When the loss is forever
I haven’t written much about the transition of my son J to our new life and existence after Joan’s death. He lost his mother when he was 12; it is something that will shape him for the rest of his...
View ArticleLove after death
I often wonder about love after death. After the bodies are buried, janazas are done, and people become memories – how do we love souls then? Is it in the past, like a faded memory? Does loving end...
View ArticleThe Life and Death of a First Love
First love can be a bittersweet and intense experience, especially if it is unrequited. It can also change us in ways we may not grasp until much later. I discovered love for the first time when I was...
View ArticleMaghrib Memories
Three years just doesn’t have the same ring to it as one month, or one year, or two. At three years, you are supposed to be better. You are supposed to be healed. You are supposed to forget. Three...
View ArticleHidden Fractures
When I was a child, Ramadan – like the life that stretched before me – seemed magical. Forbidden for the very young, fasting was a mark of adulthood, a rite of passage for which we were all too...
View ArticleUnmosqued
Poetry as dhikr. - Warsan Shire This past Ramadan I threw myself head over heels into poetry. I struggled this Ramadan, with my health, with my temper, with my solitude. But the one thing that kept me...
View ArticleMemoirs of the Beautiful Widow
And just like that, I remember it all. At the age of 25, after 6.5 years of marriage, my best friend died with my hand in his. Cancer transported his vitality too quickly into a realm better than life,...
View ArticleForgive me Allah for I have sinned
Please welcome writer Eren Cervantes-Altamirano whose column Flirting with Fate and other Disasters of an Intersectional Muslimah will appear the first Thursday of every month. Her piece below, written...
View ArticleInto the Deep
A friend once told me when I was going through a tough time that nothing is permanent. As a person of faith I know not even death is permanent. That piece of advice has helped me when I stumble into...
View ArticleGuava Jam: Taste of my mother, taste of home
This month’s Radical Love column is a video essay recorded live at Common Grounds in Santa Ana, California. It begins at 2:48. “This is what it means to be an immigrant living in California, smuggling...
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