Letters from a Muslim Woman Podcast

About Letters from a Muslim Woman Podcast

I share the joys and challenges of being a Muslim Woman in a sometimes unfriendly world. Exploring the multi-generational immigrant experience at the intersection of mental health, motherhood, and faith. nohabeshir.substack.com (https://nohabeshir.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Noha Beshir

Category

religion & spirituality · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

2 Jun 2024

Latest episode

3 Jun 2025

Latest episodes

26 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   3 Jun 2025

   Names, a Segmented Essay from WAYF Journal

   Happy June, my friends. This week, as a treat for paid subscribers, I wanted to bring you my recently published essay in WAYF journal. You can purchase a digital copy of the whole journal here (https://www.wayfjournal.com/shop) if you are interested. It’s full of beautiful poems and pieces, including a stunning one by Ambata Kazi (https://substack.com/profile/166174663-ambata-kazi). I’ve been eagerly awaiting publication so I could share this piece with you. It’s a segmented essay that explores themes I come back to again and again in my writing: belonging, faith, the immigrant experience, but all through the lens of Names and what they say about us and who we are. Instead of simply sharing the essay with you, I decided to try something fun and read it for you on video. (A short excerpt is available below for free subscribers.) Let me know how you like it, and what your own feelings are about your names. Are they complicated? Do you feel as though your name fits you? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nohabeshir.substack.com/subscribe (https://nohabeshir.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

2. 

   3 Dec 2024

   Not for the faint of heart

   A couple of weeks ago, the boys and I had an epic sleepover in the basement while M was away. We inflated the air mattress, draping bedsheets over it to make a fort from one side of the room to the other. We brought down blankets and sweet and salty popcorn and a bowl of jelly beans and sour peaches. Then, we watched a cheesy Will Ferrell musical and sang karaoke, belting our songs out at full volume, the Apple TV remote our microphone. The boys are 13 and 11 now. They are fairly independent when it comes to the hard work of keeping them alive. We get the groceries, but they make their own breakfast. We double check that their homework is in their backpack. That they’ve packed a hat in case it gets cold. Still, those heady days of heavy lifting are over, at least physically. There are no car seats to lug from the back seat into the house. No strollers to fold and open one handed. No babies hanging on hips. Nine years ago, M was away for two weeks in July. This was the stage of our life when summer was choreographed down to the day, with scheduling and coordination starting in March. Daycare spots booked. Day camps reserved. Vacation requested. The boys were 4 and 1. I gave M my blessing and booked off work for the same two weeks he’d be traveling. My mind, my delusional mind, imagined regular sleepovers with my sisters and the niblings. There would be no need for day camp, because the kids would be in a camp of sorts with their cousins, my sisters and I the counselors. I saw late night shenanigans. I saw my own idyllic childhood, replayed. No so. Letters from a Muslim Woman Demystifying the Western Muslim Experience Somehow the date approached and I found myself alone with a toddler and a kindergartner for two straight weeks. No childcare. No camp. No sisters or cousins to entertain us. Grandparents dispatched to another country, to the aid of another mother, her hands full with another set of grandkids. What I remember most was the oppressive heat of that July. The air still. The windows and backdoor opened in the desperate hopes of a breeze that never came. Without my sisters’ company, I didn’t have the energy for the city pools. Instead, I would muster my strength and gather the big blue Ikea bag of sand and water toys, loading it onto the back of the stroller. Then I would wrestle A in and buckle the harness, keeping an eye on D to make sure he hadn’t followed a rolling ball into the road. In this way, we would make our way to the water playground, where I would pray for them to get into a groove. To find wonder in the water splashing and gathering in their buckets. In the way an older kid might spray them with a soaker. In the way their feet left a trail of little wet prints as they ran to me in anger or delight. Sometimes, we’d last 3 hours at the park. Sometimes 30 minutes. And then we’d come home and the whole rest of the day would yawn ahead of us. Endless meals and snacks and dishes and diapers and baths and tantrums, and I would kick myself for my poor summer planning. Once the boys were asleep, I would reach for the remote, craving the voice of an adult, even one who would only talk at me, rather than to me. One night, I clicked on The Walking Dead. Even though I despised Zombies, even though M had asked me again and again if I wanted to watch it and I had said no, again and again, afraid of the gore and the nightmares. Still, it was hours of plot and character and stakes. And I needed stakes after negotiating between two small children all day. By the time each episode ended, I would find myself sucked all the way in. Too invested to stop, but also too afraid to be alone with my thoughts in the dark. My husband, my parents, my sisters all hours away, and me alone in the night. The adult in charge. The next day, D would wake me bright and early. His chubby little hand shaking my heavy shoulder, his thick little voice repeating, “Mama, mama, is-hee”. Or A would demand release from the crib across the hall by screaming with all his might. And we would start all over again. I have long felt guilty about being a working mother, a mother whose children spent hours each day being fed and cared for by another adult. More than once in those early years, I would Google “homeschooling” and find myself scrolling a fantasy on Pinterest. Idyllic images of women in flower print dresses baking in sun-drenched white kitchens. Their children gathered around enormous quartz islands. The youngest finger-painting. The oldest midway through a baking soda - vinegar volcano. The problem with all of this, of course, was that I hate finger paint, I hate crafts, and I am a terrible teacher. But the guilt? The guilt was real. That summer, two warring ideas became abundantly clear to me. The first was that I would have made a terrible homeschooling mother. That my children were definitely better off at school and camp, where educators would tend to their learning. The second was that I felt like a horrible mother. A mother who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) conjure art projects out of thin air. A mother whose pancakes and cookies did not take the shape of beloved Disney characters. The boys and I would bake and run and play with Duplo. But the house was a mess. And I never cut the crust off their bread. And I had kept a baby book for maybe one week before the whole charade of tracking memories in anything other than a hard drive had collapsed in on itself. I love to play with babies. To tickle their little bellies and watch them howl with laughter. To hide my face and hear them cackle when it is revealed again. I love to chat with 3 year-olds. To watch their delight as they find the shape of a sentence, to discover their ability to make magic. My niece, Rania, called me her second mom when she was still a toddler. “Khalto Noosa!” she would shriek at the sight of me, running over to be scooped up and cuddled and loved. And yet, for all the precious joy of babies and small children. For the miracle of having them melt into your arms for a nap. For their impossibly chubby cheeks and pudgy fingers, I am more at home in motherhood now than I have ever been. The boys are little humans now, which isn’t to say they weren’t always humans. But before, their babyhood trumped their personalities. Now, I can see them more clearly. Their curiosities and their habits. Their favourite books. Their favourite games. Not so long after that summer where I momentarily experienced single parenthood, I read an article online that soothed my guilt, called This stage of life? It’s hard. “In this stage of life, you are bombarded daily with a whole host of decisions. Some of them life-changing, some of them not. None of them with clear cut answers… Do I send (my kids) to public school? Homeschool? Charter school? Do I continue to breastfeed? Do I blow the budget so that I can buy all organic? Do I force my child to apologize, even though the apology will be insincere? You don’t know the answers to ANYTHING, but you feel constant pressure to figure out EVERYTHING.” Reading that article, something finally clicked for me. Nobody doing that early parenting had it together. Not me. Not my friends whose houses were always clean when I went over. Not the moms in the photos on Pinterest. It’s supposed to be hard, I realized. I’m not failing because it’s hard. The nigh of our sleepover, when we finally went to bed it was nearly 1 a.m. The next day I woke up cranky and a little annoyed with everything, and of course, the guilt kept trying to resurface. Cue the inner voices shouting over each other: ‘Don’t undo all the bonding by snapping at them’ versus, ‘You spoil them so much! You’re doing it all wrong.’ This time though, I recognized the turmoil for what it was. Parenting is not for the faint of heart. If you’re lucky, you walk a never-ending tightrope of struggle and reward. And the guilt? The guilt will never go away. We just learn to recognize it. Soothe it, lull it to sleep the way we used to lull them, when they needed us simply for survival. Let’s chat in the comments: * Are you a parent? Do you have a lot of mom guilt/dad guilt? * Are there other things you feel “not enough” on? * How do you quiet the “I’m not doing enough” voice in your head (yes I’m looking for advice) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nohabeshir.substack.com/subscribe (https://nohabeshir.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

3. 

   12 Nov 2024

   In the face of great beauty and great horror

   A couple of weeks ago, Soraya, Baba and I took a trip the Grand Canyon. I’ve written about Soraya’s wanderlust (https://nohabeshir.substack.com/p/the-opposite-of-wanderlust?utm_source=publication-search) before, and about my lack of it, but I’m grateful to her for inviting me along on the short trips. For dropping an itinerary at my feet that is too tempting to resist and dragging me along to see the world’s wonders. We were in and out in 4 days: landing in Phoenix, driving north through Arizona, staring at this wondrous, cavernous beauty, and driving south again through the Red Rock region of Sedona. Every moment seemed tinged with anticipation, both good and bad. Here we were, in America mere days before the election, before the re-ascendance of Donald Trump. Here we were, so close to a cliff’s edge, both literally and figuratively. The South Rim of the Grand Canyon is wider and deeper than it has any business being. You expect to see the whole thing with your eyes. And then you get there and you realize that you can see maybe 2% of it at any given time. And the 2% you’re seeing is as far as your mind can fathom, and even that is overwhelming. Just looking down is enough to feel as though you’ll tumble. Enough to feel as though there is no end to the drop. And yet, it is breathtakingly beautiful. It is mindboggling and mind blowing. It is perspective shifting. Last Wednesday, after being home for a few days, D and I went to a presentation by a Canadian astronaut and he spoke about the wild shift in perspective you get, looking down at Earth from the vast emptiness of space. I think the next closest thing to that is looking into the Grand Canyon. Perspective. We are so small. We are so small so let’s not sweat the small stuff. And yet. On our last morning there, Soraya and I saw the sunrise over the eastern-most point of the South Rim. The earth around us there was desert-like, dusty and red. Everything felt precarious. If the magic of what we had seen the two previous days was wearing off, well then, that moment brought it all back. Letters from a Muslim Woman Demystifying the Western Muslim Experience I try to remember the glory of God in these moments, to look at the Sun, a miracle, rising over the Canyon, a miracle, and let my remembrances accompany my awe. So I was watching the sun come up, and praying, and taking photo after photo, when I noticed that the glove of my right hand was missing, had fallen away from me some time between the shuttle bus we’d gotten off and the craggy walk we’d taken to the cliff’s edge. It’s amazing how much the loss of a $10 Costco glove will affect your mood, even when you are witnessing a natural wonder, a miracle of creation. We are so small, not only in size but in perspective, in heart, in the things that might worry us. A perfectly replaceable glove. “We can look for it,” Soraya said and started to walk around, so caring is she for her older sister. “After,” I told her, “We’ll look for it after. We can’t get this sunrise back.” And so we stood and we watched and we prayed, but now our utter focus had been pierced. The loss of a $10 Costco glove loomed over our moment, and the future of a Trump presidency, and the anxiety of flights home, and every other potential moment of fear or loss. There is a verse in the Quran that says, Inna al-insaana khuliqa halu’a. This translates to verily, humanity was created anxious. I think about this when I’m spiraling. When I’m in the middle of contemplating literal miracles and I’m derailed by the most ridiculous of things. When I’m overtaken by a sense of foreboding. In the chapter in question, God goes on to talk of the healing power of prayer. How that anxiety can be mitigated. I think of Marcellus Williams and his last words, and I think he understood that. I am a long way, but I am trying. The sunrise, by the way, was glorious. The red rocks around Sedona where we drove later that day were incredible. My heart yo-yoed, falling to the pit of my stomach and rising to the opening in my throat as Baba drove the car along the switchback roads on the mountain in Oak Creek Canyon. We descended from 7000 feet to 4000 feet of elevation. Inna al-insaana khuliqa halu’a. Earlier that morning, Soraya and I looked for the second glove as we walked back to the shuttle bus stop. We didn’t find it. “Never mind,” I told her as another bus pulled in to the stop. If the cost of the sunrise over the Grand Canyon was a glove, I would pay that a hundred times over. And yet I still felt disappointed. By what? The loss of control. The smallest thing having gone wrong. And then I noticed something black being held by a small rock on a larger boulder. My glove! I snatched it up quickly and we boarded, my heart buoyed. “Oh good! So that was yours,” a man said. He’d been there on the cliff too. “Thank you!” I told him and we sat down, flushed and energetic. I’m not sure why this moment is cast in such prominent relief. Why the smallest thing having gone wrong is so crushing, and the smallest thing having gone right is such a boost. But here we are. Sweating the small stuff in spite of ourselves. Inna al-insaana khuliqa halu’a. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nohabeshir.substack.com/subscribe (https://nohabeshir.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

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