Category Archives: Life

Life

Best Laundry Secret Ever

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PSSSSST! Can you keep a secret? A dirty little secret? I am terrible at laundry. But I have a secret weapon that has helped me overcome my secret weakness.

Yep, you can tell by my photo what my best laundry secret is. It’s using Shout spray! Before I learned about the beauty of using a stain remover like Shout, I was used to throwing what I thought were lost causes in terms clothes. Clothes that had seen better days, and were too stained to wear in public anymore.

However, shortly after my little girl was born, my good friend (Sarah, mom of 6) told me how she kept her kids’ clothes pristine. If you know Sarah, you will know that even with 6 kids, she and her kids are always styling mA. So when she told me to use Shout spray on badly stained clothes before I did my laundry, you better believe I listened to her!

Now my girl has seen her clothes reused till she outgrew them. It doesn’t matter how badly she stained them. Pee, poop, spit up, throw up, and baby food have all been obliterated in the wash thanks to Shout.

Do you have a great laundry secret? Let me know. Until then, run (don’t walk) and pick up some Shout to get perfect laundry every time.

Life

Stress Management

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Stress is a natural part of life. However, chronic stress is not healthy. In Islam, we are sure to be tested in this life:

“Be sure We will test you with something of fear and hunger, some loss in goods or lives, but give glad tidings to those who are steadfast, who say when afflicted with calamity: To God we belong and to Him is our return. They are those on whom (descend) blessings from God and mercy and they are the ones that receive guidance.” (Qur’an 2:155)

As humans, it’s only natural to get stressed about these trials. But a practicing Muslim will learn to overcome these feelings of stress. Trust me, I am still working on this myself!

But whenever I get stressed, I find myself turn Allah (swt). Here are my tips for learning how to cope with the stress in your life:

Avoid the triggers: We all have certain situations that make us stressed. The next time you are stressed, think critically about what is causing it. Is it being late? Make sure to start getting ready earlier so you can avoid that situation.

Pray: There is a reason why yoga is taking off. It’s a great way to tune out the daily drone of life and balance yourself. Allah (swt) gave us the gift of praying 5 times a day! That is 5 chances for us to forget the stresses of life and focus on what is important.

Read Quran: Never underestimate Allah (swt)’s words to soothe you. When I get stressed about life, I read Surah t-ul Inshirah:

Have We not opened your breast for you (O Muhammad (Peace be upon him))?

And removed from you your burden,

Which weighed down your back?

And raised high your fame?

So verily, with the hardship, there is relief,

Verily, with the hardship, there is relief (i.e. there is one hardship with two reliefs, so one hardship cannot overcome two reliefs).

So when you have finished (from your occupation), then stand up for Allahs worship (i.e. stand up for prayer).

And to your Lord (Alone) turn (all your intentions and hopes and) your invocations.

Just hearing Allah (swt)’s promise about ease after hardship always calms me.

Do what makes you happy: For me, it’s blogging. For you, it may be painting, singing, cooking, sewing, etc. Take a walk if you need it. Once you occupy yourself, things are easier to deal with.

Remember, stress happens. But make sure to take care of yourself so that you can take care of others.

Life, Parenting

Halloween and Islam

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Cute Picture From Jannah Steps Blog

I know that a lot of you may be tempted to dress yourself or your kids up for Halloween. However, the majority of scholars have said that Halloween in particular is a celebration that true followers of Islam should not celebrate.  I feel awful because even though I was always a practicing Muslim, I didn’t realize how harmful Halloween was until much later in life. So I decided to write this post to help more Muslims gain awareness about it.  While it may seem harmless to dress up and eat candy on Halloween, here is an excerpt from SuhaibWebb.com.

“The consensus of our scholars have prohibited taking part in the activities or selling the items specifically related to celebrating holidays representing religions other than Islam. This is due to the hadith we mentioned, ‘Whoever imitates or resembles a people is one of them’ (Bukhari)

Among these is Halloween which is an ancient polytheist pagan tradition of Europe that was switched to All Souls day once Roman Catholicism had spread throughout Europe. It gained back its pagan roots with the capitalist venture of profit in those polytheist rituals. The current practices are almost identical to those done by the Polytheist originators of this holiday. If you are truly a follower of the Qur’an and Sunnah – not someone who follows their desires, or someone who simply wishes to fit in even when it compromises their religion – then you will not partake in this holiday.

We must not take part in this celebration. Instead, we should try to organize mosque activities on this night, or try and go somewhere that doesn’t celebrate it, or at least just keep your lights off outside of your house.”

For those of you in the Bay Area, MCC East Bay is planning a nice event called November’s Eve Celebration at Sienna Ranch from 5:30pm-8:30pm. It will be a halal alternative to Halloween replete with s’mores, bon fire, face painting, and henna. Since this is NOT a Halloween event, please don’t come in costume iA.

I hope this post finds all of my East coast readers well and I hope this helps all Muslims decide to do the right thing today iA.

Life

Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Days

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You know it’s bad when the barista at Starbucks runs out of Tall cups and needs to put your Tall order in another size cup and literally almost reads your mind and puts a sad face on the cup.

We have all had them: bad days. Or as Holly Golightly calls them: the reds.

I am currently having one at the moment and it seems like everything that can go wrong, is going wrong. Today feels like one of those days where I should have stayed in bed. I am having a crazy bad hijab day, work is crazed, items I shipped eons ago still have not gone through, got a ton of rejections for personal projects, etc.

But, I remember that things went a lot worse for most people in the world. Look, the fact I can buy Starbucks or even have food for the day is incredibly lucky. In fact, I need to stop being so sorry for myself and feel blessed that I have so much.

While having a bad day happens to all of us, it’s how you react to that bad day that matters most. And I will make sure to be more grateful on my better days.

And turning to Allah (swt) always helps me too: Allah (God) says: “Take one step towards me, I will take ten steps towards you. Walk towards me, I will run towards you.” Hadith Qudsi.

Perhaps today is the push I needed to take one more step. Until then, I will just weather out the day and be grateful for the little blessings in my life.

Life

Sisterhood

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The jumbo shrimp skewers at my girl Fay’s birthday BBQ.

I know I wrote about the power of friends in an earlier blog post, but given the fact that women need a support system more now than ever, I wanted to discuss it more in depth.

When you go through a loss in this world, a woman may get some solace and support from her husband, father or brother, but more often than not, the support that keeps her going is her mother, sister, and friends. This is why a lot of Hadith that discusses brotherhood should apply to sisters as well.

When you need a sympathetic ear, who do you turn to besides Allah (swt)? For me, it’s my mother, sister, mother in law, and friends. In fact, I feel like Allah (swt) answers some of my most desperate prayers by compelling my girlfriends to call me when I need it most.

For example, when I was pregnant, I was so far away from my mom but I feel like Allah (swt) brought an angel in the form of my girl Sarah. My friend Sarah was there to hold my hand in labor and called a nurse when I wanted that epidural.

When I first moved to SF, my girl Fay introduced me to all my good friends here mA. She threw my baby shower and listened to me whenever I got home sick.

My girl Sandra always listens to my crazy ideas and encourages me to listen to my heart especially when it comes to Islam.

My girl Farah has been my bestie since I was 13. She introduced me to Sunday school and kept me straight in the deen in my formative years. I feel like our souls must have met before we even met in this world because she knows me so well Alh.

Each one of these remarkable ladies reminds me how lucky the Prophet (saws) was to have his own group of close friends. I mean who else is going to hide in a cave with you when there are assassins chasing you? If you look at the life of the Prophet (saws), you will always find examples that are relevant in your own life.

For me, I am just grateful I got to share good food and good company today. Make sure you thank your own support system today.

Life

Time Management

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My mom asked me to write a blog post about time management. I thought it was so ironic because as a young child, I would procrastinate all the time.

When I was in the 6th grade, students had all week to write out a sheet of the multiplication tables for each day of the week that were due every Monday. (7 sheets of it for 7 days in a week).

What was 12 year old me doing every Sunday night? 7 sheets of the multiplication tables by hand all in one shot!

As a working mom, I don’t have the luxury of procrastination. Moms NEED to get up early, take care of babies, go to work, take care of their homes and hubbies and some like me, also attend to the needs of in laws too.

While it may sound tiring, I have some tips that I learned along the way:

1) Make time for bed time: if you can stick your child to a regular bed time, try to sleep then too. That way, you can wake up early for fajr prayers (or if you are really lucky tahajjud).

Waking up with enough time to eat breakfast and get ready for work or the rest of your day sets the pace and tone for you. No one can function if they are sleep deprived or hungry.

2) Finish the boring stuff first: One of the worst things is having fun after a long work week during the weekend and then realizing on Sunday that you have to do 2 weeks of laundry! Try to do your errands on Friday or earlier in the weekend so that you have time for some fun stuff too. Let’s face it, would you want to do errands when you have the Sunday blues?

3)Always make time for your kids: Yes, a clean house is lovely. However, sometimes I do ignore messes if it means spending time with my daughter after a long day at work. I have her sing the clean up song with me so the house is not terrible and then we laugh and giggle while reading books.

4) Make small changes: As a procrastinator, I used to pledge BIG promises to myself and then set myself up to fail because it’s too hard to change. Small changes add up in impact over time. One small change I did was do automatic online payments of my bills so I never have to worry about being late on my payments.

Small consistent actions are recommended in Islam. Aisha (ra) narrated that the Prophet (saws) said: “The most beloved actions to Allah are the most consistent ones even if they are few.” (Bukhari)

5) Don’t be too hard on yourself: I used to beat myself up over procrastinating, but I realized that it wasn’t helping me change, but it was holding me back. Embrace that you have this flaw by trying to preemptively do things. If you can’t, it’s okay. Things eventually do get done and life does go on. No one is perfect! I can promise you that I don’t procrastinate like I used to, but I still have a ways to go.

Life

Weight Loss Tip That Really Works

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I have written before about how I have a bully who loves to pick on my weight. What I didn’t get to tell all of you about is my own weight loss journey.

I want to tell you how since I was a teen, I struggled with my weight. I feel like if I just LOOK at cookies, I gain a few pounds. This means that I have always been vigilant about what I ate and I always exercised, but I never seemed to lose any weight!

Finally, I read an article about how people who lost weight and were successful at it actually kept a food diary. Even after learning this secret, I was still disheartened because who can actually keep track of EVERYTHING you eat in a day? And that is when I realized that perhaps I WAS eating items that seemed healthy, but were high in calories.

Do those jellybeans your coworker offered you really count? What about oil supplements?

After some research, I found My Fitness Pal (some of my other friends use Fit Bit). My Fitness Pal actually tracks your food intake because you never have to guess how many calories something is. Their food database is immense. They even have entries for caloric counts of Indian sweets like jalebi!

You can track your calories easily. There is even a barcode scanner capability on their smartphone app. It also helps you track your exercise too. It makes it simple for you to track what you intake in terms of calories, what you burn, and even estimates your weight in 5 weeks based on your daily entries.

I lost 17 lbs using this free app. That being said, I still have a long way to go, but at least I have a powerful tool to help me along the way.

What are your weight loss tips?

Life, Parenting

Body Image and Muslim Women

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Source: google.com via Jillian on Pinterest

My older sister wanted to share her thoughts about how Muslim women are not immune to unrealistic images of women in the media.

It could not have come at a better time since I have a bully in my life. She, like most bullies, think its okay to tell people unflattering and just mean things. It’s not.

Her latest thing to talk about is my weight. At first, I was hurt. Then I tried to be proactive and watch what I ate and exercise. Then I realized, “Screw this bully!” She probably is cranky because she wishes she could enjoy life like I do! (Plus I really enjoy food and was getting annoyed saying no any time someone offered me something to eat). Here is what my sister said:

“We all have fellow women (and men) who try to impose unrealistic ideals on us. What can we as practicing Muslim women do to help this situation? First we must believe that this body temporarily houses a far more beautiful thing called the soul. How beautiful this soul is depends on our deeds and actions and not some arbitrary thing like genetics. We must believe our bodies are an amanat or trust from Allah and as such must put pure and halal food into it and make sure it’s done in moderation.

We must also make sure we are exercising at least 30 minutes a day. This can be done and maybe sisters can start a walking club. Even sisters at home can do tons of exercise that don’t require special equipment. Learn to love and embrace your self. I read somewhere about stretch marks– I am a tiger that has earned her stripes.”

So I still watch what I eat and exercise, but I would much rather be known for my beautiful soul. And let’s all pray that this bully starts to change and focuses on having a beautiful soul herself.

Life

The Beauty of Friends

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If you are lucky, you have friends that not only are with you during good times, but through hard times too. I mean a friend who doesn’t just agree with everything you say or do, but a friend who is willing to set you straight.

That type of friendship is rare, but if you find it, Islam recommends you cultivate it and care for it.

In Islam, the Prophet (saws) always spoke of the importance of brotherhood and camaraderie.

“You cannot enter paradise unless you become a total believer and you won’t become a total believer unless you love each other.”

I have always relied on my girlfriends to get me through life and give me good advice based on Islam. I can honestly say that they make me a better wife and mother. I love you ladies! I hope you know that your love counts with Allah (swt).

So if you are having a bad day, make sure you talk it out with a close friend. And make sure to share this post and tell them how much you love them!