Salaam! The names Sakeenah. Let’s see who am I…. Well I’m a Muslim. I’m an American. I’m a mental health advocate and a lover of cats. I’m Indian. I’ve recently developed a liking for pineapple on pizza (I know I’m sorry y’all, I didn’t think I’d become one of those people either!!😓🤫). I sing. I paint. I travel. I observe. I love and I love to be loved as cheesy as that might sound.

When I first made this blog perhaps over 12 years ago now (when I was really just a kid), I initially used it as my own personal online notebook and mental health journal. I’d use the screen to spew out any and all difficulties I had in my life, whilst also facing a clinical diagnosis of “MDD” at the age of 12…

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Its really hard for a 5th grader to grasp the understanding of someone telling you you have a mental illness and that you need to take a medication for it. To us we just hear “You’re crazy and here’s a medicine that can help stamp out your craziness and dampen your personality along with it.” It makes you spiral out and question every…single…action… you do- “Am I crazy? Should I have reacted that way? Should I not have reacted that way? How are others acting? What exactly constitutes normal? What is wrong with me??! How do I stop it?!! Does this mean I have to stop being me? How do I stop being me?” 😦

I remember learning about this story in Islam about the 3 parts of your nafs/ soul and how they’re each trying to gain the upper hand. Sometimes the good one has the upper hand. Sometimes the bad one has the upper hand and sometimes neutral/”scared to do anything” has the upper hand. There’s actually a similar story in the Native American legends and folklore:

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.

A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

https://mot.global/2019/12/the-story-about-two-wolves/

And I related to that a lot. As someone with depression you are constantly having thoughts that are trying to undermine your success. You might feel hopeful but there’s this tiny voice in the back of your head saying “you can’t do it, you’re going to fail, you’re such a failure, remember that last time you failed?”- thus causing me to fold myself into a ball, cry in the corner, and subsequently have no will to do anything else for the rest of the day.

I say this story only to remind us all that there may be times where we have thoughts in our head trying to undermine our success. We might have difficult days convincing us that the next day will be just as bad. But we also have a warrior within each of us. A strong wolf, a soldier, an amplifier of the soul that can get the upper hand if you allow it to. If you feed it.

You see, sometimes our souls have to be stronger than our thoughts so we can live on knowing that the decisions we’ve made were whole heartedly our own. We have to take hold of “the warrior within” and amplify it, and fortify it, and strengthen it. And I think that’s the battle. For an MDD patient like myself, that’s the battle I need to face every morning when I get up- feeding my good nafs, my warrior wolf inside. And not letting the evil nafs take control. And when I do get up, I can feel good knowing I won a battle. Perhaps a small battle, but a battle nonetheless- and a victorious one at that. 😌

I hope to spend the rest of this blog filling it with my random ruminations, but also all the ways that you can continue to feed a good soul/nafs.