1. The Storm
Dear Sister in Islam,
Separation is hard. Divorce can be ugly. The whole process is utterly painful.
Life is a series of beginnings and endings. Our only, eternal, everlasting love and relationship is with God, His Book, the Messenger ﷺ and with ourselves. Everyone and everything else in our lives will come and go.
You will fall many times. You will curl yourself into a ball of anguish. There won’t be anyone to hold you but you. There won’t be anyone to dry your tears but you. There won’t be anyone to take care of you but you. You will hold your own hands for comfort. Your pillow will be drenched with your tears, night after night. Your pain will almost cleave you into two in its intensity. You will wrap your own arms around yourself and place your forehead to the ground, alone on your prayer mat because your community will fail you.
There will be many many months when you won’t have the strength to stand upright; you will still stand, holding on to the walls for support if necessary. Not for yourself. For the little people in your life, who are depending on you. They didn’t choose this.
When you have dug deep into your reserves of strength and find only emptiness, you will learn to dig deeper, to really scrape the bottom of the pit. Not for yourself. For the little people in your life, who are depending on you. They didn’t choose this.
You will cradle your wounds in your own hands, still alive, but barely, struggling to live, when all you want to do is sink into blessed oblivion. You will want to be wrapped in a shroud, to be placed in a grave, so you can finally rest. You will fight to live. Not for yourself. For the little people in your life, who are depending on you. They didn’t choose this.
You will learn to force yourself to rest, because giving up is not an option. You have to survive. One moment at a time. One hour at a time. One task at a time. Not for yourself. For the little people in your life, who are depending on you. They didn’t choose this.
You will learn to breathe through it all. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Not for yourself. For the little people in your life, who are depending on you. They didn’t choose this.
The invisible wounds will run deep. Bruised, battered and bleeding, you will move forward but you will never to be the same again. What happened to you will always be part of you. You don’t ‘get over’ or ‘move on’ from deep emotional and psychological trauma. You make space for it. You learn to live with it. You carry the scars with you. One day, you will learn to smile. The sound of your rusty laugher will surprise you. Your children will stop and stare at you. They’ve never seen this side of you before. You will learn to thrive in spite of what happened to you. It won’t be easy. Accept this.
It isn’t easy to reverse years of living in fight-flight-freeze or fawn. It will take years for your dysregulated nervous system to heal. There will be many setbacks. Accept this.
