Let me tell you what you never hear about growth.
When you reach the crux of your issues, it becomes messy. Uncomfortable. An incredibly painful process. You are forced to confront the dark parts of yourself that rarely come to light and are rarely acknowledged. You question who you are as a person, what you stand for, what morals you hold. You question your family structures and beliefs imposed on you as a child. You perform a brutally honest appraisal of yourself which often conjures up shame, excuses, and sometimes even disgust. Old traumas may surface through which you will have to wade through. Growth also includes breaking generational curses which is a burden large enough to bury you six feet under. Growing and learning about yourself can be incredibly overwhelming and confusing. It feels like jumping off a ledge not knowing if you have a safety net to catch you.
Then why go through this process? I ask myself this a lot, and the main answer I get to is that the alternative is a lot worse. When you realise that staying in the same dysfunctional cycle doesn't serve you at all, the cogs of change start to turn. It's not supposed to be easy, but I can guarantee you that staying as you are is infinitely worse. You may not see the changes at first. You may not see them for some time. But I promise you the second you notice that growth and change, is a precious moment you will never forget. When you realise you are breaking patterns and cycles preset by your ancestors. When you learn to communicate your needs to others, something you would never have been able to do in the past. When you challenge negative thinking patterns and invest in your wellbeing.
Staying on the ledge hurts way more than jumping into the unknown. So jump. Jump off the ledge and you may find that instead of falling, you soar and fly higher than you could have ever imagined.
- Hanaa Amaidia
Welcome to the the Hawaa Newsletter
Asalaamalaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu (May Allah shower you in tranquility, His Mercy and His Divine Aid)
This is an age of fast news, algorithms favouring the churning out of daily content with no heart and no soul embedded into it. An abundance of smiles and serenity on our screens - there seems to be so much love to go around, and yet we somehow still remain hungry. Starved. Women who seem to be bathing in Divine Light with their talk of closeness and connection with our Lord, yet we feel immobile and enfolded in darkness. Trauma that doesn’t seem like it wants to leave. And yet:
‘there is beauty yet in this brutal, damaged world of ours. hidden, fierce, immense’ - a. roy
We want these monthly newsletters to be a journey of creating and solidifying our sisterhood - the Newsletter aims to centre on Muslim women’s voices, with all of its rawness, wit, spirituality and strength and use it as a means of encouraging ourselves to reestablish our relationship with Allah with a foundation of Love and Hope. We truly believe in the power of story telling, and ultimately the Mercy of Allah SWT
This is a journey we hope you’ll take with us, one that will, bi’ithnillah, be filled with some healing, growth and inspiration.