In an attempt to rekindle my mantra- “Don’t ever give up. The only true failure is when you stop trying.” I am making a “new” resolution. Scratch that, I am renewing an age old goal of mine:

Wake up early.

Its been a hard task that is constantly a struggle for me. But if my mother (the night owl from birth) can do it, who can’t right? So, how will I wake up early?

First of all, set the affirmation.

I will get up before 10:00 am every day/consistently. I can do this. I will do this. Starting on the first morning of the last ten days of this year’s Ramadan- May 25, 2019. 

Second (but technically always put Allah first), set your intentions/pray to Allah swt.

I pray to Allah swt that He helps me to achieve this goal. Ya Allah, you are the greatest of Helpers, when we take one step towards You, You take ten steps towards us. And when we walk towards you Ya Allah swt, you will run towards us. So I pray that you run towards me Ya Allah and help me in succeeding this affirmation so that I can better serve and worship you Ya Allah (swt). Ameen!

Thirdly, in detail, why am I doing this?

It will make your lifestyle better, you can achieve your career goals better, you will make your parents proud, you have a higher chance of study success and overall life success as well as higher chance of praying all salah. 

Fourth and finally, set your subgoals.

– Waking up early requires me to sleep at a decent hour. Sleep at 12:00/12:30 seems reasonable for now.
– If I have the urge to go back to bed, use the rubber band technique or run outside.
– (a few more. will update this later)

In either case, my point is I want to better myself. In addition to these subgoals, I am acknowledging that I NEED therapy (at least definitely at this point) to properly function and keep level headed and consistent. Without things to keep me busy (like my student organization that I left recently), I get in my head a lot and going 6+ months without therapy is taking its toll on me. SO, I want to start that up again. I am also coming to terms with the fact that I most likely need to take medication and I am willing to try again what my Psychiatrist has recommended.

Let this be a witness that I am saying and admitting that I need to and will try to take medication if this is what needs to be done.

Now that I have set all this in place and written/typed it out, I need to follow through! See you on the other side by tomorrow morning, before 10:00 am, bright and early! 🙂

Sincerely,

Yours truly, Sakeenah Tahir

Vocab Story
– Can you guess what the underlined words mean?

She sat in her boss’ office perusing through the Times magazine on her desk. In reality, she should have been worried because she was not aware of the ignominy that was about to ensue. The putative condition of Ashley’s reputation at her work was not exactly what she thought it was. In fact, her boss had found some things on her social media accounts that seemed to have been leaked to the rest of the company.

Unfortunately, her boss was not known to be a very open-minded person and against her sectarian views she had decided to accept Ashley into her company despite her views on abortion and the Pro-Choice/Pro-life principle.

Unlike the Pro Life/Pro Choice matter however, this mistake that Ashley made was incontrovertible.

Her boss walked into the room. “How are you Ashley?” she said, in a rather harried manner. She was not only nervous about having this discussion with Ashley, but her daughter had called in sick a few minutes ago and she was in a hurry to leave soon.

New words to study for next post’s Vocab Story:

Spurn: to show unwillingness to accept, do, engage in, or agree with./ Fiercely independent, the elderly couple spurned all offers financial help.
Deprecate: to express scornfully one’s low opinion of…, belittle, bad mouth, decry/ movie critics tried to outdo one another in deprecating the comedy as the stupidest movie of the year.
Extol: to proclaim the glory of/ campaign literature extolling the candidate’s military record
Blithe: having or showing a good mood or disposition, cheery, bright, buoyant, etc./ a blithe, obedient child.
Bellicose: aggressive, argumentative, feeling or displaying eagerness to fight.
Spurious: fake, unnatural, not of natural quality, made with the intention of committing fraud/ claimed that the governor’s election-year enthusiasm for conservation was spurious, since he had cut funding for state parks (Merriam Webster).
Consummate: having or showing exceptional knowledge or experience in a particular field or endeavor
Confiscatory: relating to or effecting confiscation/ if tax rates escalated any further, taxes would become confiscatory, allowing hard-working individuals to keep little of their well-earned income!
Sojourning: a temporary residing as another’s guest, staying in, residing in temporarily/ She decided to teach English in Korea, sojourning in that country for a year.
Galvanize: to cause a pleasurable stimulation of feelings, charge, electrify, excite/ theatergoers were galvanized by the actor’s powerhouse performance as Hamlet.

Spurious Synonyms, Spurious Antonyms. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/spurious

Today I’d like to discuss a hidden gem I’ve found within the Muslim community in regards to mental health, and that is….The FYI- The Family and Youth Institute

The FYI is actually an organization founded by one of my role models Dr. Sameera Ahmed. She was a speaker at a few of the ISNA conferences I’ve attended in the past few years and is a Muslim Clinical Psychologist (whaaa??? that’s exactly what I want to be!!). She spoke at numerous panels and lectures at the conference regarding mental health.

Well, I recently found she also started an organization called the The Family and Youth Institute. Perhaps one of the first of its kind, this organization does research on the Muslim demographic, and provides solutions for many of the pressing problems in our communities from a psychological perspective. They examine issues in our community that many of us are not willing to admit; like the fact that 57% of Muslim males and 48% of Muslim females in college have been involved in pre-marital sex. Or the fact that in regards to trying alcohol, females have actually ranked higher at 48% while males ranked 45%. And these stats are of course not to shame anyone but rather to acknowledge that this is a reality. That Muslim students are not immune to engaging in risk behaviors, and that rather than trying to deny it, we should be trying to help them. How do we approach children who are involved in these behaviors. The sahabah weren’t perfect, sometimes they engaged in these behaviors, but The Prophet (s) did not condemn them from the community because of it. From this perspective, FYI comes in to try and assist communities in creating a more welcoming environment.

We need to work on creating an environment in which students can go to for help. And risk behaviors isn’t the only thing that The FYI researches. They do research on many things including bullying prevention and elder care. They also have an entire toolkit of resources dedicated to Suicide Prevention and Intervention. So if there is anyone out there struggling with this, and looking for a sign here it is. Go check out their list of toolkits at this link!

When I found this I was very excited about the research from the clinical psychologist point of view. I also loved that the people there were not afraid to discuss mental health. Rather, they made it a priority and the focal point of much of their discussions.

The fact of the matter is that there are dozens upon hundreds of issues that we as Muslims, scratch that, we as people face every day. Difficulty with our parents, burnout, unknown career choices, stressful pressure for a career choice, loneliness, loss, and the list goes on. When we don’t know where to go it is most definitely important to look to God and cry out for help. But after that, we have to do something. We’ve got to “tie our camel.” We can’t just sit and wait for Allah (swt) to just magically cure us.

When you have a broken bone in your leg, do you just pray to Allah (swt) to completely cure it and then sit at home to let it persist until it goes away? No, you go to the doctor, you pray everything will be alright, you get a diagnosis and a treatment plan, and you pray Allah (swt) will make that treatment plan a success. Point is, you are proactive in your process of trying to fix this broken bone of yours. And in addition you are constantly remembering Allah (swt) throughout the process.

I think something a lot of people tend to forget is that we as humans are not like rocks. We don’t just sit aimlessly by the wayside and let the systems and things around us do whatever they will to us. No, we on the other hand have something called agency. The ability and choice to get up, and make things happen. We know that our actions can create change, can have affects on other beings, things, and items around us, we can influence.

Its really such a powerful tool that Allah (swt) gave us. And not only this, but He gave us the knowledge to be able to reflect, and the wisdom to recognize this agency we have. A river can create change by eroding rocks, but without ever knowing it. A lion can create an effect in the ecosystem when killing its prey without ever being aware of it. But we, we have this amazing ability to change whole ecosystems, vote in political systems, change daily habits, MAKE CHANGE and simultaneously be aware of it. This is all agency. All the actions that we do that causes an effect in something else.

So with this beautiful gift God gave us, it is important that we take it up whole heartedly. Use it. Use your agency to make something happen- including taking care of and protecting your mental health. Allah swt will most definitely be there by your side for He is closer to you than your own jugular vein. But you must also work for your own change and success.

With that tangent aside, I really respect The FYI for these resources they’ve provided for us and I hope you can check it out and learn even more about the hidden gem that it is. Happy reading and Asalamualaikum! 🙂

Writing Prompt (in an attempt to practice gratitude): Write about the last thing or person that made you smile.

The last thing… Not the most frequent but the last thing….Okay.

The last thing that made me smile was my friend Annie’s phone call. I recently had to go to the ER for a condition and was admitted into hospitals and in and out of doctor’s appointments. To top that off I’d been in this slump. I had no energy to work (even though I was discharged and physically had no pain). I just sat in front of the TV all day. And I mean literally all day.

In some sense, as I look back, I realize I may have been a little hard on myself. Its okay to take a break once in a while. But, I wasn’t feeling it. I was feeling like a failure and didn’t want to talk to anyone. One of my best friends from down south called when she heard I went to the ER and I didn’t even call her back. She was so worried.

So lets set the scene, it Thursday night, I’m sitting in my dimly lit room with my eyes glued to the laptop screen, watching yet another one of my tv shows. I’m almost at the end of the season really. I’ve binged watched all the episodes in the span of about 5 days. My phone’s been getting messages- people asking me how i’m doing, how i’m feeling. Notifications telling me to pray and I just haven’t done it yet. My friend Annie texts me. I see she’s called about 2 hours ago but I don’t call her back.

Then she calls again. I’m looking at my phone watching it buzz and in a split second I’ve picked it up and answered (thank goodness for my reflex or whatever that was!). And long story short she had just called me to see how I was doing.

“I just wanted to check in on you and see how you were doing Sakeenah” she says.

And in that moment I smiled; and so did my heart. For the next hour and 46 minutes we talked. About my favorite topic of course- Islam. We talked about gender relations and things we need to watch out for. Things we need to improve ourselves on. It was so rejuvenating for my soul to be able to talk to someone who valued self-improvement as much as I did. Sure, I may be a perfectionist, but at the end of the day I thrive on knowing that I am working towards improving myself in some way. I think its a characteristic that can be good or bad depending on the way you look at it.

But we talked about other things as well. We talked about life in general. How we view the world, and for the first time I met someone who didn’t feel the way I practiced my religion was incorrect. We agreed. She kept taking the words out of my mouth. I didn’t feel like I was defending an overthought idea of mine as much as I was learning from her wisdom. And it wasn’t sudden or drastic, but I felt a little better. I felt a little more motivated. I felt that much more ready to try and read my prayers again, and come back to Allah swt, and get out of this slump. I’m still in the slump a little but I’m doing better. I’m not self-loathing and I’m doing my best.

In fact, for the record, I was able to complete a paper I had due on Friday at midnight by 7:00 PM! I’ve written two blog posts so far and I’ve checked some emails and emptied some inboxes. So by that standard I’m doing just fine and I’m proud of it.

So that was one of the most recent moments that made me smile. And when I went to bed that night I’m pretty sure I still had a slight smile swiped across my face.

…..
The end! 🙂

Here’s to a post for friendships! May God grant anyone reading this the best of company and people who will always remind you of God and your place in this world. May He grant you the best of company and keep you far way from anyone who is not of that caliber. May He bless you with people who will reach out to you, take your hand and make you smile when you don’t have the energy to do it yourself. Ameen!

🙂

I’m not going to lie, I’m in a slump. I’m barely getting to write this blog post only because my friend kind of helped me get a little out of the slump. But seriously, I feel so bla about things right now. Like I have no motivation to get up, or pursue my dreams, my career, sometimes even my salah. I’ll just sit there looking at the clock knowing full well that its time for salah and may Allah swt forgive me out of His immense mercy and forgiveness but I get lazy. I give into shaitan, I don’t pray, then I feel worse about myself and the cycle continues on for the next prayer… and the next prayer… and the next prayer.

I know I’ve already done a post about this, but its at times like this that I try to make a dua.

“Oh Turner of hearts, turn my heart upon your path.” In unemotional desperation, there’s a tiny part of my heart screaming “Sakeenah DON’T listen to the shaitan! Don’t let your laziness get the best of you, and for sure DO NOT let your heart die.” There’s a tiny part of myself that keeps telling myself ohh I’ll just regain my motivation for salah tomorrow. But the other part of me is saying, no. If you miss enough salah, your heart is going to seal shut and you’ll never feel anythign for Islam, for salah, for your one and only God ever again.
And so in that peak moment, with that tiny desperation and fear of having my heart sealed I make a dua. I’m not sure how sincere it is. I do it within 30 seconds and then proceed to watch whatever TV show I was watching again. But I still make the dua. And it helps. I’ll come back the next day and feel a teeny bit more khushoo and concentration in my salah.

The other thing that helps is good company/friends whom you can really and truly be honest with. People whom you can actually talk about Islam with. This is what happened to me. I was in the slump and I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Ignored phone calls, didn’t call anyone back, and binge watched a TV show all week and skipped all my classes (I also had a health concern but technically I still could’ve gone to class). Anyway, my friend texts me, I reply.

Then my friend calls me….I wait.

Finally I have to pick up the phone since I just texted her and I finally talk to a human being. And she tells me how are you? And I finally admit that I am not okay, I’m in a slump, I need help. And we talk it out, she revives and rekindles this spirit in me again, and well here I am now.

I’m okay, I’m not like on a high of passion but I’m in an okay place. Trying to continue praying all my salah.

But yeah, if I can give any advice for people trying to get their salah finally pat down is to 1) not give up, 2) make dua (even if it feels insincere), and 3) keep good company and if you can, force yourself to reach out to them.

We’re never too old to call someone up and just have a conversation.

I hope someone out there can find this beneficial inshallah!

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

I’m not sure that any one of us really understands the power of dua. When my non-Muslim friends ask me what the difference is between dua, and salah I try to explain to them the difference. One marked difference is that dua is embedded in salah and it is a type of prayer in which you simply ask God for anything and everything you want. You can make it at any time, any place, and however many times you want. But the magical thing about dua is not necessarily its fluidity in terms of when you can say it but rather in the binding it does between an individual and their one and only, Allah (swt).

You see, the dua is only as powerful as the person holding it, makes it out to be. This is why in Islam the dua is called “The weapon of the believer.” (For the love of all that is good please don’t go around calling me violent just because I used the word weapon, in fact this is the most peaceful, yet powerful kind of weapon if you think about it).

Anyway, its called the weapon of the believer because it can do anything. You make dua and you ask Allah swt for whatever you want, a car, a nice house, a pet cat, an A on your next exam. You could ask for intangible things like love, and an easy pregnancy or an easy exam, or lots of good company. But the ones who truly know how to yield their weapon well, and use it in the most efficient way possible are those who ask for things that will bring them closer to Him. Not only this but they make dua for everything. Every little thing they are constantly aware that Allah swt is there, with them, and can help them.

Now why am I talking about all this, well because for the first time in my life, after many many many years of making dua I realized that while I was making it, I wasn’t completely relying on Allah (swt). I wasn’t asking for the right things because there were some great things that a part of my heart felt like it wasn’t possible. What am I talking about? Depression- my illness, Clinical Depression.

For as long as I have had depression I have always seen it the way my society sees it- that it is a life-long illness that you will have forever. That you can take pills to curb the effects but you have to take the pills forever, that even if you change your lifestyle, etc, you will still always be stuck with this disease.
And while this is true sometimes, I realized there is also a chance that for me it could not be, yknow why? Because I have Allah (swt). And so at that moment I put my hands up to the sky and I prayed to Allah swt that He cure me of my illness. For once I wasn’t praying for others to understand my illness, for me to learn to get through my illness, for me to find a spouse who can understand my illness, no I prayed for Allah (swt) to CURE my illness.

Because if I was truly a Muslim, and if I was truly a Mu’min, then I knew that Allah swt created EVERYTHING including mental illnesses, including mine. And I prayed to Allah. I made salat-ul-istikharah asking Him to lead me to what was best for me. If it was medication, then I would take it because I would it was what Allah swt wanted. And I didn’t just make dua I took/am takng action. To better my lifestyle and improve myself and my daily routine. And I continue to pray that Allah swt remove from me my depression and cure me of my illness.

In either case, this is my point, that never doubt Allah’s ability in anything. If you are suffering from a mental illness, take your medication, and listen to your therapist, but don’t forget Allah swt. Let Him be the first one that you reach out to in times of need. Let Him be the first one to lean on when you are struggling because He is Al- Adheem.

I hope this post finds you in the best of states, and if I have said anything wrong it is entirely of my own mistake and not of my religion’s. And if there is anything that I said that was of benefit, it was only by Allah swt that I was able to do it.  Keep trekking!

I will hopefully be posting more frequently in the coming days!

Hey guys,
hehe so I know I said I would be updating this regularly…. yeahhh I’ve got nothing to say.
But I didn’t completely give up. I’ve actually been recording my day everyday but I just didn’t upload them. Either way, I won’t give up, I’ll try to do this again.
In addition, I created a video for you guys on how to get more organized.
Organization is key to battling depression. So here is the video! I hope you like it because I worked hard on iMovie to make it work!

So long ago, I actually got up early, and got stuff done (sometimes…)

Well, I’ve been trying to create a routine for myself and boy do I keep failing at it. But that is okay, great people rise from failure. Average people sit in a bed of lies, thinking it is success. Either way, my point is that its okay to fail over and over, you just have to keep getting back up and sometimes try a different approach.
In my quest to start a daily routine I have,
1) downloaded dozens of apps including Habitica, Start, and Productive
2) Tried to go to sleep super early so I could wake up early and start off well
3) Taken sleeping pills to actually go to bed
4) Tried at least 30 different methods of “How to wake up early” advice
5) Read hundreds of articles on how to create a routine
6) Watched thousands of YouTube videos on how to create a routine
Basically I’ve done a lot. Now I am trying yet another approach. First, I will be recording my days here. I need to start by listing what I like to call my “vitals.” So:
-time i went to bed
-time i woke up
-if i took my medicine

Then I will proceed to tell you about my day. It probably won’t be too long since the idea is that I log this every day. My first day I will just get an idea of what my current day looks like so here we go, I am logging it all for today.

Time to bed- 3:00 AM
Time I woke up- 7:00 AM
Medicine? I think so?

7:00-I got up put on a hijab and hoodie and got in the car to drive my brother to school
7:13- left the house while eating a Nutella sandwich
7:46- Arrived at school
8:07- arrived at home and went to bed
8:07-11:30ish- I sat in bed watching a drama, sleeping, and telling myself I’ll get up in a few mins, wasted time on phone
11:30- got up, wasted time sitting there, then went to bathroom and washed my face
11:40- found something to wear
11:50- washed face again and half did wudu
12:00- walked back and forth around room while watching my drama and just standing. Wore my clothes and walked back and forth while putting on hijab throughout my house.
12:30- I left the house at 12:30ish after taking about an hour to get up and wash up. I did not even floss, but still took forever. I did not take a shower, or make a full wudu. I just washed my face twice, did a quick shave of my face and
12:32- realize i still didn’t fill my oil and bought some to refill it
12:40- sat in a Wendy’s parking lot as I refilled my oil while wearing super nice clothes
12:45- Got on the highway and followed a car I thought was someone I knew (but it wasn’t). While simultaneously speeding
1:09-arrive at university
1:15-walk to one of the buildings to make meeting minutes before my last meeting for my school club (I’m president)
1:35- kinda sit there and pack up and reply to a friend’s text and wait for her to meet me but then I couldn’t wait so I just left
1:40- Went to pick up two boxes of pizza for my club’s meeting
1:50- rushed downstairs
1:55-2:50- In my club’s meeting
3:00- Forgot my shoes in the prayer room and a friend reminded me. I ran up to get them.
3:15ish-Walked over to the Undergraduate Library and found an empty room. I booked a different room while I was in there.
3:30- it was too loud there so I left and sat somewhere else
3:40- 4:20- wasted time watching GIFS on my phone on Facebook.
4:20-4:30- Wasted some more time
4:30-4:45- sent out a Facebook post to remind group of summer work. Sent messages to different boards of the team
4:45-6:08- Wasted more time, wrote a blog post, started writing this blog post, and am still writing it.

Today I think I truly understood what it means to be a leader. And let me start by being honest and say that it kinda really sucks. It’s REALLY hard. I’m sure the fact that I am a bubbly, short (5’0), high-pitched girl unfortunately adds to it, but its hard to get people to listen to you! Its hard because lots of people have questions that you don’t know the answers to. It’s difficult because not everyone agrees on certain ideas. People don’t always take you seriously, but through all that you still have to strive and persevere and make your expectation a reality. And why?
As a depressed person, a question that constantly crosses my mind is: “Why? Why does it matter? Who cares?

I’ll tell you who cares, everyone who put you on that pedestal and accepts you as their leader. They may be difficult, not take you seriously, cause problems, be argumentative, but at the end of the day they acknowledge that you are the leader. And so when or if something goes wrong, you can’t blame it on your team, its all on you. And there is nothing you can do about it.

I realize I’m making this sound like a pity post and I promise that is not my intention, but I really just realized what being a leader means.
It means taking responsibility for the management of a group of people who may or may not get along. It means welcoming in people that you may not work well with for the sake of getting a job done.  It means having a thick skin when people don’t always listen to you. It means putting yourself out their for everyone to judge when none of them are willing to put themselves out there.

And I know this may have started off as a pity post but dang is that a noble position to take on! True leaders seriously are like my heroes now. I don’t think we as followers, non-leaders, the rest of the world, realize how many times leaders had to fail in front of other people. Or simply how much more often they failed than other people because they had the guts to take a risk. Because they were put in a position that requires action without dictation. There is no one telling you what to do or when to do it. And while bad leaders may perceive this as great, its not super great; Because everyone is looking to you to tell them what to do. They may not listen to you but they are still expecting that you somehow create a great and perfect outcome or product. And to anyone who is sitting in the leadership seat right now, well hats off to you.

*clap* *clap* *clap*

If this were a video blog, I would insert an applause here because Subhanallah, leaders have it so difficult. I respect that and I respect you. I have decided to take on this position as leader of a school club at my college and now I’ve got to do this. Its my job to take on all the qualities I listed before and more.

But you know what is interesting, I am not going to give up. Not because everyone is watching me, not because I already have the position and I’m kinda stuck, but because I am capable of doing. Because Inshallah with Allah (swt)’s help, I will show people that I have what it takes to be a great leader. That I will lead my group to success no matter how internally or externally difficult it may be. I am fighting for education, and inspiring minds, and I am ready to stand up for that. I may be able to give up on myself sometimes, but I will not give up on others.

On a side note, PLEASE PRAY FOR ME GUYS! Omg I am so scared and I pray to Allah (swt) that He help me through this. But I’m sure if Allah (swt) wills it, I know I can do it. I don’t know, there is just something inside me telling me that I can actually do this, and I am going to follow that gut feeling. My depression may throw all these worries in my way but I wont let it take over my thinking and mentality. I can do this!!!!