I was not my 20 year old self. I am not who I was when I began this journey to be a physician, to be a better Muslimah, to make my own contribution to social justice.

I'm not 20 years old anymore. My grandfather is not on this earth anymore and my brother is an adult with autism who is unemployed, unskilled for most vocations and lives at home with my aging parents. I am a family physician continuing a very separate life on the West Coast, away from my aging parents and away from my brother. My personal life bears harsh realities that I did acknowledge, in a highly dramatized form at 20 years old, but that are more eminent now, as I begin to make plans for marriage and a family of my own.

At the same time, I'm not 20 years old anymore and I don't look for ways to save the world at every turn, in every crevice and with every issue. I'm looking for very specific ways I can make an impact in matters that I care most about and that I know most about.

I'm not 20 and I'm not premed, I'm a family physician. I don't love a man absently who I have no access to, I love one who is here, on earth, with me, who is not a character I created but a real man who doesn't always follow the ideal script for our lives but who is here regardless. I don't look outward for my Muslim identity, I look inward.

So I begin this two months off before starting work period resuming Ramadan (Ramadan Mubarak to all) after the Feminine Interruption. I return to focusing on The Compassionate.

A Career Woman

As salaam alaikum,

This past Sunday, I was busily cleaning my apartment in anticipation of meeting up with my SO after his trip to SF. My place usually lies in shambles because of the time I spend out of it either hanging out on the East Side or fulfilling my many residency responsibilities. When I planned his Sunday return to Seattle, I proposed he meet me at my place before returning to his place to attend a panel on life after residency by recent graduates with perhaps Ethiopian food thereafter. He happily agreed, even before I mentioned that my place would likely be clean when he came.

"Don't make promises you can't keep," he said flatly.

His dead-pan delivery of jokes usually takes me off guard, and I took mild offense before he told me he was just kidding. Even so, I spent much of my Sunday scrubbing and sweeping and vacuuming.

I was putting the finishing touches on my place when my phone rang. I expected it to be him, because it was almost time for us to leave to go to the recent grad panel. I looked up and it was instead one of my co-residents. I was simultaneously excited and crestfallen. One of my OB patients was due, or as wont to say, "one of my ladies" was due, so I thought it was her presenting to triage in labor. That kind of thing throws monkey wrenches into plans.

Instead, I hear that it is my patient who was supposed to be scheduled for c-section in the coming days. She was contracting painfully every 3 minutes.

I think, great, a c-section at least takes place over a finite amount of time, so I can go in and come out 1.5 hours to two hours later. I told my SO this as we adjusted our evening plans. He would go to a movie while I participated in the section.

Long story short, from anesthesia push back, to slowing contractions to a complicated section, I was not out of the hospital until 6.5 hours after that initial call. By this time, my SO drove back to his place, never having seen my sparkling clean apartment, both of us having missed the grad panel and neither of us having Ethiopian food.

In fact, I didn't eat dinner that night because I had nothing prepared and all food places that I would have bothered with were closed.

It was a gratifying section in which baby was fat and healthy and the surgeon commended me for the command I had over closing the incision. What was not gratifying was talking to my SO to find that he was upset with me after my Sunday was thwarted.

I explained to him that I probably didn't have to be there, but my co-resident sold it as if the delivery were imminent and I got there to find that it was pushed back an hour and a half, then another 2.5 hours, and so on. I couldn't easily say to my patient that I wouldn't return after I had essentially promised her in her last three visits that I would be present for the procedure and round on her in the hospital.

The next day, after I apologized again (even though it really wasn't my fault!) and my SO told me that he was going to ask me a question the next day and he wanted me to think it over. I asked him if it were an ultimatum. He told me it wasn't. I really had no idea what he was thinking, what he was really angry about, and what I had done wrong.

I knew he was going to ask it over dinner. So yesterday, after our quesadillas arrived at this Mexican restaurant near his place, he asked me, "How much of a career woman do you see yourself as? I think I know the answer, but I just want to hear it from you."

Really? That was it? All of that build for that question.

So I answered, "Well, you know, babe, I could totally see me taking some time off of my work schedule to spend time at home with children."

"I know you say that, but then things like Sunday happen."

Things like Sunday? What was special about Sunday? I've delivered nearly 30 continuity patients, some of whom have come in times that it interrupts my plans with my SO. He's understood before. Similarly, I've been called in back up at random times.

"I was fine until you said you didn't have to go in," he told me.

Ahh. And therein lies the problem. I said too much.

For him, I didn't have to go in, but I went in, anyway, prioritizing something I didn't have to do over our plans. Even though I explained to him that I didn't have to go in (I never do for continuities), but I promised this patient that I would come to her c-section when it was scheduled for a future date. I didn't have to but I felt obligated. And, more than that, I wanted to be there for a patient I had bonded with throughout her pregnancy.

"I just want to know if, after we're married, I'm eventually going to be seeing you only 1 or 2 times a week."

Really? This is what came of me scrubbing into one c-section, the exact circumstances of which I described to him? Him thinking that suddenly I'm going to become a workaholic who never comes home?

And he thinks there is some definable dichotomy between being a "career woman" and...not, whatever either of those mean.

So I told him, "First of all, babe, career woman is a really antiquated term."

"Really?"

"Yes, but I know what you mean."

So I broke it down for him.

Because, the truth of the matter is, if I could have married and started a family years ago, even as much as 10 years ago, I would have, if the opportunity came along. So it didn't. So I continued with my education. I asked him, if there were such a thing as a dichotomy between me being a working woman and being more domestic, I shouldn't have gone into medicine at all. I should have instead worked small-time or more acceptably domestic jobs until a potential husband came along. But that's not how I roll. So I continued my education and training, all the while knowing that whenever I did marry and have children, I would adapt it into whatever stage and position of life I was in.

Furthermore, I told him, it is hard to say what I will be like when I have children. Life doesn't stop because I plan to have children in the future. It is a fluid position that changes. So while right now I'd love to be involved in many of my continuity patient's deliveries, I recognize that, at some point, family time will take priority.

But that was such a hilarious question to me. If we got married tomorrow and he wanted to start a family right away, I would be game. But in the meantime, life goes on, I have a robust work life with many professional and patient-doctor relationships to maintain as well. I cannot put my life on pause for a course of life that has never been my decision alone to make. 

2014 Retrospective

As salaam alaikum,

As predicted, residency (and life) swallowed me in a way that did not allow me to post (or even write) that often, but that is soon going to be history! I am now a third year resident, and in six months time, I'll be graduating and taking a 3 month break before I start working for real. What I do in those three months are dependent on how much money I save up moonlighting in the next year, but that's another story.

Anyway, for me, the year is hardly over, as my SO is flying down tomorrow to meet my parents, which will get a little notch in my year-in-review, but I figure I may be pretty busy the end of this year so I'd better get in my retrospective now while I'm ahead.

So, this was my 2014, roughly, and maybe not exactly chronologically, but in order of things that stand out to me.

Grandfather: The last time I saw my grandfather fully lucid in this realm was around Christmas of 2013. There was a big ice storm in Flint and surrounding northern communities and it resulted in a prolonged black out. My grandparents were staying at my Uncle Maurice's place because the power was out in their house. My grandfather talked about how much he appreciated what we did for him, an old man, and he started crying. Early this year, he likely had another stroke and went into a fast decline that almost ended in his death in March of this year but ultimately ended in his death early in the morning, July 16, peacefully in his sleep. I love that man with all of my heart and I eagerly but patiently await the day when I hear the rest of his stories in Jannah, iA.

Auntie and Uncle: I met my Nigerian Aunt and Uncle for the first time this year. My uncle, who my father had not seen in over 30 years, and his wife traveled to the United States for the first time and stayed with my family. I cried when I saw the brothers together, reunited. They stayed for four months and I visited with them two weeks out of those four months. I would love to travel with my father to Nigeria one day and visit with the rest of the family. I could say much more about this visit, but that will have to be for another venue.

Sayulita, Nayarit: I still feel like we totally pulled a coup in our residency by taking this trip. For our second-year retreat, instead of the usual long weekend in Leavenworth, we took five days in Mexico with our favorite faculty member in March. It was a coup because those five days did not count towards our paid time off, it was "conference/educational time." So we were paid for five days in which we did maybe 4 hours a day of therapeutic small groups (which were excellent!) and spent the rest of the time as beach bums, wandering around this semi-hidden jewel resort town. I actually got sunburned on this trip. Yes, black people can sunburn. Skin peeled from every exposed surface over the next couple of weeks and I felt like I was molting. So those times I wore sunscreen in the Dominican Republic were not in vain. The 12 of us and our faculty member spent 5 glorious days sharing a house on the hill that overlooked the beach. It was definitely a second bonding point for my classmates and I fell in love with them again.

Jamaica: I had never been to Jamaica, and at first felt conflicting going there to attend a wedding in July, not only of people I had never met before (my SO was best man, and I was his date), but also as the only black person in the party. Yes, I felt conflicted going to a majority black country with a group of white people. This was only the second international trip (Sayulita was the first) that I've made that was not part of a service project. And then to go to a resort where I felt like I may be inherently exploiting the people who work there? It was challenging until I got there and realized that over half of the patrons at this particular resort were black, many of them Jamaican, having conferences or spending a relaxing weekend at the resort. There were also a lot of African Americans there. And I realize that supporting tourism in a country like Jamaica is probably more productive than any of the service projects I carried out in other countries the past, though I still found it polemic. At some point, I finally just let myself relax. I was welcomed by my SO's friend and his wife warmly into their wedding party and was pulled in to do some Serbian dances during the reception (courtesy of the groom's family). Minus the sand flies biting the left side of my body, it was a good time. This is another place I have to go back to. I love going to countries with majority black people!

Stevie Wonder: I attended Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life" concert as he toured the country. He actually made a stop in Seattle on December 3. So many performers and performances skip Seattle (like Motown, the Musical), but he came by. I was chief on Family Medicine Service at the time, and though I tried to switch my call days, I ended up on call on the day that our service went from tame to crazy. After that day, we would continue to admit patients and eventually cap out our service. My call days usually saw me staying at least until 8:30pm most days, and this day was no exception...exactly why I wanted to switch my call day so I could make the concert! In the end, I'm glad I didn't switch my call day because Friday (the day I was going to trade out) ended up to be a busier day. The concert started at 8pm, I got out of the hospital at 8:30pm and made it to the concert by 9pm. The people next to me lamented that I had missed "so much," though I got there as he did "Pastime Paradise," and knew that he had much of the album left, though I had missed "Sir Duke." I had heard from my cousins, who went to the concert in Detroit, that it went on for three hours. And Stevie did not disappoint. Our concert went on for four hours, which means I got to jam with Stevie for a full three hours after sliding in an hour late, until midnight! And, after four hours of sleep, I got in to work the next day, saw a full set of patients during my half day in clinic, and realized that age really is just a number. I thought that my days of staying up that late and then being fully functional the next day (without coffee) were behind me. At 29, I surprised myself with the stamina of a 19 year old while working full time. And Stevie, of course, was awesome. He sang each song from the album exactly as it was in the album. And his daughter Aisha Morris was one of his backup singers! And I could go on, but it definitely made my life to see my favorite artist in concert.

Nephew: My best friend from medical school had a baby boy in September, and I got to visit him in November when he was 6 weeks old. I've never witnessed someone I'm that close to have a baby, during those very new periods, someone that I knew before she met her husband when we were both very much single young women. And now seeing her as a mother, watching the transformation she and her husband have made...all I can say is, it's real. It's the only thing that gave my baby fever a pause. Not because of the job they were doing...no, they were doing excellently. It's just that I see that the struggle is real, there is no magical transformation. I was watching them as they were learning and adapting with a newborn. That is how life is, and that is how my life will be when, one day, iA, I have one of my own. Hopefully a girl. I already have some names picked out. Okay, so baby fever was on pause, did not completely go away.

Babies, babies, babies: This was the year of the babies. I think I delivered more than 20 babies this year, most of them being my own patients'. I just delivered one a few days ago, my patient's gorgeous baby girl. I have three more of my own patients due and then my residency adviser cut me off from deliveries. It's just as well. I've more than exceeded the number of continuities I need for graduation. My poor SO is tired of me talking about labor and delivery, and babies. He states that he could probably deliver a baby at this point from my descriptions of it.

Licensed Physician: I took (and passed) Step 3 earlier this year, officially completing USMLE and becoming a licensed physician. Seriously, exam taking in medicine feels like the "Song that Doesn't End." I started medical school and heard about the boards, and then learned about what would be the hardest exam I'd take in my life, disconcertingly named "Step 1." Disconcerting because if there is a step 1, there is probably a step 2, and maybe it goes on. Each year, I learned a little bit more about the exams I was going to be in for. Depending on one's specialty and if they go on to fellowship, there are a whole list of exams besides the USMLE steps that one had to pass to become not only licensed, but also board-certified. As I've chosen family medicine, I have an every-10-year board exam that I will have to pass and certain amount of Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits that I have to keep up with to maintain board certification. The family medicine boards through the ABFM is the last exam I'll take in residency, and the last exam I'll take in life (unless I lose my mind and go for more education or more board certification). But, in February of this year, I took and passed step 3, making me a licensed physician, able to practice independently (thus, moonlighting).

That Full Circle Moment: A couple of weeks ago in clinic, I had one of my first full-circle moments in family medicine. I went into the clinic counseling a pregnant woman on some cramping that she was having. She planned to do her prenatal care elsewhere, so it was going to be a simple visit. As I entered the room and began talking to her, I noticed there were tears in her eyes. She then told me that I was the doctor that told her that her grandfather was dying. Back in my intern year, when I was completing a night float rotation, I led a family meeting at 1am for a family whose beloved grandfather, who I had admitted hours earlier, was passing. It was the defining moment of my residency. I laid myself bare for that family as they looked to me to prognosticate what I couldn't with numbers. People were rolling on the floor, crying. I myself felt completely spent and cried after that interaction. I had never put so much of myself into a patient interaction in residency, and that was a great transition point for me. I actually didn't remember that woman in the sea of family members that were there, but she remembered me. Together, in the exam room, after I reassured her that there was no threat to her pregnancy at present, we remembered her grandfather. I shared with her that my grandfather had also passed that year, so I understood what it felt like to lose someone who had lived a long, complete life but who was still very beloved. We shared that moment and that continuity in a 15 minute visit. And so at the beginning of residency I saw the end of one life I was there at the beginning of another in the same family.

Saturday Thanksgiving: The last three Thanksgivings, I have been working. The first year, I was on the Family Medicine Service and served on a skeleton team that included my seniors and the chief and rounded on all of the patients of the day. My second year, I was on maternal child and covered the team's OB service. This past year, I was again on FMS, this time as chief, and I covered for my interns so they could all have the day off and me and one of the second years covered service for them. My first year, I wanted to prepare a turkey, so I made a full Thanksgiving meal on the day that I had off--Saturday. Since then, I've made Saturday Thanksgiving a small tradition for my residency class. This past year included one of the newest additions to our residency family, one of my co-resident's baby girls.

Death of a Cousin: In January, one of my second cousins lost his life senselessly. He was an anesthesia tec in his hometown in Ohio and he was paged in to work to help with a transplant. His car was in the shop so he couldn't drive there so he walked to catch a bus early in the morning and was robbed and shot dead, in cold blood, his body left in front of the bus stop where it was found shortly thereafter. This Christmas, my cousin, his father, a pastor, is celebrating his life and mourning his only son, the father of his two grandchildren.

A lot more happened this year on the smaller scale that is more tedious to recount. Overall, it was a good year, a year of challenge, growth and transition. And here I find myself.

And here I am.

Unassuming

As salaam alaikum,


One of the last things about my grandfather that he lost in the months leading up to his death was his personality. Or, I'm unsure if it was his personality per se or more his unassuming nature. I'm not sure the two are the same. They could be. I'm not sure how much of this is an artifact of my grandfather's upbringing, in a small, Southern Baptist family in the South, how much has to do with growing up during Jim Crow and having to choose deference to white people or face certain death, and how much was just his gentle nature. But my grandfather, in the time I knew him, was very unassuming.

"Oh, don't worry about me, baby." "You don't have to do that." "When you're not busy, could you..." "I'm sorry to bother you, but..."

So while my grandmother, in her heyday, would absolutely dominate all conversation in the room, my grandfather was often silent. Even after his death, my grandmother confided in my mother that she worries that he won't speak up for himself on Judgement Day.

When I learned of grandfather's death, I immediately cried but instantaneously felt a nur that could only come from God, and I was blessed to feel his presence. I knew he was not far, and that he was not suffering, and that he was with God, and it was fine. And it's been fine. And though I missed him at the family gathering after the funeral, the chair that he would occupy inside the house during such gatherings empty, I felt his presence in all of us, his offspring.

And one of the things I either got from him or learned from him is how to be unassuming.

Because I am unassuming in my daily comings and goings. I sometimes don't advocate for myself. I think more than that, I purposefully don't try to stand out in certain situations. Sometimes I feel that I do the spiritual equivalent of shrinking myself as small into a corner as I can. And I don't know how much of this was left-over, learned Muslimah jeito from college, but I try not to be too loud (though I have a naturally resonant voice), too boisterous. I try not to take up too much space, consume too much energy around me.

As a result, I feel as if sometimes, people don't really know me, or that the traits they do know me for are artifacts of the unassuming nature.

Then I worry if I'm not really nice, understanding and a good listener.

I've thought about this more as I've begun to speak up more for myself, let my opinions be known, speak before getting a chance to pour over the intent of my words so much. Sometimes, I don't feel myself when I do this, although it is certainly necessary when assuming an authoritative role, like senior resident, recruitment chief, or later, attending.

I've been thinking about this as I've contemplated my career and the various leadership roles I'd like to take, and as I see that if I don't advocate for myself, few people will. People are ready to assume mediocrity, perhaps in part because my unassuming nature. People are ready to dismiss me or consider me someone not worth knowing.

I'm not bland. I'm not boring. I'm just different. And if I spoke of my interests with as much fervor and pride as some of my friends do, as if all of our base interests are universal or at the least theirs are the ones worth sharing, then I'd be in no way dismissed, ever.

But there's something to be said about humility.

I think there's a balance. One can advocate for themselves and influence their own environment while still being humble and kind. I just have to make sure that when I'm unassuming, it's not to my own detriment while being of little benefit to those around me I'm trying not to offend.

Some Truths

As salaam alaikum,

"The one thing we did right was the day we started to fight. Keep your eyes on that prize, hold on." - "Eyes on That Prize"

I don't usually get political. On this blog or anywhere else online, really. Definitely not Facebook. But one of my co-residents posted something about Ferguson, and how we should keep talking, and while I agree, more than just talking needs to be done.

More than just media showboating needs to be done.

I posted in the Facebook comment box that we have a militarized police force that has been in full force and growing since the 1980s institution of the War on Drugs. I told her to read The New Jim Crow, which I have to read in pieces because it makes me angry. I told her that post-civil rights is a fallacy. The Civil Rights movement didn't end, it died. It died with a lot of its key leaders who were assassinated, thanks in part to our own FBI. To this day, I don't understand how more people don't know about COINTELPRO. Even if there were only evidence linking the FBI to the death of one Black Panther (and I believe there is more evidence than that), isn't that bad enough?

The movement was posthumously declared over. There was still work to be done and Malcolm X had just found Islam and that shaped the way he saw the movement, Martin Luther King had more than just a dream, he was a man of ideas made tangible and wanted to move to overall social justice and poverty next. So many leaders and non-leaders, young people, killed, so many deaths without justice.

Post-civil rights movement is a fallacy and that's exactly how Michael Brown could be shot with his arms up, feet away from the police officer so many times into his poor body and left dead in a pool of his own blood on the streets of Ferguson for hours in the sun, like a dog.

Black life is not valued in this country, never has, and if we do nothing, never will. Some black people do not value black life. That's how my cousin was murdered and left for dead in a pool of his own blood while trying to go to work to provide for his young family. For a few dollar bills. And the killer has not been found. That's how another cousin killed in cold blood and will spend the rest of his life in prison. That's how Emmit Till and thousands of other black men had their bodies destroyed for sport. That's how Eric Garner was choked to death in public and that's how Michael Brown was shot and left for dead.

Left like a dog. Or worse than that, because someone would have handled the body of even a stray dog.

I could say so much more, but this is not the only issue out there right now. This summer was a hard Ramadan for many because of injustice and death so many places in the world, most notably in Gaza. I don't like to get political mainly because I don't have time, during my training, to be part of the grander solution. I don't have time to be well read and therefore the best spoken here, and I don't put my prose to its best use, which I do not believe is an online blog that few people read. I believe that is mobilizing people who have the tools and the drive to affect legislation.

My parents have also always feared my online presence, especially as a Muslimah, because long before we knew about NSA, my mother, as a former black nationalist, knew about the NSA. In the sense that she knew after 9/11 there were most certainly governmental bodies that had the power to tap into our lives as the NSA has. Call that some old NOI conspiracy theorizing, but it was true, and now folks acting shocked.

I could say so much more, but instead, I choose to end this entry with a series of truths. This goes beyond Ferguson. This goes beyond the other string of innocent black men that were killed before Michael Brown this year and were killed after. This is about Civil Rights.

1. The militarized police are here to stay and will continue to use excessive force unless meaningful and deep rooted legislative action happens to eradicate it, much of which is firmly based in the War on Drugs. Our legislative bodies have not been in a state to affect that type of change and won't be in the foreseeable future.

2. The 1960s were a horrendous decade, not only because so many people were killed, but because the government lied, step by step, over and over and over again.

3. The Civil Rights movement should not have been over when it was. There were many victories but the status quo is not a victory we can declare post-civil rights worthy by any stretch of the imagination.

4. As Affirmative Action programs have ended over the country over the last 10 years, the "playing field" is still far from "level," as long as predominantly black schools remain predominantly poor, meaning the majority of black kids get substandard education to inhibit college success.

5. SCOTUS knew exactly what they were doing in voting down the Voting Rights Act, and that "country has come so far" rhetoric was a cover. Poor blacks won't be counting marbles in a jar to get the vote but there will surely be other restrictive measures popping back up, and it won't be restricted to the South.

6. Speaking of the value of black life, some black people also do not value black life, this is true. The reality of white-on-white crime aside, black self-violence is apparent not only in crimes and murders committed but in our own music, our entertainment, our leisure. This must stop because, fair or not, there is a group of people who will not value our lives because they figure we also don't value our own. And we will continue to die in our own hands and in the hands of others, on the street, in pools of blood for hours, worse than dogs.

7. Regardless of the above, it is egregious to blame the victim, and every time a young black man is killed, the victim is blamed, it is justified based on circumstantial issues that really are not worth dying over. Like Trayvon and weed. Like Emmit Till and flirting with a white woman. The latter should sound as ridiculous as reasons to die as Michael Brown stealing candy and Eric Garner selling taxless cigarette singles, except even more so because it was carried out by law enforcement.

8. COINTELPRO is real and it's declassified. And just because its now declassified doesn't mean that our government wouldn't and hasn't had similar endeavors, so to speak.

9. We talk about how our healthcare system is broken, and it is, but moreso our penal system is broken, broken and costlier than the education of our children, which further feeds into the system. The disregarded black bodies that are not slaughtered spend some time in the penitentiary, if not the majority of their lives, most of them for petty drug offenses, spending time and tax payer money in a place that has no reformatory value and leave unable to make lives for themselves because of ex-con status.

10. Injustices such as these will continue to happen, in spite of peaceful protest and marching in Ferguson until our government takes thing seriously enough and do as they did during the movement and sign the needed changes into law.

I think 10 is a nice round number. There are probably others that I could include.

It's been more than a month since my grandfather passed, and I feel even more emboldened to try to take over where he left off before a stroke and an ICU stay in the 1970s changed him from the outspoken member of his local black nationalist organization to a quiet man whose memory of injustice often suffered in silence as he changed his focus to his growing family of grandchildren.

"The one thing we did wrong was stay in the wilderness a day too long."

Let's not let time pass after Ferguson, security set in, and we wander back to the wilderness.

The First Death

Salaam,

My beloved grandfather died on Wednesday. We buried him today. I saw his body beforehand, and I smiled. It held him for so long, but it was so clear, looking at the frame, that this was just a shell, and not at all the man I've loved all 29 years of my life.

I am so happy that he died in his sleep and that he died at home, surrounded by family members. I am so happy that 9 of his 10 children, 30 of his 40 grandchildren and several of his 70 great-grandchildren were able to make it to the funeral, as well as most of his daughter-in-laws, his son-in-law (my father) and several community members.

He left behind my grandmother. They knew each other as children, for 82 years, and were married for 68 years, had 10 children, 40 grandchildren, over 70 great grand children and 3 great-great grandchildren. He converted from Christianity to eventually Islam with his family of 10 and was a founding leader of the Flint, MI Muslim community. He raised three of his grandchildren. Their home was a home for any and all of us when we needed it. I lived with my grandparents for about three months during the summer of 1995 and the winter of 1996 when my mother had medical problems.

My first memories of my grandfather were of the horsey rides on his knee, the string of lollipops he seemed to have an endless supply of, and his sugary coffee. My final memories of him, before his most recent decline, was of climbing up on a step ladder much less stable than he ought have, putting corn cobs in the feeder for the squirrels.

He had a unique way of telling stories, of mimicking people's voices, of making sounds, of playing with babies and making them laugh that is not duplicated on earth right now. He, along with my grandmother, loved children infinitely. They raised children from 1947 to 1998.

And between WWII, the auto plant and the conversion, there's so many stories that I do not know about Grandfather.



At first when he died, when I heard about it, it felt like a part of me died. It felt like a part of my mother, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, it felt like a part of us all died. Like a part of my heart went away. Then, in a matter of minutes, I had a sense of peace and fullness because, even though we can't know know, I was reassured that my grandfather was in Jannah. And more than all of the Qur'an reading I've been doing this month by ajiza, I felt the mercy of God, right then.

It was one of the strongest moments of my faith, and it makes all of the tears that I shed either happy tears or tears of saudade. My grandfather was a staple in my life, like my sustenance, and life will never be the same without him here. And life is not as precious without him here. But I will strive each day towards God, may I be all that Grandfather desired of us, his legacy, his progeny, and even more than he could have imagined.

I love you, Grandfather, and that you are in Jannah makes it even more of a goal for me.

All I Want to Be

Salaam,

As another Ramadan approaches, I'm starting to become more reflective and introspective at a time that my incoming rotation will not allow me to be. I'll be on a surgery inpatient service for the duration of Ramadan. I just have to get in enough calories and hydrate enough during suhoor and before I begin my shifts at 5am, and I think I'll be fine, iA.

But also, as another Ramadan approaches, I reflect on all of the things I've wanted to be over the years, all of the things I want to be, and all of the things that I've tucked away, at least temporarily. One of them is a better Muslim. That definition has shifted over time and looks a bit different than it did 11 years ago when I fasted my first full Ramadan outside of my parent's home as an 18-year-old college freshman.

It looks different than it did when I was a new, 21-year-old hijabi.

It looks different than it did when I was a 24-year-old medical student, struggling with the fear that my first Muslim brother-crush, who was marrying someone else, was maybe the best, the last and the only chance I'd ever get at love.

It looks different than I did when I was 27, newly disillusioned with love and certain aspects of my religion and moving from east to west coast with hopes to realize my dream career.

I think that, more than any time in my life, my self-definition is fluid. That sounds wishy-washy. I mean that I realize that parts of who I am are continually evolving as I grow and learn. I do not expect to reach my destination and still have life left to live.

In essence, I will not attain "better Muslim" at once and then sit pretty for the rest of the time. It will be one of those life goals I will work toward until the end, whether that is the end of my life or the terminal decline of my cognition.

And while one could say that my Islam is all-encompassing of the most important things of my life, I also have other aspects of my life for which I recognize that I will not reach a destination before the end. These identities of mine are constantly growing and changing, and I thank God for that. It means I'm very much alive.

It also means I can't close my eyes and see where I want to be at any given time. I used to be able to close my eyes and see such vivid detail, from the color of my clothes to the height of my husband, to how many kids we'd have at our sides. With maturity these details have necessarily become more vague or are now nonexistent, replaced with an intangible placeholder named insha'Allah.

Because I couldn't have made up the last two years of my life when I was an 18-year-old freshman or a 21-year-old hijabi or a 24-year-old medical student.

And that removes the pressure I feel to be all that I want to be. I no longer feel pressure to be all of these things soon, as if it would never happen otherwise. I no longer feel pressure to be all of the things I want to be at once.

I no longer feel the urgency of being all the things I want to be. It's all insha'Allah, and for the first time in a couple of years, insha'Allah doesn't feel daunting to me.

I guess this is what it means to Submit.

There's so much that I am that I want to be as much of my life as I can, but I cannot, because of the earthly limits of space and time. I want to be all of these things, including a writer, an artist, a singer, a musician - a family physician, a public health practitioner, possibly a medical director - a mother, a wife, a daughter-in-law--while carrying with the things I already am--a Muslim, a daughter, a sister, a cousin, a friend, the list probably goes on. I want to be all of these things at once because I enjoy each of them, in each of them I find meaning and purpose, in each of them I express a little of myself, and to several of them I aspire absolutely.

And for the first time, I'm okay with the fact that there may be some things that I'll never be. I'm not despairing right now with the possibility of never bearing my own children, but maybe I'll adopt or foster. I may never publish a fiction piece, but I'll keep writing. I may never marry, but I'll love and nurture those who are in my life. Not saying that they would not be hard to come to terms with, but I'm accepting.

Whereas when I was a teen, when I saw the future, I saw black, bleak, dark--whereas when I was in my early 20s, I saw future as a series of detailed ideals with a backdrop of grave anxiety--I can't see the future now, as I never was able to, really, and I'm placing my trust in God, the best of planners, while moving forward prayerfully with my own purposeful plans in the meantime.

By God's grace, I will be able to be all I want to be.

The Ideal

Salaam,

The other day, I was sitting with my SO and we were reflecting on our relationship (1.5 years now), and I can't remember how it came up, but I think I mentioned that I'd grown since the time I'd known him, and that I'm still growing, and I realize the things that I used to want in a relationship I don't actually want and things that I didn't think I wanted I really appreciate having.

He asked me who my ideal SO would be.

And I couldn't answer him. I know he's conscious of the differences in our spirituality and probably wonders if one day I'll wake up and decide I'd rather be with a more-practicing man and leave him on his way, especially when I get to talking about religion (even if I'm bemoaning certain elements). I feel like the answer I gave him would have only upset him.

Because, really, I've never thought long enough to formulate an ideal. My ideal man was always someone who would fit well with me. Someone who would make sense in my life, my practice, with my belief, and that was it. It takes actually being in a relationship to realize how selfish that view is and realize that it's never that simple with another, complex, whole human being at your side that you're relating to.

And just because I've waited and was prayerful and feel like I'm a really good person, doesn't mean I'm going to be the perfect SO. In fact, I spent so many years by myself, I still find myself being self-centered and forcing myself to put myself aside for a little bit to really hear my SO's point of view, his hangups, his problems.

Not that I'm usually a selfish person. Of course I know how to be a good friend and I do this for friends all the time. It's just...I guess I always imagined a relationship while being alone and relatively self-sufficient, so spending time with someone in the flesh who is filling that role after imagining it alone for a while makes it hard to get outside of myself and those imaginings and relate to the person on the other side of the dream.

So I feel like whatever I imagined as the ideal man or the ideal relationship before was fairly one-sided, as if there were a human man out there whose sole purpose in life was to be my eventual husband or something. And of course I never expected someone to be like that, but when one creates an imaginary man in their brains, he doesn't tend to have aspirations unique to your own.

What would be a better soul mate then one who also believed in care for the underserved, here and abroad? Maybe...

The fact is, the possible "ideal" combinations with me as a person are endless, but they are, regardless, combinations that I do not find often in nature. And implicit in my SO's question is his wondering if I'm settling or not, if I can do better or not.

And I guess I could imagine a lot of different types of men. Of late, I think it would be cool to travel to Brazil, specifically to Salvador, and meet some guy at the faculdade who was really into Nigeria, specifically Igbo culture, and therefore be fascinated with me, my family's history, my religion, and things go from there...

But I don't think about those things anymore. I don't construct ideals anymore because I have something real that is good, that works, that is better than I could have imagined in the package that it came in. I have before me a real man who has lived 6 years before me, has lived 33 years independent of me, has dreams and goals that do not involve me, and yet is now intimately interwoven in my life and it just seems silly to prefer to be with an imaginary man of my own making.

Whether or not I could "do better" is I guess up for debate, but I don't think I can fabricate an ideal. Not right now, not while things are so real.

Depression is...

As salaam alaikum,

I cannot survive without writing. Writing has become such a big part of my life, that even though I'm going to have to get up in less than 7 hours to finish clinic notes from today, darnit, I'm going to write! If I don't write before I go to sleep tonight, I'm going to explode!

And sometimes, that's what self-care during residency means. Exchanging sleep for doing something that will make your soul make sense.

Speaking of one's soul making sense...I, just a few seconds ago, over the course of several hours, whipped myself into a frenzy of sorts. I've done a lot of reflection about my place in religion, my place in Islam, my place with God, all of these things. This, in addition to facing a patient today who recently had suicidal ideation and a plan, got me feeling pretty depressed.

Soon, everything around me was depressing.

The fact that I had a patient who was 25 and a parent already while I'm 29 and single was depressing.

The fact that my best friend from med school is pregnant with her first child and I'm 29 and single, perhaps indefinitely, was depressing.

The fact that my younger cousin is enjoying the first few weeks of motherhood whereas I remember her being the age of her daughter and I feel no closer to motherhood than I was when I was her age was depressing.

The fact that over half of my friends from medical school are married and have already had their first child and I may never get married and or by the time I do I may be infertile was depressing.

The fact that I am overweight and currently hairy was depressing. No one would ever want me, and my SO would realize that and leave me, and that was also depressing.

Then I talked to my SO about God, a topic he shies away from with me because I usually have heavy thoughts. I talked to him with how my patient rationalized her severe reaction to the death in her family with God's plan and about how I realized that I've never been comfortable with God's plan. Not God's plan itself but the term, the simplified concept. I realized that it's always depressed me when it's suppose to be a source of comfort. He was not ready for this conversation at nearly 10pm at night, so I hung up the phone and brooded on my own.

And then I had an epiphany that brought me up from the depths of my self-constructed depressive episode.

For me, depression is believing that God has no plan for you, or that God's plan is for you to fail. In Qur'anic terms, that you are one of the ones who God is hardening your heart to prepare you for hellfire, and there is nothing you can do about it, because it's God's will.

This was the source of my depression when I was a teenager, and I hadn't felt that way in a long time. I don't believe it now, but I got a whiff of it as I found myself sinking deeper into my self-made funk.

That is the root of depression for me. Those times when I feel so remote from God that I begin to doubt the purpose of my existence...those are hard times.

And that is how my patient felt when she wanted to shoot herself.

And that is how I felt as an adolescent.

And that's how I would continue to feel if I didn't take a break from sleeping this evening and keep vigil by my laptop and write things out.

Depression for me is doubt in my purposeful existence. My only remedy, then, is belief.

Superwoman

Salaam,

"Very well
I believe I know you
Very well
Wish that you knew me, too
Very well
And I think I can deal with everything going through your head."
--Stevie Wonder "Superwoman/Where Were you When I Needed You."

After the summer of 2004, before I started to lose my grip on reality and when I began to sense that a relationship between me and MQ was not to be, this song was my theme song. Or rather, my theme song for how I felt about him.

For whatever reason, I felt like I knew him well, if he'd just let me tell him about himself. He would see that I knew him well, and he would come to love me for it. And together, we could deal with everything going through his head.

But then there was this cumbersome part of the lyric to reconcile, and that was about Mary wanting to be a superwoman.

The woman that I was early college, I wasn't into that lyric. What's wrong with Mary wanting to be a superwoman, I asked myself...and probably seriously asked my mother. She didn't give me an answer. For those who have never enjoyed this wonderful Stevie song, here is a sampling of not just the chorus:

"Mary wants to be a superwoman
But is that really in her head?
'Cause I just wanna live each day
And love her for what she is

"Mary wants to be another movie star
But is that really in her mind?
And all the things she wants to be
She needs to leave behind."

Then it launches into the "very well" part.

As my brother is want to say, I took offense to this lyric. Why does Mary have to leave behind the things she wants to do? Her dreams, her aspirations, just for this man? And he claims to know her very well, well enough to know what is best for her as if she doesn't.

"My woman wants to be a superwoman
And I just had to say goodbye
Because I can't spend all my hours
Start to cry."

And like that, it's over.

The lyrics were based on Stevie's relationship with his first wife who had aspirations to be a singer herself. I think he helped produce her first album or something, but it was splitsville from there.

Towards the end of that marriage, Stevie wrote "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" for a woman not his wife. Burn.

Just a little music trivia there.

I took offense and I told myself I never wanted to be with a man who wouldn't let me be a superwoman. Because I've always imagined myself being somewhat of a superwoman. That image has metamorphosed over time...

From my 6-year-old imaginings of a thinner, browner-skinned version of myself sporting bantu knots, a tank top and capri jeans singing "Yes and yes indeed, nobody's just a-right for me," while passing by interested young black men on either side of me in an elaborate fantasy music video daydream to my 21-year-old image of myself in black hijab and jilbab with my activist husband to my left and my young son on my hip, overlooking the landscape of the human rights march we had organized, I always imagine myself a superwoman.

That has got to be the longest sentence I've ever written.

These days, superwoman me is a bit nebulous at best. I see her as some kind of leader in medicine, leader in her community, loving wife and mother, champion of the underserved. I don't see my hair texture or color or whether or not its covered. I don't see the color of my husband or my babies. I don't see my size and I don't hear my voice and the specific of my aspirations I don't know, but I do know I want to be great.

But is that beyond what I am?

Maybe I don't have within me to be a leader. Maybe I'm too soft spoken and accommodating. I've certainly had time in my life to be as activist as I want to be, and I haven't done nearly what I could have done.

Maybe I want to be a superwoman, but that's not really what's in my head. Maybe I should just be satisfied with who I am and go on from there.

...I still take issue with someone telling you, for the sake of your relationship, to forsake your ambitions. Although, at least he left without giving an ultimatum.

The truth of the matter is that I am not the superwoman I saw myself being when I was younger and even among the things I'm relatively good at, I'm mediocre at best at them in the grand scheme of things. I'm relatively poorly read, I'm not that good of a writer, I am not a model Muslimah, and my body has swung on the pendulum back to the fat side of things. My hair is broken at the crown in spite of its growth, and I'm an okay family medicine resident. I'm an occasionally disappointing daughter (to my father) and a distant sister. I'm a hesitant significant other. I'm not the best at anything that I do.

And you know what, that's okay.

Maybe now I can focus on making real goals in my life and not idealized ones, just as I will focus on making a life with a real man in my life, and not an idealized one.

One who I do not know very well. One who I'm not sure I can deal with everything inside his head. And I won't be able to. But that doesn't preclude me from becoming part of his life.

And now I've come full circle.

[uncensored]: Part of That World

Salaam,

I've been following along with the recent posts at loveinshallah.com in response to the controversial contribution, "How I Met My Son's Mother." First of all, big ups to this guy who was so courageous to write a piece on this website and be subject to such scrutiny. There's not much left to say that hasn't already been said in several response posts on that website and the 140 and counting comments.

Reading all of these posts about the ideals of Muslim marriage and how we fall so far from that ideal did get me feeling, to use a phrase that I actively despise, "some kinda way..."

I'm probably just ovulating or something and my hormones have come out of a year and a half long hiding, because I almost started crying at a beautiful moment between a tiny newborn and her teenage mother when I was doing baby's exam yesterday. But reading these blogs about people seeking out marriage in the halal way reminded me of what I once wanted for myself, and frankly, what I gave up on a long time ago.

It all unraveled years ago when I was on an online site and this brother from Florida was serious about setting up communication. This was not the first one and nor was he the last. He was also not the first more than 1000 miles away who wanted to skype. In these settings, I usually gave an email that I used to forward my old University of Michigan mail that I used for the purpose of signing up for internet things that I didn't want to spam me...and for online dating. No phone numbers, no skype dates. Anyone who wanted to skype with me immediately I figured were too into my looks, anyway.

So brother from Florida was earnest. He was not at all my time and had a career trajectory that was not appetizing (the lyric comes to mind, "I'm a hustler, baby, I just want you to know..."). But otherwise, he was just fine on initial contacts from an Islamic standpoint. And for him, I was just fine...pre-med (at that time), with a promising career, "just throw a hijab on [me] and [I'd] be perfect."

I didn't take offense to this because I never said never again to hijab, and at this point in the game, approaching 25, I didn't know if I should be so picky as to not want to be with a man who felt hijab was fard.

Then he asked me if I had a wali. Ooohh...

"Because, you know, I talk to sisters on here and they act like they're serious, but then I find out they don't have a wali, which is absolutely required."

This was either about to be my perfect out for the Florida Hustler or it was going to be yet another cop-out for a brother who may have had promise.

I didn't have a wali. I hadn't sought a wali and at that point was unsure if I wanted to, even though I know that it would be required if I chose to go about marriage at this way. What was I thinking? I know exactly what I was thinking. I was thinking that I had to finesse this Muslim marriage thing. I have a Christian father who gets nervous anyone has a Muslim name or comes from a majority-Muslim country for "extremist ties," in spite of being married to a Muslim woman who practices five pillars. My "coming out" as Muslim in my early 20s imposed a deep rift in my family that my adult brother with autism cannot afford, nor can my parents' otherwise loving and functional relationship afford. It's a sucky place to be in as a daughter of an interfaith couple, but so it is. My parents, for this reason, were not fit to guide me through the marriage process.

Of course, my father would love to arrange my marriage with a man that he trusts. That man would be a Christian man. I bet he still would love to, but that's another story.

So, if I wanted to go forward with legit Muslim marriage, by the books, I probably would need a wali. But where would I find one? One of my formerly atheist now Muslim convert friends from medical school who converted to Islam prior to marrying her husband easily told me that I should talk to an imam, that he would help me.

Yes, thank you so much. Because it was so hard for you, dating your Muslim husband the regular way.

I hope this friend is okay. She had no wali and shut herself out from her friends in the time leading up to her marriage. I didn't even get to do my "there is no compulsion in religion" talk with her before she apparently converted and struggled through salat with Arabic words she didn't understand.

So here I was, trying to be more honest, on skype (still wasn't comfortable with it) with Florida Hustler Brother who was right. If I wanted to do this right, I needed a wali. But doing things right would mean ultimately alienating my father from this process, and maybe alienating him from my life as well. I realized that getting a wali was just a red herring. The process of attempting to get "Muslim married" by getting to know a man outside of the dating paradigm and essentially arranging my marriage was incompatible with maintaining a relationship with my father and having my parents at all involved in my decision to marry.

Because my mother is a wife that defers to her husband. My mother is also a woman who did not have patience for her pool of Muslim suitors, which for her as a black Muslim woman in the late 70s were black Muslim men, the new Muslim crew following WD Muhammad or at that point, stragglers from the Nation, who she had seen preferentially select "lost found girls" because "they put out." She is also a woman who does salat in English and does not shudder when people tell her that her prayers will therefore not be recognized. She slides easily from reading the Qur'an daily to living her Islam in the way she sees fit, and in that mode of Islam, she sees no conflict in having married my Christian father, whose morality is more excellent than any other Muslim man she's known, including her own father.

Therefore, she would not be my ally in seeking to get Muslim married at the expense of my relationship with my father.

There's always the slim possibility that I would go about this process, not alienate my father, he meets my suitor and sees past the religious difference to see that he was a genuinely God-fearing man who had the best intentions for his daughter. My mother would also be pleased with such a suitor.

But in order to get there, I would have to begin a serious search, and in order for it to be safe for me as a single woman searching without the aid of family or other elders of a spouse, I would need a wali, a legit one, a trusted guardian who really had my best interests at heart.

And I'd either have to keep it from my father or endure months of disapproval from him until the process yielded success, and the impact that would have on my mother and brother as my father took out his frustration on my mother, as he did when I first told him that I would "never be Christian."

I'm not being melodramatic. My father still tries at intervals to get me to realize my salvation through Jesus Christ and convert.

Some would argue that the decision should be easy, that I should aim to please God more than my parents. And what more example do I need than the father of both my and my father's religion, Abraham, and blah blah blah.

I mean, it is a valid argument. I should want to please God over everything else. But people who make these arguments typically were never in the position I was in. Without my parents, I have no one in this world. And at the very least, as a single woman, that is not safe.



So I closed the Skype conversation with Florida Brother and never spoke to him again. I would not be getting a wali. And from that point onward, it slowly degenerated to, "I will not be getting Muslim married."

To which I occasionally wonder, what will become of me? Marriage being half of my religion, I either will not get married at all or, if I marry, I will be less of a Muslim because of it. The ramifications are clear. I will become like my mother, who has not prayed with anyone else besides me, occasionally, when prayers are silent because I do salat in Arabic and she does salat in English. She fasts in isolation, she practices in isolation. She hasn't been in a mosque since before I was born. She's able to exist as a Muslim woman married to this Christian man praying in English because of her isolation. This was not what I wanted for myself.

It's not true that marrying a non-Muslim man means that you're children will be raised non-Muslim. I've seen more Muslim men married to non-Muslim women raise non-Muslim children than the other way around. Cultures are different, and in ours, often, the mother's faith rules. But it is true that a strong, believing father of another faith will continue to have an influence and somewhat control over especially his daughter's potential spouses, especially if that daughter loves and respects him.

I wore hijab for two years, successfully finding ways to hide it from my father until I couldn't anymore and for multiple other reasons, stopped. The same way goes my plans for marriage.

And I've come out the other side a shadow of the Muslimah that I initially sought to become. I strove to become part of a world that I could not have become a part of without disowning myself from my father and potentially permanently destroying our relationship. But my father is a good Christian man who believes in God with all of his heart who raised me to the best of his ability and wants the best for me and he does not deserve such cruelty.

My mother, a few years ago in my angst about my situation, apologized to me as I spelled this out for her. She should not have placed me in such a precarious position. What a thing to apologize for, to have married a solid husband, a great father and provider.



In the end, I have made a choice about how I will seek my partner. It is one that both of my parents approve of and because of that, feels a lot safer, although in reality, I realize that there is no safe way to do such a thing. Not only in terms of safety of emotions, but in terms of safety of person. I go forward prayerfully as with everything I do.