Slow Mornings, Heavy Hearts, and the Weight of Your Soul
A reflection on difficult starts, institutional walls, and the quiet responsibility of caring for the soul you've been given.
A Morning That Refused to Move
Day 2 crept in quietly — too quietly. The night before had been one of those hectic ones that overstay their welcome, and we all stumbled into suhoor wearing the weight of it. No one was particularly eager. No one was particularly awake. Every body in the house seemed to be negotiating with itself just to sit upright.
The energy of Day 1 — that fresh, we-can-do-this momentum — had softened overnight into something more honest. Waking up was slower. The usual efficiency was missing. My little one was up, but barely, his legs aching badly enough that he could barely walk comfortably. He wanted to stay home. After a short family discussion, we agreed — rest was the right call for today. Some battles aren't worth fighting against your own body.
The Email I Didn't Expect
And then came the email.
A message from his officer, essentially saying that missing sessions during Ramadan wasn't an option — that it would require a formal leave of absence. For a child who takes his commitments seriously, who has never needed to be pushed to show up, who is genuinely dedicated — this stung in ways that surprised even me.
I sat with the frustration of it. The feeling of encountering something rigid when you needed something human. Of institutions not making space for what matters. For a child who had been nothing but conscientious, to receive a message like that — it felt like a wall where there should have been a door.
But as I often do when something knocks the air out of me, I came back to the phrase that has carried me through harder things than this:
Insha Allah Khair. Whatever Allah has decreed, there is goodness in it — even when we cannot see it yet.
That reminder does not erase the sting. But it softens it into something I can carry.
Alhamdulillah for Small Mercies
By mid-morning I found myself back at my desk — in my basement, which doubles as my office. Working from home is a blessing I don't take for granted, especially during Ramadan. To be in your own space. To not have to perform wellness for anyone. To step away when you need to, to pray, to pause, to breathe. Alhamdulillah for that luxury.
I settled in, and in between the work, I found myself searching for something to anchor me. An Islamic quote, a reminder, anything to give the day a frame. That is when I came across it — a short phrase that landed harder than I expected.
Alaykum Anfusakum — Upon You Is Your Soul
I will be the first to admit: responsibility for self is not my strong suit. It is far easier to tend to others — to watch over a child, a pet, a home — than to turn that same watchful care inward. We are often far more diligent about the wellbeing of those we love than we are about our own.
But this phrase made me think about it differently. What if I treated my soul the way I treat something I genuinely love and want to protect?
The Pet Analogy That Changed Something in Me
Think about how we care for a pet. We make sure they are fed properly. We keep them clean. We watch what they are exposed to. We notice immediately when something seems off. We advocate for their wellbeing without hesitation, without waiting to be asked, without needing a reason beyond the fact that they are in our care.
We would never knowingly put a pet in harm's way. We monitor their environment. We are careful about what they eat, who they are around, what they experience. We take that responsibility seriously because we love them.
And our souls — the very thing Allah has entrusted us with, the thing that will stand before Him — deserve at least that same level of attention. Not out of self-absorption. But out of stewardship. Out of the recognition that you were given this soul as an amanah — a trust — and that how you tend to it matters.
When it comes to children, we have limited control over them — they grow, they make choices, they have their own path. But over ourselves? Over our own soul? That responsibility is ours entirely.
What Does Caring for the Soul Actually Involve?
I sat with this question for a while today. If I were going to take this seriously — if I were going to treat my soul with the same intentionality I give to the things I love — what would that actually look like? It comes down to three things:
Guard what enters you. Not just what you eat during Ramadan — but what you see, what you hear, what you allow yourself to dwell on. Even your thoughts can leave a residue. The soul is sensitive to its environment in ways we often underestimate. What you consume mentally and emotionally does not stay outside of you — it seeps in. Be careful with the inputs.
Feed the soul with what nourishes it — remembrance of Allah, gratitude, prayer, the Qur'an, connection with people who draw you closer to Him. A soul that is not actively nourished grows weak. It becomes vulnerable to doubt, to distraction, to the slow drift away from what matters. Strength requires intentional feeding, just like the body does.
Be intentional about your company, your environment, and your inputs. Not everyone and everything deserves access to you. The people you spend your time with, the spaces you occupy, the content you let into your mind — all of it shapes who you are becoming. Guard accordingly.
Thinking About What We Think About
Today, my mind kept circling back to one idea: the act of thinking before we speak — and even before that, guiding our thoughts in the right direction before they ever become words at all.
We are so careful about what we eat during Ramadan. We read labels, we time our meals, we make deliberate choices. The whole month trains us to be conscious about what we put into our bodies. But how often do we bring that same intentionality to what we consume mentally and emotionally?
The content we scroll through. The conversations we allow. The narratives we repeat to ourselves in quiet moments. The things we let our eyes linger on. The voices we choose to listen to. All of it enters us, and none of it stays neutral.
What we see shapes what we think. What we think shapes what we say. What we say shapes who we become. The chain is longer and more consequential than we usually give it credit for — and it starts far upstream, long before the word leaves our mouth.
See right things. Hear right things. Speak right things. And reflect — always reflect — so that you can do better each time.
Today's Intentions — Setting the Direction
There is something clarifying about sitting at your desk in the quiet of a Ramadan morning and deciding — deliberately, consciously — what this day is going to be for. Not just letting the hours happen, but giving them a direction. Today, I set five intentions:
Today I am beginning the next series on Allah's Most Beautiful Names — approaching it not as a study to complete, but as a slow, attentive sitting with who He actually is. There is a version of knowing Allah's names that lives only in the mind — you can recite them, recognise them, even define them accurately — and still not feel them. I want to learn a name and then carry it through my day, noticing where it shows up. Because when you know His names deeply, du'a stops being a recitation and becomes a conversation. You are calling on Someone specific, by the quality most relevant to what you need — and that precision changes everything about how it feels to ask.
Today, one of my intentions is to build a personal du'a — not borrowed from a book, not recited by rote, but rooted in the specific, named reality of my life and everything I am carrying. I will anchor it in the names of Allah I am studying, because His names are not decorative — they are the precise doors through which specific requests are most beautifully received. I want to ask for my family, for my work, for the longing to be fully present in this Ramadan — and then lift my eyes further, past all of it, and ask for what truly lasts: a good ending, ease in the grave, and Jannatul Firdaus, not as an afterthought but as the most serious ask of all.
One of my intentions today is to memorise a single new du'a — just one, said slowly, understood fully, until it belongs to me. Ramadan is thirty days, and if I learn one phrase every day with that kind of presence, I will leave this month carrying thirty things I did not have when I entered it. That is not a small thing. Once something is in your heart, no one can take it from you — not a busy day, not a distracted mind, not the years that come after. Small steps in Ramadan have a weight that small steps in ordinary time do not.
Every evening during this Ramadan, I want to build the small but honest habit of sitting with my day before I close it. Not to pick it apart, not to spiral into what I should have done better, but to simply look at it the way you would look at something you are trying to tend — with clear eyes and genuine care. What went well? Where did I show up fully? Where did I drift? These are not accusations. They are questions a person asks when they actually care about their own growth. Muhasaba — self-accounting — is one of the most loving things you can do for yourself, because it means you are paying attention. Tomorrow gets the benefit of today's honesty.
There is a particular kind of ache in wanting to be part of something and having to watch it from the outside. I find myself present in this house, present in this month, making suhoor and preparing iftar and sitting beside people I love as they fast — but not yet there myself. Every day I am waiting, I am making the same du'a — quietly, sincerely, with the full weight of how much this matters to me — that Allah allows me to join them. To fast fully. To pray fully. To feel the specific hunger that teaches you something no full stomach ever can. I know His timing is not mine. But I also know that longing to worship Allah is itself a form of worship, and so I bring this want before Him openly, trusting that He sees it.
Reaching the End of the Day, Satisfied
That is truly all I ask of a day like this. Not perfection. Not a mountain moved. Not a flawless record of worship. Just to show up — for my family, for my intentions, and for the soul that was placed in my care — and to reach iftar feeling that I tried.
Day 2 started slow. It asked something of all of us — patience, grace, the willingness to keep going even when the body and the heart are both a little tired. And we did. We kept going.
May Allah make it easy for all of us. May He accept our intentions even when our energy falls short. And may every slow morning this Ramadan still find us moving — however gently — in the right direction.
Ameen.
"And whoever relies upon Allah — then He is sufficient for him. Indeed, Allah will accomplish His purpose. Allah has already set for everything a decreed extent."
Qur'an 65:3Staying With Ramadan
An honest account of a difficult evening — and the gratitude that found its way through it.
It is only Day 2. And already, I am tired.
Not the tired that comes from a poor night's sleep or a long commute. This is a deeper kind — the kind that settles into your chest when you are fasting, managing a household, keeping up with work, trying to be present for everyone around you, and quietly trying to hold yourself together too. It is only Day 2, and I can already feel the weight of it pressing against my patience.
Today, I lashed out at the kids. I lectured them — the heavy, exasperated kind I rarely allow myself, the kind I dislike because I know how little it does once the words are already out. Agitation had been building quietly through the hours, and it found its way out before I could catch it. I am not writing this to excuse it. I am writing it to name it honestly, the way this diary demands honesty of me.
When the moment passed — when the air had settled and everyone had retreated into their own quiet — I sat with what had happened. Ramadan has a way of turning the mirror toward you whether you are ready or not. It does not let you look away. I should not have spoken the way I did. I knew it even as the words were leaving me, and I knew it more deeply in the silence that followed. The regret was real. But so was the understanding that the day still had to continue.
The workday was chaotic — scattered focus, tasks left half-done, the kind of day where effort goes in and very little comes out. Fasting changes the rhythm of everything. The mind moves differently. The small irritations feel larger. And yet you push, because that is what the day asks of you.
During the lunch hour, when everyone else was eating and I was not, I turned to cooking. My family had been talking about a particular dish — mentioning it the way families do, with a quiet hopefulness — and I wanted to make it for them. Next week I will be away in Albany for work, and something in me wanted to give them this before I left. I put in the effort. I put in the care. But the dish did not cooperate. It came out undercooked, and I had to throw it away.
Throwing food away — especially food you made with your own hands, food you made for someone you love, food you cooked while fasting yourself — is its own particular grief. It sat with me long after the bin was closed. The waste of it. The effort that came to nothing. May Allah forgive me. I said it quietly, and I meant it with everything I had.
When work hours ended I moved on to the home, trying to keep the momentum going. I thought involving the kids in chores might help — that it might feel like teamwork, like something shared. Instead it became a fight. Not the dramatic kind, but the slow, grinding kind that leaves everyone feeling a little worse and a little further from each other.
I cooked again — a second time, this time for them — with genuine love and care and the determination to redeem something from the day. But the dishes were a disaster too. And that is how I found myself throwing away food twice in one Ramadan day. Twice in a day when I had not eaten a single thing myself.
My eldest came home from work exhausted. I could see it in the way he carried himself — the particular weight of someone who has given their full self to a long day and has very little left. It hurt to see. But then, quietly, he made his way to his prayers. He still had that in him. Alhamdulillah. That small moment — watching him choose prayer over rest — was one of the truest things I witnessed today.
I write this now with my eyes already beginning to close, already half-surrendering to sleep. But there is still my du'a to complete, still this record to finish, still the last act of this day to tend to. So I am here, with whatever is left of me, putting it down.
Today was not the Ramadan day I imagined. It was not the version where I am patient and graceful and everything comes together. It was the version where I stumbled, lost my temper, wasted food, fought with my children, and watched dinner fail — twice. And yet, at the end of it, everyone is home. Everyone is safe. Everyone has eaten. Everyone has a place to sleep.
We handled a hard day. Not perfectly — but we handled it. And for that, I am grateful. Truly, quietly, bone-deep grateful.
Thanks to Allah for making Day 2 of Ramadan a success.
Ya Allah
Ya Allah. Al-Ilaah. Al-Waahid. Al-Ahad.
You are the Only One. The Entirely Merciful. The Especially Merciful.
There is no one else I can bring this to. So I bring it all to You.
Ya Allah, grant me barakah — the kind that multiplies quietly, that stretches what is small into something sufficient, that makes time feel like enough and effort feel worthwhile. Bless my rizq: not only in wealth, but in health, in energy, in the clarity to use what I have been given wisely and with gratitude.
Give me what I need in this world, and secure for me what I hope for in the next. Let nothing I am given become a distraction from You, and let nothing I am denied become a source of bitterness. Let my provisions — whatever form they take — always carry Your name.
Ya Allah, fill my life with love — the kind that is steady and real, that does not flinch in difficulty, that holds its shape through the long seasons. Give me kindness as a companion: in how I am treated, yes, but more importantly, in how I treat others.
Make me a vessel for goodness, not merely a recipient of it. What You pour into me — let me be able to pour into others. Make me someone who notices the ache in another person before they have to name it. Soften me where I have grown hard. Open me where I have quietly closed. Make me sensitive — truly sensitive — to the people around me, so that my presence in their lives is a comfort and not a weight.
Ya Allah, make me a Muslimah who carries her faith with intention — not merely in name, not merely in the visible rituals, but in the private corners of her heart where no one else can see. Make me someone who thinks about her aakhirah — not with dread, but with purpose. Let the remembrance of what comes after this life be the thing that keeps me upright when this life threatens to pull me under.
Let me live this dunya as a traveller passes through a land — taking what is needed, not clinging to what cannot be carried, always aware that the final destination is what truly matters. Help me strive. Help me get through. And let every step of this striving, however imperfect, be a step in the direction of Jannah.
Ya Allah, make things easier — for me, and for every person I love. The small, daily difficulties and the large, unseen ones. The early mornings and the late nights. The worries carried quietly so as not to burden anyone else. See them. Ease them.
Grant my family peace in their everyday lives and security in their futures. And for the parts of our past that still have open edges — the things left unresolved, the wounds that did not fully close — grant us closure, Ya Allah. Not necessarily the closure of answers, but the closure of acceptance: the ability to lay something down and walk forward without it following us.
Ya Allah, open our hearts. Not just to the idea of guidance, but to the actual receiving of it — the kind that changes something in us, that moves from the mind into the body, that becomes action and not just intention. Let us not just hear what You ask of us. Let us feel it. Let us be moved by it. And let that movement show up in how we live.
Make us among those You love most — not because we are perfect, but because we keep returning to You. Make us the kind of people who fall and get back up still facing You. Who stumble in the dark and still reach for Your light. Who are not always strong, but are always sincere.
Ya Allah — I ask You gently, and with full trust in Your wisdom: do not assign me trials that are beyond what I can carry. You know what I am made of better than I do. You know my breaking points before I reach them. So I place myself in Your hands and ask You to measure what You give me against what You know of me.
And if pain must come — as it does, as it always does — then let it bring me closer to You, and not further away. Let it crack me open toward You. Let it be the thing that teaches me what ease never could. Let every difficulty be a door, and let You be what I find on the other side of it.
Ya Allah — above all else, above every specific ask and every named need — grant me peace. Not the peace that comes from everything going right, but the peace that holds steady even when things go wrong. The peace that is not dependent on circumstances. The peace that comes only from You.
Grant me peace in my chest. Peace in my home. Peace in my relationships. Peace in my past and my future. Peace in the unknown, and peace in the things I cannot change.
You are Al-Waahid — the One. The only One this reaches. The only One who can answer it.
Ameen.
O Changer of the Hearts
One of the most profound supplications in all of Islam — and perhaps the one we need most.
This du'a was recited frequently by the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. It is recorded in Sunan al-Tirmidhi (hadith 3522) and Musnad Ahmad, and is considered authentic (hasan) by scholars. When Umm Salamah (may Allah be pleased with her) asked the Prophet ﷺ why he recited this supplication so often, he replied: "O Umm Salamah, there is no human being except that his heart is between two fingers of the fingers of the Most Merciful. Whoever He wills, He makes firm, and whoever He wills, He causes to deviate."
Word by Word
Why This Du'a Matters
Because the heart was never fully in your control
The Arabic word qalb — heart — shares its root with the verb meaning to flip or overturn. The scholars noted this intentionally: the heart is, by its very nature, something that turns. It was never designed to be fixed by sheer willpower. The very name of the thing we are trying to steady tells us that only Allah can steady it. This du'a is not a request for control — it is an acknowledgment that control was never ours to begin with.
Because the Prophet ﷺ himself recited it — constantly
When Umm Salamah (may Allah be pleased with her) asked the Prophet ﷺ why he made this du'a so frequently, she was asking the most sinless, most guided, most beloved of all human beings why he still felt the need to ask for steadiness. His answer was the answer: no heart is exempt from turning. If the Prophet ﷺ — whose heart was purified, whose character was perfected — still turned to Allah with this supplication, then what does that say about the urgency of it for the rest of us?
Because faith is not a destination — it is a daily renewal
Many of us make the mistake of believing that once we have found faith, it will stay. That iman is a fixed state rather than a living, breathing, fluctuating experience. The Companions themselves reported that iman rises and falls. There are days it feels close and days it feels impossibly far. This du'a is for those ordinary days — the ones that do not feel dramatic or spiritually significant — when quietly asking Allah to hold your heart in place is the most important thing you can do.
Because steadiness is not about never wavering — it is about always returning
The word thabbit does not mean "make me perfect" or "make me never doubt." It means make me firm — the way a tree is firm, rooted deep enough that the wind can move the branches without toppling the trunk. You may sway. You may have seasons of doubt, of distance, of going through the motions without feeling them. This du'a asks not for immunity from those seasons, but for the kind of groundedness that always brings you back.
Because it is an act of radical honesty before Allah
To recite this du'a sincerely is to admit something vulnerable: I cannot hold myself together on my own. In a world that prizes self-sufficiency, that admission takes courage. But it is also the beginning of genuine closeness with Allah — because He does not draw near to those who have convinced themselves they do not need Him. He draws near to the ones who reach. This du'a is a reach. A small, daily, humble reach — and that is exactly what it needs to be.
When to Recite It
After Fajr
Begin the day by placing your heart in His hands before the world has a chance to pull it elsewhere.
After Every Salah
The Prophet ﷺ recited it regularly. Making it a habit after prayer roots it into the rhythm of your day.
In the Last Third of the Night
When the world is quiet and the heart is most open, this is when du'a carries the most weight.
When Faith Feels Distant
Especially on the days when the words feel hollow and the heart feels absent — those are the days it matters most.
During Trials & Temptation
When circumstances press against your faith from the outside, anchor yourself from the inside.
During Ramadan
When the heart is most receptive and every act of worship is multiplied, recite it with full intention.
A Personal Reflection
There is something quietly humbling about the fact that the Prophet ﷺ — the most guided, most beloved of all creation — still turned to Allah with this supplication, again and again, throughout his life. He was not asking from a place of weakness. He was asking from a place of deep understanding: that the heart belongs to Allah, that it was always Allah's to turn, and that the wisest thing a person can do is simply ask Him not to.
We recite this du'a not because we have lost our faith. We recite it so that we do not.
Six words in Arabic. Fourteen syllables. And in them, perhaps, everything a believer needs to ask.