I was raised in remembrance. My childhood was a tapestry of many faces, many tongues, many ways of worship. Uncles and aunties from different religions, tribes, cultures, and lands moved through my life not as “others,” but as extensions of something familiar… something shared. I was born Muslim and nurtured within its path. Yet love did not arrive to me in one language. It came in many forms. It came through hands that prayed differently. Through voices that called on God in other ways. Through hearts that recognized my mother, held her, stood beside her, and loved her without condition. And in loving her, they loved us. So I did not learn division. I learned presence. No one asked us to become what we were not. No one imposed belief as a condition for belonging. There was a quiet reverence between us, unspoken, yet deeply understood. A knowing that did not need to declare itself. Some walked with us into Islamic studies. And we, with equal ease, walked into churches. As flower girl...
For a long time, I measured my creativity by how visible it was. By how much I could produce, how quickly I could share, how easily it could be understood by others. T thought expression had to be constant to be meaningful. I thought silence meant k was losing something. But silence was never absence, it was preparation. There are seasons where everything within you is rearranging itself quietly. Your voice is deepening. Your vision is becoming clearer. Your intention is shedding what is not aligned. In those seasons, it may look like nothing is happening. But everything is happening, just not in ways the world can measure. What lives inside you is not random. It is intentional. It carries its own timing, its own intelligence, its own knowing. And when you try to force it before it is ready, you dilute its truth. You interrupt its becoming. I have had to learn this in real time. To sit with my ideas instead of rushing them. To listen to what they are asking of me. Some want to be ...