Ramadan is an excellent time to stop being a scaredy cat

Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We recite Bismillah to initiate an act, acknowledging the intention and ethics that follow.

This morning, I thanked Allah (swt) for all that He has given me and thanked him even more for all that he has taken away from me. It was the first prayer of this type. I am always asking for things, but I need to start saying thank you for what was taken or lost because nan one (autocorrect is trying to correct this!) of them do I want back.

nan (not any) is Black vernacular, but as I just learned today, NaN (not a number) is also a mathematical term for when a calculation doesn’t produce a valid number. Love when these overlaps happen.

I am writing this at 30,000 feet en route to Los Angeles. With only two hours left on this flight, I have made this a time-bound writing task. I stop writing when my battery dies or this plane lands.

This is not how I intended for Ramadan to begin: chaotic emails in my inbox, mounting costs as I try to escape an unhealthy situation, and best of all, flashbacks of an abusive marriage where psychological, emotional, and financial warfare was routinely deployed to keep a power imbalance in play.

I keep thinking about how I have been bullied and intimidated into doing things I do not want to do throughout my life. I think about myself as a child and an adult, and the feeling of smallness is unbearable. I feel so much shame when I think about cowering. Shame for making ilahs out of other people because I feared these people more than I feared Allah (swt). Shame for letting things slide that should have been addressed. What do I look like, being a scaredy cat? I’ve been a scaredy cat for a while.

When crazy stuff happens, I stay quiet. I internalize. My body grows inflamed. Hot from the center. It’s conditioning. It is the respectable thing to do, I say. I am now protecting myself.

I am back on my team.

I feel small. I have felt small. But, on the other side of that smallness is righteous anger. Not the kind of anger that makes me want to fight in the streets, but that type of quiet anger that has reorganized my nervous system and realigned my spiritual fortitude. It is the kind of anger that makes me smile because I know Allah (swt) will resolve this situation in ways that I cannot even imagine – in ways that surpass my most desired resolution. I do not have the imaginative capacity to even consider what is possible.

Am I being haughty or naive? Not at all. I am doing what I have never been able to do: fully trust in Allah (swt).

I am the daughter of Gwen, who is the daughter of Berthenia, who is the daughter of Constance, who is the daughter of an unnamed Black woman whose name I should know. And one thing we don’t do, generationally, is let people play in our faces (especially during the Holy season of Ramadan and the jubilant Black History Month). As a Black woman, I am very familiar with this rhythm. And while a single gesture cannot disrupt the structural anti-black and misogynistic cadence that undergirds so many of my interactions, I can at the very least do something about what is sitting in front of me now.

I am not powerless, but I am so tired. It is exhausting to have to always fight. But I’m not too tired to handle mine. I am going to take a nap, recharge, make the most elaborate dua I have ever made, and have some tea. I am going to remind myself that all things have their sunset and Allah (swt) is supreme over all of this.

Thank you for reading. All the best, always,

Kameelah 👽

Finally, while I don’t organize my finances around paid newsletter subscriptions, wouldn’t it be cool if this little newsletter let me take quarterly self-imposed writing retreats? Consider getting a one-year membership at USD 70 :)

How to cite this newsletter: Rasheed, K. (Year, Month Day). Newsletter Title. I Will (?) Figure This All Out Later. URL