Notes to Myself

Imagine waking up and your mind starts running before the day has even begun. Going out to meet friends? This starts from the moment you decide to go, with which ride hailing app to take, how you are going to protect yourself, whether you need to cover up, and once you are in the car you stay on the phone, vigilant about everything outside while a fight goes on inside you. This is an average day of a woman trying to live, or maybe just trying to survive.

Now imagine that you have done everything. You have studied, you have built yourself, you have earned what you can, and you are still told that you are nothing until you have a man by your side. This is what women go through, and I think every woman, not only in a South Asian society, knows some version of it.

We do not h*te being women, even though so much around us pushes us to make sacrifices simply because we are women. I love being a woman, because my idea of a woman does not come from what this society has given me but from Islam, which came when women were treated like objects and gave them the dignity to make decisions, stand firm in what they believed, fight in battles and work. Tbh, I picked South Asia because of how I have seen this society treat women, where there is a big difference between being of service and being made a servant, or being married because you need to rather than because you found the right person. I am the eldest and the only girl with three brothers, and while we have the same parents, trust me when I say we do not have the same parents, because everything changed in how we were raised the moment it was about a girl.

Even in a privileged household like mine, building yourself becomes a constant effort to prove something you do not need to prove, and ambitious women know that we do not share our sorrows or failures because we do not want our parents to feel burdened, and think about what that does to a hyper independent mind, where even asking for help feels too big to say. I am not against marriage, but the mindset that comes with being told you are nothing without a man destroys women. You spend your whole life insecure, you finally accept yourself, and then the culture reduces you to a commodity again, hopping from one family to another trying to impress, and why do we need to impress? Why? It's weird how we women grow up building an impenetrable shield around us that makes us look strong, when in reality all we want is to give in and have someone we can trust. We want to be able to trust our parents with our choices, but this society has made them so scared of a daughter "ruining" their lives that they often forget to raise men not as "how not to be a woman" but as "how to be a man."

Honestly, as a 29 year old I am finding it so hard to make my mother realize, or even see, what I am building and how important it is to me, because at the end it comes down to fear, fear of losing "my years" and fear of ending up with someone bad. So if you are a woman going through this, girl, I feel you, because I am building alone too, and I keep asking why marriage cannot be something you build yourself, finding the right person along the way, and why it is a default that if you are not married by 32 or 33 you will end up with someone really bad.

Just know that in all of this, trying not to hurt others, trying to build, trying to live, please don't lose connection with yourself, because it is you with you when you wake up and when you go to sleep, even if you are married.

I hope this reaches women who feel alone, and I hope it reaches men too, so that instead of thinking that women cry or are emotional, you sit with how you would feel after earning everything you can and loving the people around you, and then being told at a certain age that you have no worth until there is another person with you.

You may not feel exactly what we feel, but you may learn to be kind.

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rgGQgJDlHAM?si=AHCo9uJRM8dxhbGn

It has been a while and I want to be honest about why. This past few weeks have been really hard and the last thing that happened, the thing that broke everything open, was losing my stray cat Jack.

This episode is a note to myself and to anyone who has ever lost something, an animal, a person, a relationship, anything, and then found themselves questioning whether they are even allowed to feel the way they feel. No one gets to tell you how to grieve. Not even yourself.

I talk about Jack, how she came into my life, what she taught me about love and motherhood and showing up, and the question I sat with after losing her about whether I value animals more than humans. I also talk about what it means to find ease inside hardship and how Allah sent me that ease in the most unexpected way.

Notes to Myself is part of the Azur channel. If this resonated the full video is on YouTube.

Music licensed through Soundstripe.

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This one started as a Sunday painting session with no goal. It ended with paint on my hands, chalk everywhere, and a canvas that looked nothing like any of the ten things I had tried to make it. And somewhere in the middle of that mess I recognised something. I had been here before. Not in front of a canvas but in a classroom at three in the morning trying to fix the one thing that would not cooperate while everything I had actually built was completely invisible to me.

This episode is about the ideal version we chase, what it actually costs us, and what we miss while we are too busy being frustrated that we are not there yet. It is not a lesson. It is me sitting with something I am still working through.

Notes to Myself is part of the Azur channel. If this resonated, the full video with the painting is on YouTube.

A girl in a lift asked me what advice I would give someone turning 20. And I went completely quiet. Not because I did not want to answer but because I had never actually asked myself that question.

This episode is what happened when I finally did. It took me back to a therapy exercise, to a dark room, to my younger self, and to the one thing I realized I had been looking for in every person and every place except the right one.

If you are someone who has spent a long time looking for the person who will finally just be there for you, this one is for you.

Sit with Aqsa started during one of the hardest seasons of my life. A mental health struggle that made the smallest things feel impossible. When I went looking for stories that matched where I actually was and not where I was supposed to be, I found nothing. I kept coming back deflated, convinced I was the outcast.

And then God did what God does.

Years later, mid-sentence in a recording, it hit me. The same person who could not find a single soul to relate to is now sitting across people from completely different lives, different struggles, different worlds entirely, and walking away from every episode thinking how are we so similar. I did not plan any of it. Allah took the exact thing that broke me and turned it into the thing that keeps filling me back up.

This show is rooted in my faith, in what it means to be an unapologetically Muslim woman, and in the example of our Prophet, peace be upon him, who chose a life of service when he could have chosen anything else. That is the anchor underneath all of it.

There is always someone in the corner of a crowded room quietly doing something good when no one is watching. I would always go to that person. This podcast is my way of finding them, sitting with them, and making sure that someone sitting alone somewhere, looking for something to hold onto, finds it here.

That is what this is. That is what it has always been.

The first time I described Islam to a friend I told her it feels like standing near the ocean, with the breeze brushing your face and the rhythmic sound of waves sending serenity through your body. I was born a Muslim but I accepted Islam in 2021 while an Imam was reciting shahada for three men on YouTube. I was the fourth.

When I wholeheartedly accepted Islam it was difficult. Not in terms of questioning if this was right but in being looked at as too rigid, too weird. And somehow on that road to learn about the Creator, I learned about myself. I began to see beauty in the mundane, my struggles as something that left an impact, my weaknesses as something to learn from.

What moves me even more is when I look back at the small prayers I made without fully understanding them. As a child I wasn't good at English and I remember praying I would get better at it. Right now, how vocal I have become, how I am able to articulate and raise my voice for the things I believe in, that small prayer was answered in a way I could never have imagined. That is what bewilders me. How Allah can take a small distressed prayer and mold it into something so much bigger than what you asked for.

I am not sharing this from the other side of the tunnel. I am still in it. But I am sharing this from the middle of it because that is exactly the space I wished someone had held for me.

So if you are in it right now, hold on.P.s. And if my story resonates with you, go listen to the people living theirs - Sit With Aqsa, my other podcast, linked in this episode.

You ever catch yourself saying things like: “You’re a failure. You can’t do anything right. Of course you messed up again”? Yeah… that was me last week. I was struggling to make sense of a lot of things and instead of giving myself space, I turned cruel, harsh, unforgiving and honestly brutal.That’s when it hit me: if I talked to a friend like that, I’d never forgive myself. We wouldn’t even say it to an animal or a plant. So why do we constantly talk to ourselves this way? Negative self-talk doesn’t just hurt in the moment, it shapes how we feel, how we see ourselves and how we show up every day.And this inner critic wasn’t just random, it was fueled by years of pressure I didn’t even realize I’d internalized. Growing up as the eldest and only daughter in a desi family came with silent expectations: be perfect, don’t slip, get it right. Over time, that pressure became toxic, not just for my mental health but for my relationship with myself. There were days when even getting out of bed felt hard, yet I didn’t allow myself rest or compassion because my standards were too high.Therapy helped me see something I couldn’t before. Inside our minds live two voices, a critical parent and a nurturing parent. Often, the critical one dominates, repeating itself again and again until we feel stuck or ready to give up, sometimes without even knowing why.Even knowing this, silencing the critical voice wasn’t easy until I remembered a lesson from my faith. Islam teaches that humans are meant to make mistakes. Perfection isn’t the goal. Accountability and growth matter, but cruelty toward yourself never does. I also realized something else. I’m the friend my friends come to when they’re hurting. I remind them of their worth. So why can’t I do the same for myself?
P.s. And if my story resonates with you, go listen to the people living theirs - Sit With Aqsa, my other podcast, linked in this episode.

Have you ever wondered how something that looks so chaotic , like boxing, can end up being the thing that calms you?For me, this is the first real chapter of my “Notes to Myself.”A reminder to appreciate the risks I took, even the ones I never imagined for myself.Growing up in Pakistan, I never saw myself as the “sporty” person. Gender roles box you in quietly - not loudly, not intentionally -but enough that you just don’t explore. The only “sport” memory I have is thinking I came third in a school race… when I was nowhere even close.But life has a way of cornering you until you open doors you didn’t know existed.When COVID hit, I had to move back home from university. Hyderabad is peaceful, but for someone used to living in a hostel, surrounded by noise and movement, it felt like the world went still. I felt boxed in - by the city, by my own thoughts, by the question I kept asking myself: Who could I be if I actually tried?That frustration slowly turned into rage. And when I moved to Karachi for work, I knew I needed to direct that rage somewhere it wouldn’t consume me.That’s how boxing entered my life.I joined a male-dominant gym, having no idea what I was doing. I wasn’t good. I didn’t even know why I was there. I just knew I needed something that would push back at the chaos inside me.But something shifted. I stopped caring about how I looked or how slow I was. I kept showing up. And eventually, my “missing days” turned into two-hour sessions. Somewhere in the middle of all that, I changed.The rage I thought would stay with me forever softened. I became more composed, less impulsive and more in control of myself than I had ever been.And the confidence I gained wasn’t loud — it was grounding. It made me feel safer in a city that isn’t always safe. It made me step out on my own, do my groceries, run errands, explore, help people, rescue animals… do the things younger me would never believe she could do.Boxing didn’t just make me stronger. It made me understand myself. It made me accept who I am instead of fighting it.And that’s the real note to myself here:Negative emotions aren’t wrong. Feeling rage, frustration, confusion - that doesn’t make you broken. What matters is what you do with it. Whether you box it in, deny it, or transform it into something that serves you.For me, that transformation happened through physical activity. For you, it might be painting, writing, reading, or something you haven’t tried yet.Just don’t let others define who you are.Don’t assume the version of yourself you know today is the final one.There is always a door you haven’t opened yet - and when you finally do, you might meet the “you” you’ve been searching for.

P.s. And if my story resonates with you, go listen to the people living theirs - Sit With Aqsa, my other podcast, linked in this episode.

This is the start of something I wish existed when I needed it the most.I am 28, but it genuinely feels like I have lived so many versions of myself. Every struggle, every shift, every phase just shapes you into someone new. And for the longest time, during my hardest moments, I felt like I had no one I could truly relate to.

Yes, friends are there. Yes, sometimes they are not. But when you are alone in your room and everything feels heavy, even the smallest problems feel huge. And even when I tried to look for support online or in groups, I just could not find anyone whose experiences felt like mine. I started seeing myself as an outsider. I kept telling myself that I should act a certain way, think a certain way, be a certain way, because that is what everyone else seemed to be doing.When I look back now, I can see how those moments built me. Those hard days were stepping stones. And even though I am still struggling and I know there will be more ahead, I want this series to exist for people who feel the same way I did.I want anyone watching this to know they are not alone. Even if you feel different or disconnected, there are always people somewhere in the world who would understand you. Sometimes God helps you through people. Sometimes through moments. Sometimes through animals. Sometimes through something as small as a video that feels relatable in a way nothing else did.These are pieces of my journals. My reminders. My own notes to myself about the pearls that came out of every hardship. And if this reaches even one silent fighter who needs to feel less alone, then it is worth it.And yes, you’ll see Cleopatra in the middle because she decided to interrupt me while I was recording. Maybe that was also a reminder that comfort sometimes looks like a cat asking for food whenever and wherever she wants it 🐈P.s. And if my story resonates with you, go listen to the people living theirs - Sit With Aqsa, my other podcast, linked in this episode.