Different

We spend so much energy focusing on careers, race, nationalism, religion, weight, or otherwise trying to click up n be a certain way to the max- on how we’re bigger, better, tougher than others, on how our job or lack there of choice is better than theirs because it’s the best for us. So much on being the biggest, baddest whatever we want to label ourselves… Cut us open- we’re all created the same inside.

It’s about time we focus on humanity, on being loving, on loving for others what we want for ourselves and not just as some cliche religious phrase to repeat when it applies to us, but, to truly strive. We’re either sisters and brothers in Religion or in humanity.

Why are we so hateful? mean, spiteful, angry, malicious, and harmful? I thank Allah (God) I have amazing people in my life. I truly wish ALL of you did too but here is the thing…. Amazing people won’t come knocking your door down. Get out there- be amazing.

Hold the door open for someone a little longer, buy that candy, those cookies, give that charity. Smile even through that bad mood, pick up that litter you didn’t drop. Answer kindly vs sarcastically. Help someone “get something” or understand it instead of judging them for not doing something. Drink more water, rest better-take walks, eat healthier, show some compassion or at the very least-if you truly can’t…than do NO harm.

How can I homeschool affordably?

I get the same question all the time. How can I homeschool affordably? or some variation of that. I was in the same EXACT place myself. Homeschooling can cost as little or as much as you allow it.

Very first thing to do is make dua, pray, BEG Allah to grant you ease, pleasure and aid you. Once you’ve prayed about it. Set up your plan.

Ask yourself WHY to homeschool. How you plan on enjoying this and what your goals are.

Next, you will need to look up your homeschool laws by State.

You can do so by going here ~> http://www.hslda.org/hs/default.asp

http://www.freewebs.com/homeschoolingmuslimahmommies/typicalcourseofstudy.htm

FREE and very affordable things to do can be found here ~> http://mommyhogaryamor.wordpress.com/2012/03/22/quick-money-and-sanity-saving-tips-for-the-home-educator/

I have many other articles, blog, and information on the subject of getting started and why I do you can also read on here and across the web. I’ve said to take advantage of the library over and over again because honestly you can find school textbooks, living books, encyclopedias, dictionaries and much more all there for your use. Here are a few “book” and documents leads for you. PLENTY of information at our fingertips. ENJOY

http://distancelearn.about.com/od/managingyourwork/a/cheaptextbook.htm

http://www.freewebs.com/homeschoolingmuslimahmommies/howdoistart.htm

I get asked to recommend curriculum. I do NOT do this for various reasons. The biggest of these is I do NOT endorse nor do I recommend anything or single program because we are all different and each of our children are different as well as our families, values, practices, styles and beliefs. It is up to us, the parent, to review and evaluate everything before allowing our child to use it to ensure it fits with our beliefs and goals. Also I don’t use a curriculum. We are ECLECTIC homeschoolers and use various methods and make up our own curriculum off of different books, web sites, approaches, styles, and materials.

Here is more on the Styles of homeschooling for you to try them and see which method you prefer to use.

http://www.freewebs.com/homeschoolingmuslimahmommies/differentstyles.htm

http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/methods/Methods.htm

Here is a link with links to many different lesson plans

http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/weblinks/lessons.htm

http://mommyhogaryamor.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/preschool-aged-children-curriculum/

and last but not least an older blog post with free resources you can use

http://mommyhogaryamor.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/free-curriculum-and-resources-you-can-use/

Motivation, change, life

” when work, commitment, and pleasure all become one and you reach that deep well where passion lives, nothing is impossible”~ Nancy Coey

“When you hold back on life, life holds back on you”~Mary Manin Morrissey 

Let’s get it in ladies!!!

Whether it be Arabic Alphabet learning, house-keeping, Islamic basics, loosing weight, Sura memorizing, Tajweed (PROPER pronunciation) kindness, leaving off showing off, backbiting, doing too much of everything and in the end neglecting the important, or Arabic Quranic reading. The same rules apply if we don’t want it bad enough, if we don’t love it or if we don’t keep trying we’ll get nowhere fast!

1.- Make dua for it, if we pray ask Allah for it as much as we talk about, complain about, or daydream about it we’d be a lot closer!

2.-Trust in Allah but tie our camel-this means after duas we WORK hard at it, be it working out, trying to be organized, cleaning more often, or becoming better. Hard work produces results.

3.-Know where you’re starting from. Where are you at realistically? Start there. I can’t read Quran without proper Arabic letter joining and sounds

4.- Smile and try again even if you feel no gain, no better, or stuck. Admit it we ALL have our days!! Or, maybe it’s just me 

5.-Know where you want to be/go/get to or accomplish. Make a realistic plan on how to achieve your goal or goals.

6.-Follow the plan, think of your goal, planning, wanting, and praying for it aren’t enough you have to keep on keeping on!

Happy journey ladies!

May Allah make positive changes in our life easy and may He make Islamic knowledge easy to learn Ameen.

Being Supportive

Sometimes we confuse being supportive for agreeing with and helping others through decisions WE like or think they should take or avoid. They don’t always listen, sometimes what we think is best isn’t actually best for THEm and sometimes it is and they just don’t take heed.

We have to be VERY careful in confusing being supportive for “forcing” ourselves on others as there usually isn’t a one-size-fits-all choice in life. Also being supportive, and loving of a person doesn’t always means supporting bad choices or endorsing them. It can be a simple smile, and a big DUA (prayer) for them. It means that even if they makes choices for their life you wouldn’t, can’t, or don’t like you still are kind, helpful, polite, and prayerful for them.

In the end they may have made a GREAT choice for their life and Allah knows best. What I’m trying to say is just because someone disagrees, or is in a bad place, or made a different choice then we would have or what we like doesn’t mean it is always wrong, just different. We can’t bully people around for their decisions but we can help them in goodness, kindness, duas, patience and being there for them.

Being supportive means being there for them–not being a nag at them. Some choices in life are horrible for us, but Great for another, our EXPERIENCE with certain choices or individuals doesn’t mean that is someone else’s experience with it. Anyhow just a little bit of reflections, self needed reminders, advice and tips also known as growing pains

My article

My article “In these Empty Arms” featured in this month’s Mariam Poppins magazine is also posted on her site.

” She sipped on her coffee, the sad-flat look in her eyes that now replaced the sparkle she once had–gone. Looking at me, she calmly and quietly asked “but when does it get easier?”

*sigh*

Shall I tell her you learn to laugh through the knot in your throat? Shall I tell her you learn to live again with this new you? Shall I tell her she’ll never again walk past certain aisles in stores and be the same? No, it sounds cynical, too hard to bear all that at once. I mean I remember the first year. *sigh* There is some benefit in this, I mean a lot of benefit really, but it still hurts. It can bring us closer to Allah. The All Merciful.

I put my food down and swallowed what I had, and gave her-what I’m sure, was a weak smile. We were in a public restaurant and a couple of muslimahs crying was all I needed to fuel more rumors of how miserable…… (Continue to Mariam Poppins) 

In these empty arms

Excited because the article I wrote “In these empty arms”

Was published in the Mariam Poppins magazine for this month AND it will be posted on their site later on as well.

For those of you who aren’t Muslim on my list @Mariam Poppins is a magazine for Muslim women (others can read it as well) that tries to address a multitude of women’s concerns, issues, life, solutions, and interests.

In the article the issue of coping, grieving, parenting, and gratitude are discussed between Muslim women in a restaurant, and not for the first time this happened either.

The article addresses grieving, sisterhood, Islamic reminders, and principles

And a raw, eye-opening look into the life of grieving mothers…..

Moms Make Great Teachers

You may not have a Ph.d , or have been a teacher in a school before, but you are a mom and this should give us some confidence when it comes to homeschooling.

Why?

Alhamdulilah We know our children, and homeschooling is more than just cracking open a book and timing test. It’s about caring, understanding and commitment. Just the tools many mothers have! As mothers, we have a relationship with our children that makes us care more, care about if they are truly understanding the subject, care about our children succeeding. That is a blessing when we are educating our children. Our heart is in it more, because we want the best for our children. Sadly sometimes our children are in school, and they may be neglected in their learning, there’s many students to one teacher and it is not always easy to give each child a lot of attention. Whether we are homeschooling or not, part of our duty as parents is to educate our children and do it with love and care.

We understand our children, hey we are moms. We know when Dawud needs a break, or that Sakinah learns better visually. Alhamdulilah we live with our children, we study them, we know them pretty well mashaAllah and this gives us a great advantage in our homeschooling. I understood that my children worked better when the subjects appealed to their interest. I learned that one child needed more time to understand his lessons and he needed to learn differently than his brothers. The mommy in me, wanted him to get the lesson, and the teacher in me was ready to figure out the best ways for him to understand it. Not everyone is willing to go the distance for our children and we will alhamdulilah.

Moms make great teachers mashaAllah. We are committed. This is not a school semester we are talking about. Moving them on to the next grade and wait for the new kids to come in. This is a life commitment alhamdulilah. It is part of our duty to educate our children. It seems like hard work, and some days it feels tiring, but the rewards are worth it. The results are a blessing. It makes it all worth the wile alhamdulilah. With our children our commitment is much stronger, we are more determined to raise children who love Allah, who are good Muslims, with a good head on their shoulders alhamdulilah. I pray Allah guides and helps us in this mission ameen, because it is through His guidance it is possible. We know that with the permission of Allah we are capable of helping our children grow into intelligent, kind, human beings. It starts at home.

Some of you may say “I can’t be with my child all day long.” “I don’t have enough patience to homeschool my child.” subhanAllah, I say try a co-op homeschooling, team homeschooling may be good for you. Please do not rule out homeschooling completely. There are many ways to homeschool, alhamdulilah. We are not bound to the same rules as schools outside of homeschooling, we do not have to homeschool the same hours every day, we can take learning outside the doors of our home and really embrace the joy of homeschooling, it’s very rewarding to be a part of your child’s learning and it’s a joy inside to have first hand in that. MashaAllah mothers… may Allah bless us all ameen!

- Ameera Rahim is the mom of 5 blessings. When she is not homeschooling she can be found homemaking and baking bread. She is an avid blogger and loves to spend time with her family.

New year, old story?

Reblogged from Chicago Canary:

https://twitter.com/Suntimes/status/286138371686936577

This morning, a 20-year-old man became the city's first homicide victim of the new year. Today, 11 other people were shot two more men were killed and 15 other people have been shot. And those are just the cases that were reported.

Do these numbers represent the same old Chicago, as the Sun-Times asserts?

In some ways, the answer is yes.

Read more… 258 more words

a must read

JJC Only Community College in State to Receive Grant for Prevention of Violence Against Women

JJC Only Community College in State to Receive Grant for Prevention of Violence Against Women.

I’m proud. ’tis all, carry on

sorrow, joy, past experiences, happiness, coping, grieving-HUMAN Life

We spend so much time trying to be happy. Humans. We do, we really do. Yes, we ALL have those funks that we stay in for a while; but in reality cynicism is exhausting. Being bitter, harsh, sad, angry, and cynical will eat you alive more than the actual debilitating pain that causes you to feel and be this way.

At some point we will either cope through goodness, great people, friendships, maturity, or religion. Sometimes all of them. Sometimes one of them. Whatever works for you. Then, once there, we will strive SO HARD to be that “Better me.” Some of it will burn us out. Some of it will push us forward ”todo pa’lante” and thrive. Some of us will become obsessed with this help, whatever it is pushing us forward, uplifting us; helping us in our sorrow. Many of us will fall somewhere in the middle with rises and dips in there.

I’m stuck currently in HUMAN. Human who happens to be woman, mom, Muslim, my past and all I’ve been through. Some days I’m a striving-to-improve Muslimah above everything else. Some days I barely get by, and a Hug from my child is all I can bare. Some days, some days even that is harder than I can take, harder than I can bare. Some days your legs over the side of the bed is the BIGGEST accomplishment you can envision yourself to take.

I’ve been very pensive lately. Life sure is a roller coaster ride. I reflect on the amazing qualities of the brain, at it’s amazing features all it can learn, take, how amazingly resilient and how terribly fragile it is. I think of depression, schizophrenia, Autism, Retts syndrome, Cancer, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and all the people whose minds and souls have been ravaged by life and who pretend to be ‘normal’ and get by.

Life is all over the place, like my thoughts.

I think of all the imperfect mistakes that shaped us. The experiences we never should have had which taught us. The dumb a** mistakes we make that can forever change our youth, you, our marriages, or our lives. We all have them. Some of us, wiser than others; have fewer mistakes or life learning errors. Some of us have many life experiences and learn the hard way.

Some of us have lost a pet, or a friend, some of us lost a family member– some of us have lost all of them, and a child or a parent. Some of us have lost all that and more, in a Hard way. Some of us have seen murder, cancer, war, psychosis, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, we’ve experienced a child fall asleep in our arms only to never wake up, a child dying in a fire, a sister murdered, a brother who couldn’t take it and ended it….some of us, some of us would have went through the feelings of that last one and somehow made it through. AlHamdulilah, AlHamdulilah through it all.

Reflecting on some things of my own, some things I’ve lived through, witnessed of my friends or of my family.

How hard can it be to be looked up to and admit you want to give up or mess up, or try something bad? I’m wondering how would someone admit that to another? How do you seek help before falling into that? Whatever that may be…

How does a family survive loosing their Captain? How does a mother cope with empty arms? How does a sister get through not being able to pick up the phone and call her sibling? How does a sinner return to their faith, their rope? How does a mother, hugging her child who is having a seizure stay in the moment with the heavy weight on her shoulders of just finding out she herself has a rare form of cancer out of nowhere and is already in a stage 2? How does a wife regain her husband’s love? How does a drug addict get over the urge to just slip one more time? How do we cope in this amazing, awful, happy, depressing, horrible, fun, disgusting, sick, hopeful world?

These are all rhetorical questions. I don’t really want answers. I’m just using my blog as a diary of sorts so to speak. I know how I cope, most days anyhow. AlHamdulilah for Islam, the internet and some confidants, companions, my musings and the internet. That’s mine, my safety net, my “happy pill” so to speak. Sometimes. Sometimes it’s just another thing that I “fail at”. Sometimes. Sometimes I’m just a shell. and sometimes that’s okay.

Shout out to all my shells. To my struggling to get by people. Shout out to the grieving, to the recovering, shout out to the muslims striving, Shout out to the hurt, the attacked, the defeated and then to those who have slacked and slipped up and relapsed. The ONLY way to go from the bottom is up. Rejoice, rejoice that you can be an example of starting over. No matter what it is. How hard it may be, how utterly life shattering it is or was you CAN be you. Be you in this awesome life. Be you. Relish those things that made you who you are and keep on keepin on.