We can fix a broken window, broken furniture, broken crockery, broken tech. It’s not so easy to fix a broken heart. Who knows if that will ever now mend?
I tend not to have spiritual dreams. But on the verge of nearly every major test, I have had perturbing dreams that seemed to foreshadow all that was to come. Alas, I had one of those dreams not long ago. To my horror, it seems it is all now coming to pass. Audhubillah.
I’m suffering from another mood crash today. Nothing serious. Just the standard, “I’m a failure.” I know what’s brought it on. A complete lack of productivity at work. The inability to deliver on my promises. An unfinished job hanging over me. But it led me to ponder on the career successes of all I knew …
No point forwarding me some controversy dominating Muslim social media. I don’t follow any of that stuff. Raising a family occupies me. Hard enough parenting two kids, let alone worrying about a diverse transnational community of two billion souls. I know that makes me a terribly compromised believer, but this was the lone diminishing sphere …
Everyone knows I’m a writer, not a speaker. Everyone. “If you can’t make yourself understood,” says my beloved, “write to him.” Yes, so even our kids get letters from me now. No great surprise. I even make my duas in writing.
One thing I’ve learned in life is that you should never judge another until you’ve walked in their shoes. Before we had children, I said many noble things about raising a family. But they were all founded on complete ignorance and informed by naïve idealism. I judged men in unimaginably hard situations for walking out …
It’s funny, but I’ve become those I once decried. Roles have reversed, responses switched. Now I am the protective ogre, worried about the intentions of the unknown characters in our children’s midst. I’m the one warning them about lurking dangers, and the importance of focusing diligently on the task at hand for the sake of …
If you’re a manager and you don’t like your colleagues, team, or job — you’re lucky, you can quit. But being a parent: the one job you’re stuck with, even when you feel like shouting, “I resign!” It’s a job without perks. You’re always on duty, working antisocial hours, for zero pay. Your appraisal comes …
“Why on earth do you ask each other permission to do things?” asks our daughter, squinting. “It’s called being polite, considerate,” I reply, nodding to her mum. This seems a novel concept despite over a decade and a half spent in each others’ company. Our daughter finds the way we behave in the home hilarious. …
Increasingly, we discover that the adolescents in our midst — though by no means all of them — have some kind of empathy deficit. They do not seem to understand the kindness of others. Indeed, the softest, kindest suggestion is often rebuffed with an inexplicable rage that doesn’t seem to suit the situation at all. …
This anxiety kills me. Renders me immobile. My heart pounds in my chest. I can barely operate at all.
Though it may upset us, we can neither force our children to believe nor to go through the motions of religious practice. Indeed, it would be quite hypocritical for us to do so, having gone through such phases in our own lives. In my case, I had boldly proclaimed my disbelief at their age, moderating …
He wrote this about a relationship, but this is honestly how it feels raising kids, most of the time… just holding on, despite feeling like you’re failing… trying to do what’s right.
