I Want To Do More Than Just Survive
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In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
Assalamu alaykum (Peace be upon you) my beloved. I pray you are well and in the best state of mind, body and heart.
Dear Ibtisam,
I have been dying to tell you that one day you would lose sight of who you are. Your days will seem longer than they usually are. That strength you held onto for so long resisting all the pain you harbor inside; One day, that box you so strongly built around yourself will shatter. You’ll feel exposed, naked and abandoned like a peanut that has had its chaff removed, you will feel the strong wind of all that you’ve been running away from. Your uncompromising optimism will no longer be a pillar that holds you together. You’ll hit a red light although your resistance screams green. You’ll be stuck in time and forced to heal your deepest wounds while the clock around you continues to tick. You’ll find pieces of yourself being chipped away like fingernails. It would feel heavy. You’ll be drenched in your tears like cotton soaked in water. You take deep breaths and fight to take a step forward but it’ll feel like you took ten steps backwards. The pain you’ll feel will be unreal; you’ll fight battles and shed blood like in a video game. Do not despair. Face your fears and have faith. And like a knight in shining armor on a horse, your healing will come to you enveloped in a form you never imagined.
This is a letter I wrote to myself four years ago on the exact date of March 25, 2020. I reread this recently and couldn’t help but be amazed at how much I have grown in the last four years. But more importantly, realizing two things: (1) growth is a lifelong journey (2) healing isn’t linear neither is it a final destination one arrives at.
Four years ago, perhaps my naiveté led me to believe that healing was going to be a destination I will arrive at but I know better now that it is not the case. Going back further to my last year of undergrad, I think is when I came to the realization that at some point in my life I had stopped and was no longer living but rather I was surviving. I had been wearing strength and resilience as a badge of honor for so long. If you were to ask me to describe myself in a number of words, without hesitation strong and resilient would have been the first two attributes to roll of my tongue. And I would attest to this with so much pride and reverence in my voice.
But then suddenly or maybe not because I truly believe Allah being Al-Musawwir, The Flawless Fashioner, The Bestower of Form, The Shaper of Unique Beauty is able to bring into existence whatever He wills, whenever He will and in whatever form He wills. All it takes is “Be! and It is!” He decided that it was time for me take off that cape. It was the first time, I could no longer resonate with strength and resilience; that being called strong and resilient made me want to scream into the ether. I was tired of strength and resilience. And this was difficult for me to come to terms with.
Afterall, I am my mother’s daughter, and my grandmother’s grandaughter, I am an eldest daughter, I am the eldest child in an immigrant household, I am a woman, a black woman; strength and resilience are the essential two polynucleotide chains that make up the double helix of my DNA. They shouldn't feel foreign to me! I bemoaned the fact that they didn’t feel familiar anymore. Simultaneously, I knew and acknowledged the fact that my strength and resilience borne out of having no choice but to endure and survive; is what has gotten me in this almost catatonic state, unable to articulate or express my feelings.
As I would write in reflection a few years later — at my completion of Foundational Womanhood: an intense 12-week long, international, intergenerational, intercultural and interfaith rites of passage program for women, offered by The Village Auntie Institute — that I had reached a point when I could no longer recognize the self I saw in the mirror, who was tied to an involuntary contract passed on to her in childhood. To myself, I had become a stranger I couldn’t trust. The thing about being self-aware is that it eats you from within. Because part of the reason I was struggling with self-confidence and self-trust was that I knew what I knew but I also knew what I didn’t know too.
Yesterday, I joined in the graduation ceremony of the new cohort of sisters being inducted into our sisterhood. Naturally, I found myself reminiscing and reflecting back on my own journey. A journey of feeling at home within myself; one of growing, learning, unlearning and changing. A journey of shedding old skin and being reborn, a life-long commitment that you could say began in my last year of college some six years ago. It was my realization that strength and resilience albeit being necessary had run it’s course successfully. They were tools I held onto for survival and to protect my nascent self from the scars I would sustain throughout life. It was okay to let go, to forgive myself for accepting that strength and resilience no longer had resonance for me and to forgive the ones who taught me that was the only way of living.
I want to do more than just survive. I want to live. It is my desire to live that has continued to propel me on this voyage to find the reason behind my existence. Surely, it cannot be to solely survive. Each stage of growth reveal new questions that need to be answered. And I am forever grateful to Allah for a soul that is constantly seeking. Seeking closeness to Allah, stillness, softness, contentment, peace, community, rest, rest, rest, more rest and love, love. The kind of love that is not contingent on martying myself, or my productivity or what I am able to do for others.
If you’ve made it to the end of this Soulful Smile, thank you! I hope through me sharing, you find something that speaks to your heart. And if perhaps you have found yourself on a similar journey, my prayer is that you do more than just surviving and that Allah Al-Hayy (The Eternally-Living), Al-Muhyi (The Giver and Maintainer of life) grants you life.
With A Smile,
Ibtisam
New Post On The Wesbsite - An Old Reflection from Two Years Ago That Seems So Fitting For Current Times ↓
