Self and Community Care

by Alia Azmat

This Ramadan I made a pact with myself, to take care of myself. I stretched myself, I have been challenging myself, but perhaps not in the way you might imagine. I have not attended taraweeh every night. A few days I did not wake up to reap the rewards of suhoor, the predawn meal. One day I even made the conscious choice to listen to music instead of Quran on a long drive home. This Ramadan, I asked myself to be realistic, to be present, to be honest with myself about the mental habits I engage in which destroy my body and spirit. I asked myself to be honest with myself about the habits which prevent me from connecting to my Lord sincerely.

Early in the month, I was added to a WhatsApp group where I was asked to introduce myself and share something I consider beautiful others may not. Silence, particularly those “pregnant pauses” and the silence we do not afford ourselves during our busy days and packed schedules, is beautiful to me. Silence, when we are present enough with ourselves and our loved ones to ask “how is your haal (condition) today?” Silence, gives us permission to mess up as we answer the calls of our hearts. It gives others an opportunity to reach out, kindly, softly, either with their gaze, their touch, a smile, or statement, saying “it is okay” to stumble and fall through the fear of becoming. Silence, when I allow myself to check in with myself in the morning (or in mourning), the late afternoon, right before Iftar, meal to break the fast — silently praying – “it was a difficult day today, but tomorrow I will try again for you my Lord.” Silence, when I am able to tell culturally constructed demons named self-loathing, perfectionism, the push for “productivity,” to take a back seat as I finish my final rakah (unit of prayer) or a particularly gluttonous dinner.

Still, silence, at times, can be scary.

When I am alone with these thoughts, reflecting on how and why these “basic” Ramadan tasks are difficult for me, I confront the devils God didn’t lock up.

I am single. Why do I not think God is enough for me?
Instead, how I can be useful and supportive to other sisters like me?
I am studying. I resent summer school and sweltering through summer humidity.
But consider what opportunities God has given me (even through grad school poverty).
I am safe. What does it mean for me to show solidarity?
What do I do with the privilege of emotional safety. How can I accept I may never know another’s experience intimately?

This Ramadan, I asked myself to sit with my guilt. For not praying more, for not observing more traditionally, for not being better to my parents. For me, these are true moments of reflection, of growth, of rebirth; but they are painful and uneasy.

This Ramadan I made a pact with myself, to take care of myself. God has given me the gift of intellect, of opportunity, of sincerity and concern for my community. What good am I to others if I push myself unrealistically, instead of reflecting and taking accountability? What do I lose in my relationship with Rabbul Alameen, Lord of the Worlds, when I reject spiritual sustenance, spiritual self-care, spiritual sustainability?

God is forgiving. But God is not only Forgiving in Ramadan. While we believe Allah’s mercy is multiplied 70x in this Holy month, I want to believe His mercy could also be extended towards myself this month.

My fast will not look like your fast. And there are many ways to fast in this holy month. What would it mean for you to be honest with yourself this Ramadan? What is required of you to continue talking with Allah after the month is over? Kindness, self-acceptance, a prayer buddy, maybe one less (or more post-taraweeh) coffee? Spiritual self-care is not about overextending. Meet yourself this month where you need to be. Forgive yourself if it is not where you used to be.

So what does spiritual self-care look like? I implore you to figure it out with me this month and beyond–here are just a few reflections on what it could mean:

God says “I am as my slave expects Me to be.” When you give yourself permission to make mistakes, you are humbling yourself — God is the only flawless, perfect Being. Giving permission to yourself to “mess up” in and outside of this month implies you trust God and choose to believe in His Mercy over His wrath.
Self-care can often sound “selfish.” Explore the stigma surrounding this word. In writing this I had to address how uncomfortable it was to write about “me, me, me.” It feels egotistical, it feels self-centered, at times it feels spoiled and indulgent. But when everyone around us is telling us not to celebrate ourselves and our achievements, maybe a radical Ramadan is simply saying “thank you God, for shaping me, for blowing ruh into me, for taking the time to fashion me individually.” And yet “to know yourself is to know your Lord.” Perhaps our “selfish” reflections can be reframed as acts of self-assessment. Since we are asked “to call yourselves to account before you are called to account.”
On that note, there may not be one right or wrong way to reflect and call ourselves to account. I want so desperately for someone to tell me “THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT. THIS IS HOW YOU TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF.” My challenges will look different than a mother taking care of her children, different than someone who just had, or lost a child — negotiating grief, roles, and expectations in the family. My struggles as a student in the Midwest, look very different than those working 9-5 jobs outside, or even inside, in the blazing Phoenix heat. Finally, for those who are unable to fast, for those managing visible and invisible conditions, such as PTSD, anxiety, eating disorders, chronic pain, or other medical conditions the collective Ramadan experience can be trying.

What I can share is what taking care of myself has looked like in the past: I’ve called friends, baked and shared sweet treats, let myself cry, writing poetry and taking time off social media to reengage with myself meaningfully. Others have told me spiritual self-care sometimes looks like not bringing a home baked item to an iftar party (GASP!), saying no to additional responsibilities at work, and not attending taraweeh in exchange for a good night’s sleep. The test here in my opinion is to accept ourselves and others when we make these decisions.

Spiritual self-care acknowledges burnout. Therapist, psychologists, social workers, activists and others in the “helping fields” are told at the start of their work/programs, “to take care of yourself.” We need to be nourished. Ramadan in many ways reminds us we cannot do it ourselves. We must allow others to lend us a hand. This can be particularly difficult for women I think. We are socialized to believe we can do it all. Without struggling or silencing ourselves and our suffering. Although we accept food from neighbors; we make efforts to eat and share together, we must similarly, trust and allow God and the other beloveds in our life to help us take care of ourselves.

As a woman, asking and accepting help is challenging for me. I wonder why I can’t do it all (and have a killer Instagram account…). Implicitly I’ve been told “this is your job,” “if you can’t do it all, you are doing it wrong.” This Ramadan I was reminded I have many people in my life I can trust to help me. But I realize not everyone has had similar experiences in their family or in their community. In being kind to ourselves we also allow space for us to be kind to others. To act with softness instead of shaming or humiliating individuals when they bravely reach out for assistance or worship differently. As community members, sisters, friends, husbands, brothers, and spouses I think we need to be asking, “how can I help my loved ones take care of themselves?”

You are probably already asking God to forgive you during these last 10 nights. I wonder what it would be like to give yourself a moment of silence in moments of frustration…and forgive yourself. To reflect on yourself. I wonder what it would be like to ask God,

“What do I need to learn about myself to make my relationship [with you, with my parents, with my spouse, with my family, with your Holy Book, with myself, with humanity] BETTER – kinder, softer, more forgiving, more loving, more understanding?”

Say, “O My servants who have transgressed against themselves [by sinning], do not despair of the mercy of Allah. Indeed, Allah forgives all sins. Indeed, it is He who is the Forgiving, the Merciful (39:53).”

May God keep our hearts firm on the truth and allow us to fight for justice even if it is against ourselves, Ameen.

Alia is an Educator for HEART Women & Girls and is currently pursuing her PhD in counseling psychology.

Crumpled letter — coloredletters.wordpress.com

by Eman Hassaballa Aly

I have a vessel in me. I don’t know where it’s housed or how big it is, but I know when it’s full, because that’s when I get the urge to write. Maybe it’s my inner pen, and it gets full of ink. Whatever it is, it’s full now and I’m ready to write.

I’d like it to be a rant, but rants are boring. Rants don’t do anything but stir people’s emotions and make them say “hell ya!” When I write, I want to empower people, and inspire people to find it in within themselves to make their situation better. I always tell my clients, that my job is to equip them with the tools to be able handle whatever is dealt to them. Tools that I wasn’t fortunate enough to be given when I was more malleable and younger. It’s harder to change the older I get, but I still try.

I am a true believer of the right time and the right place for everything. Whether it’s people I meet, places I go, or things that happen to me, they always seem to happen at the perfect time for me. Don’t think that I’m saying that there’s a unicorn in the sky somewhere sprinkling some magic dust on everything. But I do though believe that God is behind everything, and I am grateful when things work out perfectly and neatly. God and my jugular vein are like this *fingers crossed*. But I learned to not try to read the stars or signs too closely, or else it will drive me crazy. Ultimately, what I’m trying to say it’s not a miracle that my belief has become my reality, because it was a gradual change in the perception that allowed it to happen.

So speaking of perfect timing, in the fall of 2015, I took an Islam and gender class at the American Islamic College, where I’m studying to be a chaplain. And it could not have come at a better time. Just like back in the spring and summer of 2014, I got through the Millennium Trilogy, which oddly enough primed me for one big test in my life, which was also a primer for the class. But that’s for another time and place. As usual, I digress. So this class was taught brilliantly by Dr. Shabana Mir, who was midway through her first semester at AIC. And I almost took this class my first semester, but that was neither the right time, nor the right teacher for me. Plus it was on the wrong day for me. I’m more aware of the subtleties surrounding issues of gender. I’m not talking about space in mosques or on boards. I’m talking about the bits of patriarchy here and there that have crept into our books of law, the wolf of sexism that’s dressed in the sheep’s clothing of piety and the misogyny that is (ill) supported by the Text and Tradition that is either inauthentic, misinterpreted or taken completely out of context.

Even in my own maturity and development, I drank the patrichool-aid, and used to advocate some of these nonsensical (at least to me) ideas about what a wife should be according to Islam. In my defense though, I thought that would make me more marketable as a wife, since my weight was something that I was told would work against me. Thankfully, as I got older these, ideas were slowly getting replaced with ones that I think more accurately reflect the tradition I have grown to love. And with that life happening the tools I needed started to fill a mostly empty toolbox of life skills.

Misogyny, Sexism and patriarchy isn’t a Muslim problem, but it’s a problem for Muslims because it’s something that affects all humans, and believe it or not Muslims are humans too. Women still make 22 cents less to every dollar that a man makes. And there are countless articles about how women are forced to dumb themselves down, or put themselves down and so on and so forth. Recently, the Internet cracked a bit when Jennifer Lawrence asked why she makes less than her male co-stars? And this hilarious, but also sad blog post that really made me think about the way that I talk to people. I have become militantly intolerant of that kind of language from my girlfriends, and I’ve stopped saying sorry to people about things I’m not sorry for #sorrynotsorry. But here’s something else I stopped doing, I have stopped allowing people to mistreat me.

I’m not saying I get mistreated because I’m a woman, but I do carry three potential strikes with me all the time. I’m a fat Muslim woman. These are three categories that are marks for discrimination. But again, I’m not saying that I get mistreated because of those either.

The reason I continue to get mistreated is because of my silence. I’ve learned in therapy why I become silent when someone harms me, much of it has to do with past trauma. My silence was the way I protected myself. It also silenced my ability to express myself, and that was also a protection for me. It was my way of showing people that whatever they said didn’t hurt me. Even though I may have been dying inside, my face wasn’t going to show any pain and I didn’t even wince. I attribute the lack of affect in my face that I have sometimes to that, and I feel like my facial expressions lack sophistication and nuance. So what the heck do I do about that?

So far it’s been a work in progress for me. There’s been a lot of internal heart and soul work. It’s like gutting out and rehabbing a house. As soon as the floors are pulled up, it’s clear that there are some structural issues and something that’s central to the stability of the home has to be fixed. I watch a lot of HGTV. But the same thing applies to the self. I can treat the anxiety, and teach someone how to manage it on a surface level, but I have to get to the core of what causes the anxiety, or else when additional trauma occurs, the anxiety could potentially come back stronger. I could not have come to realization that my silence was harming me, without all the previous work done before.

And to the one causing the harm, my silence somehow communicates that it is okay to continue the harm. Most people don’t intend to harm people. God protect us from those people. Well-intentioned advice, a comment, an inquiry, an innocent suggestion or even a compliment can cause harm. People sometimes project their own issues on others, and many people see the world through the lens of their own trauma or baggage. It’s not my quote, but hurt people hurt people. And to understand that, I had to understand who I was and through what lens I saw the world.

And my heart-work continues. I know I said that I wanted to give you tools you can use to progress, and I just want to get the conversation going. The easiest way is for me to share my struggles and triumphs. I want to share my regression, too. It’s inevitable. I also want to hear from you. This kind of trauma won’t be healed in one post, not even in ten posts. Please leave a comment below.

Eman Hassaballa Aly works for the Health Media Collaboratory (HMC) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) as Director of Communications. Additionally, she works part-time for the Heartspeak Institute, a private practice that serves the Chicago Muslim community. Currently, she is pursuing her master’s degree in Islamic Studies at the American Islamic College and hopes to serve as a chaplain in the university setting.

Perfecting Ramadan and Spiritual Self Care

Why I don’t Say Sorry Anymore

Self and Community Care

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