Episodes

After a tough month in March, we are ready to talk about BABIES! We’re taking a walk down memory lane with a mom who recently had one in the strangest year on record. Sofia Kamal received a “subhanAllah surprise” when her then youngest was 10 years old and she’d been “done.” Her journey to motherhood was fraught with tests including PCOS and a challenging career as a lawyer, but even the tail end of that was a lesson in patience and gratitude. Take a listen and share this episode with someone w...

Mom doc Sarah Syed tells us what it's like on the other side of the bed--when you're not the doctor, but the mom with a critically ill infant. Her story of duaa and dawa is not to be missed. ​She's not just Imani's mom. She's our shero so much so, that she inspired us to collaborate with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. We found out this year that not only do they cure the sickest cancer patients, they aren't religiously affiliated and serve all patients regardless of race, religion, or th...

Madiha Schader joins us today to talk about her experience learning early on that she married someone who wouldn't be safe for her, yet how she continued to hide the details from her family and friends. The cultural reasons she did this are very clear in her story. She’s not unique, but what she focuses on today is that abusive domestic relationships don’t always include physical violence. Mental, emotional, verbal abuse, financial/social isolation, and unreasonable demands from a place of contr...

Samia Masood joins us today to talk about her harrowing experience through her son's illness and how she survived it. Life pre diagnosis and post-diagnosis is a real thing and very delineated in a mom’s mind and heart for life and we work out some trauma together. Her ordeal didn't end after her son’s initial fight was over, but the hot coals propelled her to do MORE--not just for her family, but for her community as well. Find out how. Check it out at 6 pm EST on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitch...

If you haven’t scheduled to listen in on our Firewalker series this month, you’ll want to. These moms aren’t just walking over hot coals--they’re doing it through billowing blazes while taking names and kicking butt. Whether you're ready for it or not, Shazia Imam, host of the Feminine & Fulfilled podcast joins us to drop truths about what it looks like when NOTHING works out. She's faced the worst of what we daily pray for protection against. How she overcame everything is a story to hear, and...

Shownotes: This month’s Love & Marriage series closes out with the expertise of Tawakaltu Busari of Hitched!, a Muslim matchmaking service based in Houston. Not an app-based method, Hitched! provides halal opportunities for singles to meet organically and not in the traditional survey method historically used to match people. There aren’t speed dates or elaborate networks to figure out who can plan forever together at Hitched!. Instead, the company focuses on spiritual matchmaking as more import...

We're all about love and marriage this month. Until we're not. Not all marriages work out, and we don't say "succeed" or "fail" because marriage isn't an Olympic event, y'all. Sometimes two people just don't belong together, and when kids are involved, decisions must be made. Rayesa Gheewala, The Muslimah Divorce Coach, talks to us today about the heartbreaking truths of divorce, including the aftermath that can leave a mom gutted if she doesn't know where to get help. The answer is already one ...

Sameera Qureshi of Sexual Health for Muslims joins us today to discuss the effects of colonized gender-based fallacies have on Muslim sexual health and practice. Not only does she have comprehensive sexual education from an Islamic perspective online, she is keen on connecting sex as a means of spiritual fulfillment, “God-consciousness,” tawheed, within an Islamic context. Learn the difference between sex and intimacy, and maybe even redefine them! We are ALWAYS asked when and how to talk to ou...

Sadia Jalali, LMFT from Muslim Bliss joins us today to talk about how to develop ourselves before and during marriage in order to make it work. Gone are the days when marriage was the panacea for all things: mental illness, neurodiversity, land or money disputes, homosexuality.....marriage is a blessing but it's not a cure. In fact, there are so many cultural approaches to marriage that do not jive both Islamically, or for Americans raising Americans. Let's start approaching it with realistic ex...

We got a lot of flack last year for "getting too political" because white supremacy, fascism, and corruption aren't in our lane. Our argument has always been that as Muslim American moms, politics MATTERS to us because it directly affects our families and kids. From misguided counter violence and extremism to unbridled capitalism to straight up racism, Muslim Americans have suffered for decades in this nation, so we ARE in our lane. Mona Haydar @mostmona joins us on this episode to round out ou...

We continue talking about hard things, including writing and publishing on today's episode. There's a HUGE writers’ community on IG! AND there a lot of Muslimah writers out there with terrific stories and projects. How do they do it? Najiyah Maxfield of Daybreak Press is here to give us the scoop! Links: Submit your momstory for our anthology: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1dxCQGrErKj91RYu2Vd2WIu1ki_7mzYh68hxxOk1HsUA/edit?usp=sharing Shop Daybreak Press’ online bookstore: https://daybreak-int...

This month is all about hard things, and one of the hardest mommy jobs is taking care of medically complex children. Moms don't get a break to start, and these moms NEVER get to stop. How do we step up to be better sisters to them? How do we avoid avoiding the elephant in the room and normalizing different bodies and abilities and supporting ALL of our kids on this journey? Tune in to find out more from our role model of resilience Ashley Marshall @mommyweek. Links: Check out Ashley’s blog: htt...

"Would you be willing to come on a podcast and talk about that?" Zaiba asked Uzma almost 3 years ago about racial profiling of Muslim Americans by TSA. "Sure. What do I have to do?" Uzma had no idea what a podcast was, or that she could find them right on her smartphone! Find out our how-to's on getting started, podcasting (while staying friends), and how-to party on this with our giveaway we did live for our audience. This is our 100th episode alhamdulillah. Links: Web: www.mommyingwhilemuslim...

Trigger alert: child loss Abeeha Hassan joins us today to discuss the very recent stillbirth of her newborn. She talks to us about how she grieved her daughter and talks about normalizing it contrary to what most Muslim cultures permit in society. Her process of closure may seem familiar to someone else who has gone this journey alone and we are so touched that Abeeha chose to share her story with us. We pray a momsister finds comfort in knowing there’s someone sharing her story of loss and is ...

Shazia Siddiqi MA, LPC, ATR-BC of Let’s Art About It studio rejoins us today to talk about art therapy, a misunderstood or poorly understood therapeutic modality for trauma, anxiety, or depression. She’s here to explain the science behind it, and your co-hosts will share some of their experiences with art that accidentally healed them or their loved ones. Find out some easy ways you can use art therapy in your virtual school or homeschool schedule! We will use whatever we need to protect our men...

Summayah Poonah joins us today to talk about an important resource to assist our Muslim teens’ mental health needs. She is Head of Operations at Naseeha Mental Health, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting communities and individuals in their journey towards positive mental health and wellbeing. Did ya’ll even know that there is a hotline for Muslim teens to call or text a counselor 7 days a week no matter where they live? Yes, that’s Naseeha! Why is a safe space like this necessary,...

This year has brought a lot of changes we weren’t ready for, moms, and this episode brings on Dr. Saba Maroof, MD, a very busy psychiatrist whose work tripled as a result of the pandemic! She’s seen a lot and has had her pulse on the Muslim American psyche pre-pandemic, but there are some specific Muslim mental health needs she’s seeing arise as a result of the lockdown. Let’s address what the hang-ups are in the Muslim community, as well as without it, about mental health, address the burdens o...

Dr. Rukhsana Chaudhry comes on today to kick off our mental health series and gives us SO MUCH insight into our anxieties and how to deal with our kids’. Let’s face it: this pandemic has kicked our collective butts and we’ve seen changes in our kids and in ourselves we haven’t handled well all the time. We can do better by learning better, and when we do that, we MOM better. Learning to sit with discomfort to teach our kids how to do the same can hit childhood anxiety head-on. Dr. Chaudhry addr...

Zaiba and Uzma discuss the final stage of Kubler Ross’grief: Acceptance today. They skipped over bargaining for religious reasons! As Muslims, “acceptance” doesn’t mean lie down and relax. The work is NOT DONE! There’s much to do to keep the momentum going and to undo all the damage that’s been done to our nation in the last 4 years, and particularly to Muslim Americans. Local and state elections matter because of school curricula, zoning laws that determine when and if masajid go up, law enfo...

The next step in grief in this Part III of our election series is depression, which may feel worse today because it’s a holiday in pandemic, and it doesn’t look like what we’re used to. With social distancing protocols, many lives lost to this disease, and a third surge with no end in sight, we could dive right into depression, the next stage of grief, but today we choose gratitude. It’s not one of the stages of grief, so here we go replacing it! December will be our mental health series, so sta...

Since they couldn’t find a Muslim mom who voted for Trump, Zaiba recruited her husband, Zafar, to return to the podcast for this episode to help understand the 35% of Muslims surveyed by the Associated Press who said that they planned to vote for Trump--and probably did. It was CLOSE, y’all! Could the Muslim vote afford to be so split? What are the reasons that it wasn’t a landslide with 100% of Muslim Americans voting against the current POTUS? Zafar does a great job calming Zaiba and Uzma dow...

Zaiba & Uzma discuss election results which, at the time of this recording, was not yet called, but was highly suggestive of results they did not expect. Why don’t they have cause to celebrate regardless of who is elected this year? This is a darker episode, with some sad reflections about what the turnout means in terms of the moral compass of America and who our real allies are. Conscience does not have to be consistent with only a political ideology, rather requires us to think, act, and vot...

Dr. Hodon joins us today to talk about how to maintain pregnancy health during a pandemic when most of us are barraged with conflicting medical advice and everyone and their president wants to be the doctor giving it. While providing her personal story of losses after surviving COVID TWICE this year and losing her dad unexpectedly (to Him we belong and to Him we return), Dr. Hodon emphasizes that what worked for her is not medical advice to listeners; it’s her experience on how she recovered and...

Zaiba and Uzma ended up having to have a conversation about abortion, as well as their religious and feminist views on the topic. This is not a scholarly episode, rather a discourse between friends on personal, very individualized choices they would or would not make if they were faced with an unplanned pregnancy as Muslim American moms. To get an Islamic opinion on abortion, please talk to your favorite Islamic scholar. You can refer to our September episodes on female Islamic scholarship avai...