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The Forty Days Postpartum Rest We Forgot
We spend nine months preparing the nursery, but we spend zero minutes preparing our souls for the “void” that comes after the storm of birth. In Java, where my roots are, we don’t “prepare” for postpartum with a shopping list; we prepare with a shift in tempo. There is a quiet, deeply practiced understanding that a mother must be held for forty days. Traditionally, her body is considered “open” and her energy fragile. She is surrounded by her mother or her mother-in-law—whoever brings her the most peace. There are helpers, traditional masseuses, the warming heat of Jamu tonics, and specific foods designed to “seal” the body back together. But for…
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Birth and The Raw Truth of Surrender
I have birthed ten children. My journey has taken me from a delivery room in Surabaya, through the busy hospitals of Riyadh, into the sacred quiet of my own bathtub at home in Riyadh, and finally to a hospital room in Sharjah. I have been the woman handled like a procedure on a hospital bed, and I have been the woman surrendering to the water in her own home—bringing life into the world on her own terms. If I could sit you down in my home today, I wouldn’t teach you how to prepare a “birth plan.” I would give you the truth about what it actually means to surrender…
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The Books That Built Me
Before I was a mother of ten in Sharjah, I was just a girl in Indonesia with a book in my hand… and a very specific obsession. British stories. I know exactly how it started. My paternal grandfather and grandmother were the ones who paved the way. I still remember my first encyclopedia; my grandmother bought it from a walking salesgirl who came to our door every month for a year. My grandma paid for it in installments—month by month, page by page—investing in my mind before I even knew what a “future” was. Then there was the time in Grade 2. I had broken my arm at school and…
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When “The Best” Feels Out of Reach
We have all heard the Hadith: Often, we hear it in the context of leadership—the way a father or a husband carries himself. And rightly so. But as a mother of ten, I’ve found myself sitting with these words… a little differently. What does it mean to be “the best” when you are bone-tired? What does it look like when the “smallness” of daily life—the endless questions, the missing snacks, the constant mental load—begins to weigh on you? The “Forty-Tab” Brain The mental load of a mother is invisible because it is made of micro-decisions. From the outside, it can look like we are “just sitting with a laptop.” But…
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Rewatching Titanic as a Grown Muslim Woman
Around 10:00 PM, the house is finally quiet. My kids sleep early (Alhamdulillah), so by then, the noise of the day—voices, footsteps, little arguments—has softened into stillness. I sit with my laptop, the glow of the screen lighting up the room, and decide to watch Titanic again. I remember watching it twice in the cinema back in the 90s. Back then, it was everything. And yes… I had a huge crush on Leonardo DiCaprio. Watching it now? He’s… very meh And that alone tells me how much has changed. I’m not watching it as a girl dreaming of escape anymore. I’m watching it as a wife of twenty years. A…
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Vulnerability as a Woman’s Strength
In our Deen, the roles of men and women carry a divine logic that is both simple and profound. The husband is the provider and protector—the Qawwam. The woman is the heart of the home, the one who nurtures and builds what cannot always be seen. On paper, the balance is clear. But in the lived reality of a long marriage, the heart often feels the gravity of that arrangement. The Smallness of Asking There is a specific kind of vulnerability that comes with not having your own income. It’s quiet. Subtle. Hard to explain to those who haven’t stood in those shoes. It shows up in the smallest moments.…
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The Lockdown Chronicles (Part 3): The Lonely Hallway and the Chorus of Cries
The adrenaline of a home birth makes you feel invincible—until it wears off. Then, reality hits. Heavy. Sudden. Cold. After that surreal car ride—with my newborn in towels and my eldest son holding the placenta in a bucket—we reached the Emergency Room. I was wheeled through sliding doors into a world that felt alien. Everything was masked and sterile. The silence wasn’t peaceful; it was tense. The Separation Almost immediately, the doctors found my baby’s blood sugar was low. Before I could even process that he was finally here, he was gone. Straight to the NICU. My own body began to buckle under the trauma. My blood pressure spiked, and…
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The Lockdown Chronicles (Part 2): Six Computers and a Car Ride
If you ask me what it was like to be pregnant during the peak of 2020… I have to be honest. I don’t really remember it. Not clearly, anyway. The months blur together into one long, exhausting hum. When you are managing an indoor plastic playground, rationing eggs, worrying about family across the ocean, and trying to keep eight children sane during a lockdown—your brain simply switches into survival mode. There was no sitting quietly, holding my belly, or journaling about the pregnancy. My body was just… doing its job. It was quietly growing a life, while everything else around me felt loud, frantic, and overwhelming. The Madrasati Chaos By…
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The Lockdown Chronicles (Part 1): “Shollu Fi Rihalikum” and the Great Egg Hunt
In late 2019, as whispers of a strange new virus started making the news, I was busy doing something I had waited years to do: I was relearning how to drive in Saudi Arabia. By December, I had passed my test. By early January 2020, I was holding my official driver’s license. I felt a surge of freedom. The open roads of Riyadh were finally mine. And then, just a few weeks later, the entire world stopped. Lockdown. My brand new driver’s license stayed tucked in my wallet, useless. Malls closed. Parks closed. The roads I was so excited to drive on were suddenly empty, heavily guarded by police checkpoints.…
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From Surabaya to Riyadh: The Barakah of the Empty Hours
Foreshadowing of a Future Sixteen years before I ever called the UAE my home, I sat in the Dubai airport for a transit flight. I didn’t know it then, but sitting in that terminal was a quiet foreshadowing of my future. I was just a young girl leaving the lush familiarity of Surabaya, Indonesia, bound for Saudi Arabia. I was making Hijrah.Following a man. And honestly… I was terrified. The Sea of Black and the Souq I arrived in Riyadh in March. The weather was mild, almost gentle—completely hiding the fierce desert summer waiting ahead. But while the weather was soft, the culture shock was not. I remember walking into…
