I haven’t shared anything in a very, very long time. I am a little frustrated right now, actually, and I am writing from a place of feeling obliged, because my WordPress subscription just got automatically renewed even though it was not due to expire until the end of September. So I am not sure what happened exactly. I never agreed to automatically renew it a month before the expiration date. Anyway. Part of the reason for my extensive ‘silence’ though was having to write a lot for credit classes I’ve had to take through a community college this past year. That included an early US history class, two composition classes, a psychology class and a sociology class, all of which I enjoyed thoroughly but yes, also left me with no spare time to ramble about anything else. Another reason was that I am no longer certain what this blog really represents. It started off with just talking about what I’ve been up to, writing about a few of my prenatal, birth and postnatal experiences, sharing herbalism related stuff, some recipe here and there, occasional creative (lol) writing, or some standalone essay topic, without ever fully developing into anything substantive.

So, because I want to look back at this unauthorized early subscription renewal and say, hey, at least I published one entry between this annual subscription and the next date in 2027, I will just provide a short life update… first off, my beloved grandmother passed away in January of this year, and that was one of the hardest months of my life. I felt very lonely, because I couldn’t share my grief as much as I needed to with anyone except with myself and Allah. Anyone who has little kids knows that they don’t allow you much space to just feel the feels. I was away from my dying grandmother and my close family members who surrounded her in her last days. I couldn’t leave to see her given all my obligations, but it did make me feel better knowing that, if she were able to speak, she would have told me there’s no need for me to physically be there while neglecting other responsibilities she always urged me to tend to with gracefulness. She would have told me, as she always did, that physical distance does not matter because the souls are near.

Second of all, as I just mentioned in this post, I started taking classes through a community college, and while it may take a while, my intentions currently are completing prerequisites for Nursing. So, on top of full-time mom and homeschooling duty, that has kept me very busy, but also very intellectually engaged. Outside of college, I’ve been taking Persian classes since nearly half a year and that has been really fun, too, especially seeing the overlap between Turkish, Arabic (both of which I am relatively fluent in) and Persian and how we use the same words, sometimes in different ways. I have Greek and Spanish on my wishlist too, but I told myself I will spend at least one year on Persian.

Finally, after three months of waiting on babies and weddings in Cyprus (there were only one of each, but for the sake of exaggerating…), we returned to Chicago, packed our apartment in about 9 days and moved into a new house in the suburbs where we are closer to some friends and family, and have a great backyard and not so great tiger mosquitoes that are making me really miss the Cypriot heat. I am excited to officially start our homeschooling year, with our oldest starting fifth grade. Mashaa Allah! And, alhamdulillah, after about two years of consistent tajwid classes and making recitation of the Qur’an a regular daily practice, I am about to embark on my ijaza pathway (in teaching, not hifdh — yet).

Dear reader, I hope that you had a safe, peaceful summer and have a wonderful rest of the year ❤