Barakah Roots

Life of a Big Family Mom

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  • Warm collage capturing ordinary Muslim motherhood and faith-filled daily life: a missing white sock lying outdoors, hands on a steering wheel during a school run, soft morning sunlight in a quiet living room with plants, a woman holding Quran and prayer beads, and a calm breakfast moment with a child holding mugs. The images reflect the spirituality of ordinary Tuesdays, school-morning routines, and finding barakah in small repetitive moments.
    Faith,  Hadith,  Islam,  Motherhood Unfiltered,  Reflections,  United Arab Emirates

    Faith Is Also Built on Ordinary Tuesdays

    May 11, 2026 / No Comments

    I think when I was younger, I imagined faith would feel more cinematic than it actually does. I imagined spiritually strong people as calm and refreshed all the time. People who prayed every salah with perfect focus. People who read Quran peacefully for long stretches without interruption. People who woke up for tahajjud with glowing skin and emotional stability. I thought closeness to Allah would feel quiet and uninterrupted. But adulthood, especially motherhood, feels very different from that. On a Tuesday morning in Sharjah, faith sometimes looks like searching frantically for one specific white school sock while the clock is ticking and we should have left the house five minutes…

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    mamabarakah

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    Hayaa is not a wall that keeps love out. It is the dignity that keeps the 'Me' intact. It is the sensor that tells me when I am safe. I am learning that I can be a sanctuary with a door—and it is okay to tell the world when that door needs to be closed.

    Hayaa in a Loud World

    April 14, 2026
    “Retro-inspired collage capturing the imaginative world of 80s and 90s television nostalgia: MacGyver-style survival tools and multitools scattered on a workbench, a neon-lit futuristic car dashboard inspired by Knight Rider, a glowing sci-fi time portal reminiscent of Quantum Leap, and a Wild West cowgirl figure standing in a dusty frontier town. The collage reflects childhood imagination, imported television culture, adventure fantasies, and the cinematic inner worlds children created before the internet era.”

    MacGyver, Quantum Leap, and My Wildly Unqualified Childhood Confidence

    May 13, 2026

    My LinkedIn Profile and the “Chief Justice of Book Disputes”

    April 5, 2026
  • Collage of modern school-morning life featuring a phone with unread notifications beside coffee, school uniforms hanging ready, a backpack and shoes prepared for the next day, an empty school hallway, and packed lunchboxes. The images reflect the quiet emotional rhythm of modern motherhood, school routines, and preparing children for ordinary days again.
    Faith,  Motherhood Unfiltered,  Reflections,  The Big Family Life

    Ordinary Mondays Feel Like Mercy

    May 10, 2026 / No Comments

    Today I opened WhatsApp to do one thing. I still do not know what that thing was. Somewhere between replying to a cousin, checking a message from another mother, and opening Telegram for a school update, my original reason for picking up the phone disappeared completely. For the past couple of weeks, the sky had been quiet. No interceptions. No sudden sounds overhead. Just stillness—the kind of stillness that slowly tricks you into believing life has returned to its normal rhythm again. Then last Monday, there were a few interceptions again. Suddenly, the Telegram school groups became alive all over again. The groups themselves are actually very organized; alhamdulillah, only…

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    mamabarakah

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    A bright, airy kitchen scene showing the faceless hands of a Muslim mother and her children preparing a large meal. In the foreground, a mother's hands stir a steaming stainless steel pot on a modern stovetop. Nearby, children's hands are busy chopping vegetables and reaching for fresh fruit. On the side counter, a multi-cooker and rice cooker sit among grocery bags, while a hand-designed family chore chart is visible on the wall in the background. The atmosphere is warm, sun-drenched, and captures the busy, organized rhythm of a large household

    How I Feed 12 People Every Week (The Logistics of Barakah)

    April 12, 2026
    Warm collage capturing ordinary Muslim motherhood and faith-filled daily life: a missing white sock lying outdoors, hands on a steering wheel during a school run, soft morning sunlight in a quiet living room with plants, a woman holding Quran and prayer beads, and a calm breakfast moment with a child holding mugs. The images reflect the spirituality of ordinary Tuesdays, school-morning routines, and finding barakah in small repetitive moments.

    Faith Is Also Built on Ordinary Tuesdays

    May 11, 2026

    The S26 Ultra and the Fear of the Escape

    April 5, 2026
  • a collage of food, molokhia stew, rendang, ratattouille, and lasagna
    Motherhood Unfiltered,  Nostalgia,  Reflections,  The Big Family Life,  United Arab Emirates

    The Trail I’m Leaving Behind

    April 21, 2026 / No Comments

    I really have to share why I started Barakah Roots—not as a “brand” or a project, but so you can understand why I am here, opening up my house and my head to you. I was born in 1981. I’m a child of that bridge generation—the ones who remember the silence of a house before the internet lived in our pockets. Now, it’s 2026. I live in Sharjah, managing a house of twelve. Ten children. A multicultural marriage where we are constantly translating our very souls across different languages and unspoken codes. Most days, I am the logistics officer for a small army. My mind is a Forty-Tab Brain. I’m…

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    mamabarakah

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    From Surabaya to Riyadh: The Barakah of the Empty Hours

    April 6, 2026
    An image of three large woven laundry baskets packed with clean, folded clothes and towels. Bright greens, blues, and whites are visible. A few items of clothing lie softly on the plush rug in the foreground. The background is a neutral, textured wall.

    Laundry, We Will Always Have Laundry

    April 15, 2026
    A dramatic five-panel collage illustrating a first Umrah journey. The top panels show the Masjid al-Haram at night, a lonely desert highway at sunset, and the back of a woman in a black abaya. The bottom panels feature a car dashboard with a glowing 'Fuel Low' warning light and a pair of open hands raised in prayer before the Kaaba in Makkah. The imagery captures the transition from the vulnerability of a desert road trip to the spiritual sanctuary of the Haram.

    The Road to Makkah, My First Umrah and the Hijab in the Mataf

    April 12, 2026
  • A bright, airy kitchen scene showing the faceless hands of a Muslim mother and her children preparing a large meal. In the foreground, a mother's hands stir a steaming stainless steel pot on a modern stovetop. Nearby, children's hands are busy chopping vegetables and reaching for fresh fruit. On the side counter, a multi-cooker and rice cooker sit among grocery bags, while a hand-designed family chore chart is visible on the wall in the background. The atmosphere is warm, sun-drenched, and captures the busy, organized rhythm of a large household
    Children,  Motherhood Unfiltered,  Reflections,  The Big Family Life

    How I Feed 12 People Every Week (The Logistics of Barakah)

    April 12, 2026 / No Comments

    People say the kitchen is the heart of the home. In a house of twelve, the kitchen is something else entirely. It hums. It spills. It overflows. It is less a heart and more a high-traffic terminal … where someone is always arriving, leaving, asking, hungry, or waiting. Between ten children (from a twenty-year-old with a real appetite to a three-year-old who survives on whims), my husband, and me, we are not just cooking meals. We are managing an ecosystem. Somewhere between the rice cooker and the sink full of cups, I realized: this was never meant to be done alone. Feeding a large family is not about culinary perfection.…

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    mamabarakah

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    My LinkedIn Profile and the “Chief Justice of Book Disputes”

    April 5, 2026
    Hayaa is not a wall that keeps love out. It is the dignity that keeps the 'Me' intact. It is the sensor that tells me when I am safe. I am learning that I can be a sanctuary with a door—and it is okay to tell the world when that door needs to be closed.

    Hayaa in a Loud World

    April 14, 2026
    Soft green-toned collage illustrating the invisible labor of motherhood in a large Muslim family: a hijabi mother holding papers while children move around the kitchen, children helping wash dishes together, and a mother folding laundry quietly. Botanical sketches and soft neutral colors create a warm, reflective atmosphere about caregiving, teamwork, mental load, and everyday family life.

    Nobody Claps for the Mother Who Remembered Everything

    May 13, 2026
  • A close-up, light and airy shot of a woman’s hands holding an open Quran. Soft morning sunlight illuminates the pages and a simple notebook and pen resting nearby. The scene is faceless and serene, focusing on the texture of the paper and the quiet moment of reflection.
    Islam,  Motherhood Unfiltered,  Quran,  Reflections,  Spiritual Perspectives

    Iqra, When My Mind Is Full

    April 11, 2026 / No Comments

    A quiet reminder for the days when everything feels like too much. When my mind is full, I don’t usually think about revelation. I think about what’s next. Who needs what. What I forgot. What I’m already late for. My thoughts move quickly—like tabs opening and closing faster than I can keep up. And in the middle of that noise, it’s hard to imagine a cave. A quiet place. A single word. Iqra. Read. In a world that constantly demands we do—to produce, to cook, to manage, to solve—it feels like a quiet mercy that the very first command given to our Prophet ﷺ was not a list of instructions.…

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    mamabarakah

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    Birth and The Raw Truth of Surrender

    April 10, 2026

    One Full Trolley

    April 5, 2026
    A cinematic, warm-toned photograph of a woman from behind, wearing a heavy, cream-colored prayer dress (isra). Her hands are raised in the opening Takbir of prayer, facing toward a soft, hazy light streaming through a window. The background is softly blurred, suggesting a domestic interior with the golden glow of a Sharjah afternoon. The image is framed with elegant gold filigree corners, emphasizing the sacredness of the quiet, private moment.

    Finding Stillness on the Rug

    April 15, 2026

About Me

Umm Abdallah

I’m an Indonesian mother of ten, now making a home in the Middle East. Most of my days are spent navigating the beautiful, heavy, and often messy reality of a large family and a body that requires me to move a little slower.

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Categories

  • Birth (1)
  • Books (1)
  • Children (4)
  • Covid 19 (3)
  • Doula (2)
  • Faith (2)
  • Hadith (2)
  • Islam (10)
  • Marriage (4)
  • Motherhood Unfiltered (14)
  • Movie (1)
  • Nostalgia (5)
  • Pop Cultures (5)
  • Quran (1)
  • Reflections (23)
  • Saudi Arabia (5)
  • Sisterhood (1)
  • Spiritual Perspectives (8)
  • The Big Family Life (7)
  • United Arab Emirates (12)
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