children

Choosing a childfree present

This piece is a follow up to the essay, “Accidentally Childfree”.
“Do you want to be in your marriage?” She asked me, matter-of-factly.
For months I wrestled with this question, always too afraid to broach it during daylight hours. But here we were, in her bright little office, and her words flooded the room.
On that day, I did not have an answer for her.

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On bullying of American Muslim school kids

Are you part of the 9/11 or are you ISIS?” “Did you ever kill anyone?” “Are you going to bomb this place?” These are some typical questions that 12-year-old Abdu Rrahman Mohamed says he’s been asked by his non-Muslim classmates week after week in his Long Beach, California, school, he…

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Learning to Breathe

These days I’m unsettled.  I feel like we are on the cusp of a major change.  By ‘we’ I mean The World, The United States, Society as a Whole, Islam, My Family, Me. My wise friend, Heather, tells us to breathe through the change but I’m scared of change.  I…

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“Color”-blind

My five-year-old daughter started school this week and she said, or rather did not say, something which left me amazed. I asked Sammy who she played with on her first day of school and she happily replied, “Jordan!” When I asked her to tell me all about her new friend,…

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Single Moms, Super Moms: altM Working Mom Series

[columns_row width=”third”] [column] Mariam Ahmed is a regulatory lawyer. Raised in the U.S, Mariam moved from a law firm in the U.S. to work at a futures exchange in Dubai, where she is currently the Head of Compliance & Risk.  Mariam and her husband, Haroon, have two little boys, Hamza…

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