8. Land Ahoy!

Dear Sister in Islam,

71. There is no freedom in minimising, diminishing, or marginalising your own experiences, as you paddle towards your landing place. Don’t let any one else do it either. 

72. You have to sit with your emotions and feelings. You must process the pain, anger, resentment, bitterness, regret, grief and heartbreak. You have to allow these feelings and emotions to pass through you, so you don’t carry the darker emotions with you on the voyage forward. 

73. You can’t heal what you don’t have the courage to feel. It won’t be easy but it’s absolutely necessary. Repressed emotion stored over years within the body will be expressed in the body as disease. Numbing yourself will only work in the short term but not in the long term. Once you feel the tsunami of emotions, you must let go of the turbulent waves of feelings buffeting you for your own well-being. It is only by consciously letting go, that you can fulfil your own potential, without the burden and torment of what happened to you in the past weighing you down. 

74. Your trauma isn’t who you are. Your trauma is what was done to you. It’s important to know the difference.

75. You don’t get to choose what happens to you but you do get to choose how you respond to what happens to you. Therein lies the secret of a life well lived. Your worst experiences can be your best teachers. Every tribulation has a gift and a lesson. You have to learn to look and find both.

76. In life, you have no option but to walk forward, leaving the past behind you but carrying the rather painful lessons with you. Hopefully you won’t repeat the poor choices you made in the past. These were not ‘mistakes’ you made but ‘choices' you chose. Mistakes imply that it happened without your will and agency. That’s not true. You make choices - great choices, good choices, bad choices, terrible choices. Choice happen with your own agency. You have to take responsibility for that. There are always consequences to choices;  poor choices lead to painful consequences, while sound choices lead to joyous consequences. You have to learn to make your choices wisely and you have to teach your children to do the same.

77. Some days, it’s enough that you survived from morning to evening. And then from evening to morning. Remember that today’s problems are for today and tomorrow’s problems are for tomorrow. Breaking everything that needs to be done into smaller manageable parts will reduce the feeling of overwhelm.

78. Small, incremental change over time can add up to great change over the years. It’s telling yourself to do something different today than what you did yesterday. It’s telling yourself to do one thing today, instead of nothing. That’s how you build habits. That’s how you stack habits. That’s how you manage hard tasks. You can do hard things. You have done them before and you can do them again. 

79. When you live in the past and worry about the future, you are losing the present. The past cannot be changed and the future is not in your hands. You have to consciously treasure this moment in time because the now is really all you have. Your mind has the tendency to ruminate over the past and worry over the future. Every time this happens, you have to bring your mind back to the present. 

You have to be mindful in the present; 

Live in the present; 

Be in the present; 

Do in the present.

80. Forgiveness is for you. Not for them. Forgiveness gives you the choice to decide that you won’t allow their actions or words dictate or impact your life any longer. 

Forgiveness is telling someone, even if you only say it in you mind and heart “I forgive you for what you did to me. You had the power and choice to hurt me and you chose to use your power to hurt me. But I have power too. I have the power and choice to say, I am no longer allowing the hurt you caused me to affect my life.”

Forgiveness doesn’t mean that you forget what they did to you or what happened. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you let the people who harmed you back into your life or allow them to hurt you again. 

Forgiveness means that you will hand all of it over to the Creator and let Him deal with the people who wronged you, so that you can move forward with the remainder of your life.

Forgive for your sake. Not for theirs.