Join a community of Muslim women writers at varying stages (wannabe to professional) in a unique, fun opportunity to explore and hone our writing skills while creating new stories and/or sharpening work in progress. This event is calibrated to work for writing short...
Thinking back to my first dozen or so Ramadans without a Ramadan planner, they appear so lack luster now. Some of them were great, some were extra challenging, but overall they were focused on the wrong things (food!) and there was little planning that went into how...
I'm polishing up the Two Weeks Free portion of the upcoming Writing From The Fitra Workshop and thought I should take a moment to explain my process here. Firstly, I know that even though it’s stuff they love and need, it is very, very difficult for many of my...
I have been meaning to cut back on activities that folks can use to judge my mothering and make more time to write about all the bad mommy things I have done, but then some other bad mommies suggested that I open an Instagram account. So, let me quickly tell you about...
I just realized that I never got around to writing about the unassisted (assisted by my husband) birth story of Asiya Eve last year. Maybe I hadn’t done so because it was really quite uneventful. My water broke late in the morning, maybe it was even early in the...
I am offering my first ever online creative non-fiction writing workshop, starting Tuesday September 29th 2015. 8-Week online creative non-fiction workshop designed to get you writing from start to submit.
I have been meaning to write a sort of sketch for my family of all the different ways we have done Ramadan: from just me and the new hubby sharing cream puffs out of a paper bag in front of an Italian bakery in Brooklyn to enjoying a break of a solitary iftar while...
From SISTERS magazine’s November 2014 issue, some of the best sister-owned shops on the Internet’s favourite place to buy handmade. I know many folks think that shopping on Etsy can be a very dangerous thing. There are just far too many unique and wonderful things on...
For the October issue of SISTERS Magazine Aida Azlin explained to me how “It’s all about Sisterhood” with her fresh and exciting clothing (and tech stuff!) business. Brooke Benoit: The idea of entrepreneurship can be really terrifying. At what point did you know that...
Carnelian, turquoise, fine and sterling silver charmed bracelet. Have you heard the one about the convert who accepted a recited surah for her marriage? Or a promise of hajj or a complete set of Sahih Bukhari? If you know me, then you know how disinclined I am to make...
It surprises me how many Muslims respond negatively at my having a large family. Worse is when they nearly reprimand me, demanding to know if I am “done” at six kids. I thought we all knew this one: Wealth and children are an adornment of the worldly life. But the...
It has been two years since my family of eight moved from cosmopolitan Casablanca, Morocco, to a ram-packed earth house in a rural village in the High Atlas Mountains. Insha Allah, by the time you read this we will have traversed the two hour windy road down the...
Last month I spent a week in Essaouira on the southernish shore of Morocco. I went for the purposes of respite from the bulk of my kids (just took the 10 and 12 year old boys), to do some annual household shopping and especially to do some business related shopping,...
Herein are ruminations from a Muslimah point of view on Lundy Bancroft’s book Why Does He Do That? Inside The Minds of Angry and Controlling Men originally published in the August 2014 issue of SISTERS Magazine. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say something I...
In an attempt to better understand what it is I am doing, I have been wanting to dedicate some time to writing about parenting, but you know… writing vs doing. Well, Ke’lona Hamilton, the force behind the awesomeness that is Creative Motivations, has dedicated a...
I really appreciated this article on motherhood last week from GrowMamaGrow in which Layali Eshqaidef challenges that Muslims are not living up to the standards that they claim Muslim mommies deserve. The overuse of “Paradise lies at the feet of your mother” while...
Welcome to homeschooling/unschooling where you have opened yet another window of opportunity for people to judge you and suck energy from your being by wasting your time drawing you into conversations which are mostly built around others’ guilt about what they fear...
The call of the athan, plentiful halal foods, people who know about Allah (SWT) similar to how you do, easier access to Islamic or Arabic resources for the entire family, and of course sending your kids to schools with Muslim teachers and peers are all among the perks...
