“Persist and Resist.” – Epictetus
Featured Photo: Sabr. Patience. A small pair of paintings with evil eye amulet, and the Arabic word for Patience, completed the day after the Night of Power, 2024.
Dear Fellow Warrior,
Ramadan has flown by…and now we are in the final two days.
I just had some rough thoughts for the moment. I’ve had many, some of which I have shared on my social media, but I wanted these thoughts to be on my reflections in this blog. This space I nurtured for so many years. All are welcome here, in this space. You have been welcome, but most don’t seem to want to be here. I have been hoping that changes. I have been patient. But I wonder if what I am waiting for, what I have been fighting for will ever come.
Sabr is a beautiful word in Islam. Patience.
I always find myself reflecting on my life’s progress during Ramadan.
It seems asking Allah for patience has grown stronger over the years… when you’re tired of waiting for some movement in your life… or feeling a sense of paralysis.
You must strike a healthy balance between going after what you want and being patient… but there comes a point in your life where it just gets harder when so much time is passed.
And then there comes a point in your life when you realize maybe “that’s it for you.” That was it for you. Those moments. You wish you were able to take it in more before they left you…
Some of the memories fade away. You return to certain spaces that bring forward a very painful nostalgia, and a realization for yourself.
What happened? Where did you go? Where were you? With all this time past. Feels like that “interstellar effect” again.
You look at your body, when your mind turns back time, and it doesn’t match…. You can’t sit the same way. When will it stop? The fighting. The jihad. Will it ever stop? Why did you have to fight so hard for everything… to find a sense of home, just a little love?…
You were that forgettable, invisible. You were that insignificant. You were that misunderstood.
When people have made up their mind about you, they will keep it fixed… they will never change.
No matter how many receipts you show they are completely wrong. You let them go. You try to shake them off… But you allowed those forces to have so much power over you, you tried to fight them off, but they were just too powerful, and with that….time slipped.
‘That was it for you.’
You lost the grip in that moment. You couldn’t stop and smell the roses.
You missed out on love. You didn’t “catch the last bus…”
The only rationalization you have is that this can happen when you refuse to be kept in a box, caged, and chained, and silenced into complicity and mediocrity.
God knows best what is the truth. But this is your truth. And while you don’t need to prove your truth to anyone, you have the receipts.
This happens when you risk being authentic, and speaking your truth, speaking truth to power of all its forms, in spaces that don’t fundamentally welcome “freedom of thought.”
You refuse to accept people’s perceptions about you as fact, as the final truth of who you are.
You refuse to allow their opinions of you to dictate and shape what you choose to do.
You are the easy target, the easy scapegoat, for the lies and systemic injustices, only because you are the one who has colored outside the lines of conformity. And you stood for integrity.
You made your choice.
You chose defiance.
You chose rebellion.
You chose resistance.
You chose the inward and outward revolution.
And you can’t turn back now. You have no other recourse…
You can only move forward…
May Allah help us remain patient, protect us from evil eyes, as we stay focused on the grand prize…
I pray that all our efforts are accepted in this blessed month of Ramadan.
Stay Resilient. Stay Empowered. Stay Connected.
Be Radical. Be Inconvenient.
Peace, Warmth, Blessings, and Solidarity,
Dr. Elsa, Warrior KQueen
“She wasn’t looking for a Knight. She was looking for a Sword.” – Atticus
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