So you've probably noticed that it's been a long time since I managed to publish a post on here and whilst I'll
touch on the reasons here, I wanted to start on a more positive note and share
a significant event from earlier this year. I had a piece published in a
collection of essays titled 'Mirror on the Veil'. The book tackles the
controversial issue of veiling through the personal stories of a diverse range
of women. It was a defining moment for me, not just because I felt it was
the perfect opportunity to convey my personal experience with the hijab,
but also to see my words appear in print as I've always been quite protective
of my writing, which in the past meant I was hesitant to submit anything. This was in part due to the natural tendency we as humans have, to want to protect our
privacy, personal thoughts and experiences with others.
I had been battling with the decision to put myself out there for a while and whilst I always knew that I could not write in my voice without exposing parts of myself, I also had a fear of inadvertently 'outing' other people. The advice I got time and again was that if people didn't want you to write about them, well they should have behaved better, but as a person of faith I don't believe in exposing others in that way and whilst I realise that this might alienate me from having my writing accepted on some blogs that want the full story, I don't care, because my integrity is a core value which I am not willing to sacrifice and I believe I can still write about myself and my own struggles and successes and inspire people without having to directly talk about the role others played.
My piece was about my decision to wear the hijab which was an extremely personal journey for me. I have always been headstrong and somewhat of a feminist so it became quite a hindrance to me that people always came to the wrong conclusion that another human being was behind my decision and that in wearing it I somehow became passive and would fade away into the background when really it didn't stop me from succeeding in my career and going from strength to strength in other ventures. I guess I became aware of the stereotypes people had warned me about but it was that rebelliousness in me that welcomed the challenge. It may also surprise some people that not only had the decision been totally my own; my family did not even know I had decided to wear hijab until they saw me with it, but that it had also bought me so much happiness and peace. It felt good to tell my story so that all misconceptions, at least for those who read it, could dissipate and certainly those who edited and read my work commented that they had learnt some important aspects of hijab and what it meant to me. I had still been unsure in myself but when a friend told me it moved her to tears I felt confident that my writing had inspired her in some way and that the experience I was going through may help others going through things that didn't need to be the same in context, but that had similar emotion or energy attached to it, would hopefully feel the benefit of my writing and so it was worth overcoming my fears.
I guess I am trying to say that sometimes the terrible things we go through can bring us to an immensely positive outcome. And that on the outside it may seem like a person is failing, drowning, going backwards, not moving, all the things we see as negative, but actually what is really happening to them behind the scenes is that they are growing, learning, transforming, becoming resilient, becoming more beautiful and sincere and hopefully acquiring wisdom which they can then share with others and I honestly think if you've not gone through trauma of some kind you don't have that same wisdom and so rather than pity we should be in awe of these incredibly strong people who've moved these mountains and found the treasure inside. Sometimes it looks very much like standing still, like that person is stuck, just going through the motions, but this is why I love the concept of patience so much, in happiness we just can't acquire the same wisdom and strength that we learn in hardships. It looks like nothing is happening, yet it's a complete transformation taking place behind the scenes and only those who know can actually feel the blessing and be grateful for the pain that bought them to this place, without which they would never have become who they were meant to be all along.
This led me to write about the healing powers of writing, as one of the ways I transformed myself was by saying the things I felt out loud and putting them down in ink. When I wrote my piece for 'Mirror on the Veil', I was going through an extremely difficult period of my life, so much so, that part of the content needed to be edited a number of times due to how I was feeling about a particular situation at the time, and due to the experience I was going through, which coloured my writing considerably.
I’d say that the last few years have been pretty challenging for me and in the midst of all the confusion and heartache, I lost myself and what it meant to be me. I was reacting to the whirlwind of events that were going on around me and what I now recognise as an unhealthy situation. In trying to protect myself and stay afloat, I had to let go of the things that made me quintessentially me as well as normal wellness. I had to let go of self care and sacrifice for those who depended on me, I had to let go of joy and choose responsibility and strength. I had to go into survival mode and there was no time or energy for the things that used to make me feel alive. I also had to become my own champion, I had to pick myself up after the dark nights, I had to tell myself that I did the best I could have, I had to be in awe of how much compassion my heart could hold and I had to forgive myself for my mistakes, which meant to stop beating myself up for being so naïve, which I so very clearly was but would never have known had I not gone through what I did.
I had recently taken up the opportunity to write again, after a long time, I took myself to cafe’s once a week during the only free hours I had so they were as precious to me as gold. I'd sit with my coffee infront of me and fresh notebooks, pen at the ready and a strong desire to write. From the outside I looked like a writer penning my next novel and yet some days I would feel completely uninspired and beat myself up mentally for wasting a good mornings worth of writing time with just incoherent ramblings in front of me about the things that had transpired over the course of the week and how lost I was feeling. I used to put an enormous amount of pressure on myself to ‘create’, and subconsciously to heal myself, to find myself. In hindsight I probably thought I could write myself back into happiness but of course I now know that it is a process and it wasn’t going to just happen one morning over a caramel macchiato no matter how hard I willed it.
I was constantly lost in thoughts of the trauma I was dealing with in my life and often wondered how I was still standing some days and not crying under a table somewhere, hiding from the things and people that were hurting me. I suppose it was a luxury I couldn't afford and when it came down to it I just don't know how to break down, I am too resilient that's just how I'm built. I'll never be that person who gets looked after or gets everyone's sympathy because my weakness makes others uncomfortable and it is the way when you're the strong one, but whereas before I saw it as unfair, I now see it as a blessing and I realise it's this strength that will allow me to help others going through difficult times.
Fortunately I persisted with the writing and slowly the words started to filter out, hesitant at first, and wanting to be perfect in each word, there were piles of scrunched up paper before I allowed myself to be messy and raw, until one day it just poured out of me and I suddenly felt a familiar part of myself come back. A familiar voice flowing through my writing. It was a ‘hello again you’ kind of moment, and it was exhilarating.
As I started to visualise myself as a writer again, various opportunities came my way, along with the invitation to contribute to the book. I would see reasons to write everywhere and the pain I felt was all the motivation I needed to sit down and write and persevere even during the many writing blocks I faced. One of the side effects of depression is the complete lack of motivation to do the things you really want to do, I would sit paralysed in the late evening doing nothing and then get angry with myself for not achieving the things I had set out to achieve when my girls were in bed, even though as a single mother at that time I could have been forgiven for the exhaustion, however that pressure I put on myself was there in all aspects of my life, you must do this, you must learn that, you must heal, you must be the perfect mother, you must not waste time, you must not be sad, you must not let anyone see you struggling, you must not let them see how hurt you are, you must forgive everyone and everything, you must....until I learnt to be gentle on myself and talk to myself in a kinder way and believe me it's still a work in progress.
When I submitted my first draft, I was already going through turmoil and even after sending through the first draft, my life took a dramatic turn, throughout the editing process, there was a lot of behind the scenes transformation and darkness that I was dealing with. There was also a lot of heavy introspection.
I was trying to ‘find’ myself after coming out of what can only be described as a bad dream. I realised that some of what I had written in my piece about feeling lost at various stages of my life, mirrored my life at that very moment. Here I was, years later, fresh trauma being caused by the same thing that had caused me so much happiness in the past, so much had changed, yet again I had lost myself and I wondered, had I ever found myself in-between?
In writing again, I started to find that familiar self, the girl I had lost so many times, in the process of my relationships, in motherhood, in the darkness of depression, in the pain and confusion that I had become so accustomed to living in recent years. I no longer had the energy to create, to motivate me to do something for myself, for my soul, but when certain energy left my surroundings, I was able to refocus again, as I found peace followed by the confusing departure.
So when I wrote this piece, I attempted to not only rediscover myself, but I also attempted to heal myself and present to the world, that I choose happiness. It also gave me a way to find the perspective that was lacking around me from others, I was looking for advice in the wrong places and inside I knew how I felt about the situation and what felt right for me. But it took finding my voice. My writing voice and my inner voice.
I have always believed that through pain, we can create beauty and art and that is very much how I felt about the piece I wrote and how it healed parts of myself, because I allowed myself to see the lesson my sadness was trying to teach me, and I release through my writing.
I feel it contributed to my well being, and it gave me hope, at a time when despair was overwhelming me. It gave me the hope of having my voice heard and my story read, and my art appreciated.
If you read my work and you find any beauty in it, then please know, my words were my pain transformed. It was my sadness that made it all possible by carving a hole into my heart that could now be filled with joy*. It was being hurt that gave me courage. It was loneliness that gave me strength.
When I read the piece now, I am able to identify how much I have grown, and transformed, how much life has changed, and also how much my writing has matured. It has become an entry to my past, to be stored away under the file of life experience and the Faizah’s of the past.
Now I see, more than ever, as I sit here writing this, that all of this heartache, confusion and pain, it pushed me to become who I was meant to be. A person who tries to make sense of the world through words, through thoughts and feelings. A narrator on life.
I lost my way many times, but life showed me where I needed to be, and no matter how I resisted, no matter how much I ran from the discomfort of changing, because nostalgia makes us want to hold onto the past and who we used to be with a firm hold, this journey needed to be taken and this ending is finally in sight.
I am grateful for all the wisdom I now have and that will aid me in my writing, and in my life.
And if you find that the previous posts seem different and lighter in some way, you would be right, because the person who wrote those posts well I'm not her anymore. There are parts of her inside me still, but I am held together by something stronger now, I make more sense. I now know the level of compassion and forgiveness my heart can hold. I know I can withstand adversity and do not need another person to rescue me for I am complete as I am.
I hope you enjoyed reading this long overdue post and that at the very least it encouraged those of you going through difficult times or dealing with difficult emotions to try to put pen to paper and evoke the healing powers of writing. Journaling is a great way to start and below is a helpful link to get you started from one of my favourite blogs. Did I mention it's also a great excuse to buy a new notebook, the one I took along to the photo shoot featured below was from Homesense.
https://tinybuddha.com/blog/10-journaling-tips-to-help-you-heal-grow-and-thrive/
http://www.homesense.com/
I'd also like to say another thank you to Zahra at The Healthy Hijab for shooting some great author photos for me. She is as lovely as she is professional so go check her out at http://www.thehealthyhijab.com/
Mirror on the Veil is available from Amazon, here is the link, please send me your comments here, I'd love to know if it resonated with you.
https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Veil-Collection-Personal-International/dp/1905510519
* I am reminded of an excerpt from one of my favourite books, The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran which I've copied below,
On Joy and Sorrow
'Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.
and he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
and the selfsame well from which your laughter rises
was oftentimes filled with your tears.
and how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
is it not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that
was burned in the potter's oven?
and is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very
wood that was hollowed with knives?
when you are joyous, look deep into your heart and
you shall find it is only that which has given you
sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and
you shall see in truth you are weeping for that
which has been your delight'.
I had been battling with the decision to put myself out there for a while and whilst I always knew that I could not write in my voice without exposing parts of myself, I also had a fear of inadvertently 'outing' other people. The advice I got time and again was that if people didn't want you to write about them, well they should have behaved better, but as a person of faith I don't believe in exposing others in that way and whilst I realise that this might alienate me from having my writing accepted on some blogs that want the full story, I don't care, because my integrity is a core value which I am not willing to sacrifice and I believe I can still write about myself and my own struggles and successes and inspire people without having to directly talk about the role others played.
My piece was about my decision to wear the hijab which was an extremely personal journey for me. I have always been headstrong and somewhat of a feminist so it became quite a hindrance to me that people always came to the wrong conclusion that another human being was behind my decision and that in wearing it I somehow became passive and would fade away into the background when really it didn't stop me from succeeding in my career and going from strength to strength in other ventures. I guess I became aware of the stereotypes people had warned me about but it was that rebelliousness in me that welcomed the challenge. It may also surprise some people that not only had the decision been totally my own; my family did not even know I had decided to wear hijab until they saw me with it, but that it had also bought me so much happiness and peace. It felt good to tell my story so that all misconceptions, at least for those who read it, could dissipate and certainly those who edited and read my work commented that they had learnt some important aspects of hijab and what it meant to me. I had still been unsure in myself but when a friend told me it moved her to tears I felt confident that my writing had inspired her in some way and that the experience I was going through may help others going through things that didn't need to be the same in context, but that had similar emotion or energy attached to it, would hopefully feel the benefit of my writing and so it was worth overcoming my fears.
I guess I am trying to say that sometimes the terrible things we go through can bring us to an immensely positive outcome. And that on the outside it may seem like a person is failing, drowning, going backwards, not moving, all the things we see as negative, but actually what is really happening to them behind the scenes is that they are growing, learning, transforming, becoming resilient, becoming more beautiful and sincere and hopefully acquiring wisdom which they can then share with others and I honestly think if you've not gone through trauma of some kind you don't have that same wisdom and so rather than pity we should be in awe of these incredibly strong people who've moved these mountains and found the treasure inside. Sometimes it looks very much like standing still, like that person is stuck, just going through the motions, but this is why I love the concept of patience so much, in happiness we just can't acquire the same wisdom and strength that we learn in hardships. It looks like nothing is happening, yet it's a complete transformation taking place behind the scenes and only those who know can actually feel the blessing and be grateful for the pain that bought them to this place, without which they would never have become who they were meant to be all along.
This led me to write about the healing powers of writing, as one of the ways I transformed myself was by saying the things I felt out loud and putting them down in ink. When I wrote my piece for 'Mirror on the Veil', I was going through an extremely difficult period of my life, so much so, that part of the content needed to be edited a number of times due to how I was feeling about a particular situation at the time, and due to the experience I was going through, which coloured my writing considerably.
I’d say that the last few years have been pretty challenging for me and in the midst of all the confusion and heartache, I lost myself and what it meant to be me. I was reacting to the whirlwind of events that were going on around me and what I now recognise as an unhealthy situation. In trying to protect myself and stay afloat, I had to let go of the things that made me quintessentially me as well as normal wellness. I had to let go of self care and sacrifice for those who depended on me, I had to let go of joy and choose responsibility and strength. I had to go into survival mode and there was no time or energy for the things that used to make me feel alive. I also had to become my own champion, I had to pick myself up after the dark nights, I had to tell myself that I did the best I could have, I had to be in awe of how much compassion my heart could hold and I had to forgive myself for my mistakes, which meant to stop beating myself up for being so naïve, which I so very clearly was but would never have known had I not gone through what I did.
I had recently taken up the opportunity to write again, after a long time, I took myself to cafe’s once a week during the only free hours I had so they were as precious to me as gold. I'd sit with my coffee infront of me and fresh notebooks, pen at the ready and a strong desire to write. From the outside I looked like a writer penning my next novel and yet some days I would feel completely uninspired and beat myself up mentally for wasting a good mornings worth of writing time with just incoherent ramblings in front of me about the things that had transpired over the course of the week and how lost I was feeling. I used to put an enormous amount of pressure on myself to ‘create’, and subconsciously to heal myself, to find myself. In hindsight I probably thought I could write myself back into happiness but of course I now know that it is a process and it wasn’t going to just happen one morning over a caramel macchiato no matter how hard I willed it.
I was constantly lost in thoughts of the trauma I was dealing with in my life and often wondered how I was still standing some days and not crying under a table somewhere, hiding from the things and people that were hurting me. I suppose it was a luxury I couldn't afford and when it came down to it I just don't know how to break down, I am too resilient that's just how I'm built. I'll never be that person who gets looked after or gets everyone's sympathy because my weakness makes others uncomfortable and it is the way when you're the strong one, but whereas before I saw it as unfair, I now see it as a blessing and I realise it's this strength that will allow me to help others going through difficult times.
Fortunately I persisted with the writing and slowly the words started to filter out, hesitant at first, and wanting to be perfect in each word, there were piles of scrunched up paper before I allowed myself to be messy and raw, until one day it just poured out of me and I suddenly felt a familiar part of myself come back. A familiar voice flowing through my writing. It was a ‘hello again you’ kind of moment, and it was exhilarating.
As I started to visualise myself as a writer again, various opportunities came my way, along with the invitation to contribute to the book. I would see reasons to write everywhere and the pain I felt was all the motivation I needed to sit down and write and persevere even during the many writing blocks I faced. One of the side effects of depression is the complete lack of motivation to do the things you really want to do, I would sit paralysed in the late evening doing nothing and then get angry with myself for not achieving the things I had set out to achieve when my girls were in bed, even though as a single mother at that time I could have been forgiven for the exhaustion, however that pressure I put on myself was there in all aspects of my life, you must do this, you must learn that, you must heal, you must be the perfect mother, you must not waste time, you must not be sad, you must not let anyone see you struggling, you must not let them see how hurt you are, you must forgive everyone and everything, you must....until I learnt to be gentle on myself and talk to myself in a kinder way and believe me it's still a work in progress.
When I submitted my first draft, I was already going through turmoil and even after sending through the first draft, my life took a dramatic turn, throughout the editing process, there was a lot of behind the scenes transformation and darkness that I was dealing with. There was also a lot of heavy introspection.
I was trying to ‘find’ myself after coming out of what can only be described as a bad dream. I realised that some of what I had written in my piece about feeling lost at various stages of my life, mirrored my life at that very moment. Here I was, years later, fresh trauma being caused by the same thing that had caused me so much happiness in the past, so much had changed, yet again I had lost myself and I wondered, had I ever found myself in-between?
In writing again, I started to find that familiar self, the girl I had lost so many times, in the process of my relationships, in motherhood, in the darkness of depression, in the pain and confusion that I had become so accustomed to living in recent years. I no longer had the energy to create, to motivate me to do something for myself, for my soul, but when certain energy left my surroundings, I was able to refocus again, as I found peace followed by the confusing departure.
So when I wrote this piece, I attempted to not only rediscover myself, but I also attempted to heal myself and present to the world, that I choose happiness. It also gave me a way to find the perspective that was lacking around me from others, I was looking for advice in the wrong places and inside I knew how I felt about the situation and what felt right for me. But it took finding my voice. My writing voice and my inner voice.
I have always believed that through pain, we can create beauty and art and that is very much how I felt about the piece I wrote and how it healed parts of myself, because I allowed myself to see the lesson my sadness was trying to teach me, and I release through my writing.
I feel it contributed to my well being, and it gave me hope, at a time when despair was overwhelming me. It gave me the hope of having my voice heard and my story read, and my art appreciated.
If you read my work and you find any beauty in it, then please know, my words were my pain transformed. It was my sadness that made it all possible by carving a hole into my heart that could now be filled with joy*. It was being hurt that gave me courage. It was loneliness that gave me strength.
When I read the piece now, I am able to identify how much I have grown, and transformed, how much life has changed, and also how much my writing has matured. It has become an entry to my past, to be stored away under the file of life experience and the Faizah’s of the past.
Now I see, more than ever, as I sit here writing this, that all of this heartache, confusion and pain, it pushed me to become who I was meant to be. A person who tries to make sense of the world through words, through thoughts and feelings. A narrator on life.
I lost my way many times, but life showed me where I needed to be, and no matter how I resisted, no matter how much I ran from the discomfort of changing, because nostalgia makes us want to hold onto the past and who we used to be with a firm hold, this journey needed to be taken and this ending is finally in sight.
I am grateful for all the wisdom I now have and that will aid me in my writing, and in my life.
And if you find that the previous posts seem different and lighter in some way, you would be right, because the person who wrote those posts well I'm not her anymore. There are parts of her inside me still, but I am held together by something stronger now, I make more sense. I now know the level of compassion and forgiveness my heart can hold. I know I can withstand adversity and do not need another person to rescue me for I am complete as I am.
I hope you enjoyed reading this long overdue post and that at the very least it encouraged those of you going through difficult times or dealing with difficult emotions to try to put pen to paper and evoke the healing powers of writing. Journaling is a great way to start and below is a helpful link to get you started from one of my favourite blogs. Did I mention it's also a great excuse to buy a new notebook, the one I took along to the photo shoot featured below was from Homesense.
https://tinybuddha.com/blog/10-journaling-tips-to-help-you-heal-grow-and-thrive/
http://www.homesense.com/
I'd also like to say another thank you to Zahra at The Healthy Hijab for shooting some great author photos for me. She is as lovely as she is professional so go check her out at http://www.thehealthyhijab.com/
Mirror on the Veil is available from Amazon, here is the link, please send me your comments here, I'd love to know if it resonated with you.
https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Veil-Collection-Personal-International/dp/1905510519
* I am reminded of an excerpt from one of my favourite books, The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran which I've copied below,
On Joy and Sorrow
'Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.
and he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
and the selfsame well from which your laughter rises
was oftentimes filled with your tears.
and how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
is it not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that
was burned in the potter's oven?
and is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very
wood that was hollowed with knives?
when you are joyous, look deep into your heart and
you shall find it is only that which has given you
sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and
you shall see in truth you are weeping for that
which has been your delight'.
Such a beautiful, heartfelt raw piece of writing..I'm so proud of you and witnessing your journey within to the writer that was buried long ago ❤ love love love reading your writing xx
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