Enrapturing Highlights of 2022.

It's been such a soft-spoken, gentle year in which the first letters of love were learned and engrained in my heart. There are some moments here that I shall write down that were embedded in my most sacred dreams, and I am filled with sweet gratitude recounting them.

I have changed so much. I'm sometimes not sure about who I've become, but I am nevertheless open to the transition toward more gentle womanhood, a kind of becoming I was always longing to witness. So much of the harshness has melted away in a series of soul-shattering experiences that have made me shed tears of limitless understanding for the nature of this world, and it is ultimately love.

January 

• A trip to Portsaid, collecting shells and taking in the sea-breeze.
• Exploring unschooling, unlearning my pedagogy and being open to new ways of learning that exist.
• Opening my heart through some open wounds.
• Spring’s vibrant signs: dandelions and expanding time.
• Reading Mary Oliver’s work and feeling inspiration surge in me poetically.
• Connecting with a few colleagues at work and brainstorming possibilities of creating a self-awareness programme.
• Going on a trip with my learners to Ski-Egypt and getting buried with snow.
• Inviting a teacher to my classroom and hearing her say “it feels like home”.

February

• Chasing spring, stealing walks in gardens and dampening my shoes with dew.
• Connecting to the earth so deeply; interconnecting the empowerment of feminine energies to healing of the planet.
• Feeling a surge of longing for oneness, a lost part of myself reaching out to destiny.
• The emerging love for piano melodies inscribing all moments.
• Feeling divinely healthy and filled with energy.
• Celebrating with my learners in every single class, their creativity changing the world.
• Finding peach blossoms with my dearest Joumana.
• Planting trees with my dearest companion and naming them.
• Tears of gratitude in the early morning
• My dearest blackbirds inviting my heart to heaven.

March

• Taking care of stray cats at school.
• The beauty of spring-time sunlight.
• Falling in love with strawberries.
• Connecting to my highest self.
• Making videos out of ordinary moments.
• Making magic with my learners every single day and feeling their unconditional love and passion surge through the walls.
• The pain of nothingness.
• Receiving presents from my learners’ parents.
• Hoor’s birthday in my class.
• Gardening club and the mischievous sweetness of chamomiles.
• Watching my dearest peach blossom turn into the smallest peach. :’)
• My class winning the Spelling Bee in front of the whole school.

April

• The glorious sunlight.
• Connecting to regenerative educators.
• Reading in the expanding mornings in the gardens of my home.
• The pain of annihilation piercing me.
• Ramadan pains- surrendering being undefined by this world.
• The surrender of surrender.
• The beautiful clouds inviting ease.
• Breaking down from the heaviness of my dreams.. and letting go.
• Losing my heart.
• The unknown.

May

• The lightness of surrendering my needs.
• The prophet’s light (pbuh).
• Making travel plans.
• My learners using design thinking to solve real-world problems.
• The effortlessness of project-based learning.
• Hazem and Fatma giving speeches and inspiring my learners to the heart.
• Experiencing the death of love.
• The fragility of being.
• Sacrificing my heart to God’s love.
• Melting into the beauty of May’s flame trees.
• The unbearable weight of the unknown and returning to the arms of home.

June

• Returning to the mirror of love.
• Jana creating the most beautiful farewell gift for my learners.
• Tears of goodbye, watching my learners on their last day of school, their hearts breaking for another day to have so much fun.
• The faintest, most subtle intentions of togetherness.
• The airplane ride to Poland and it resurrecting all meaning.
• Seeing my sister and mother again.
• Warm conversations with my mother, and looking into her eyes once more.
• The trees and the sun begging for my mirror, hearing me utter words of remembrance.
• Melting into the beauty of the forestry.
• Exploring meadows, having picnics and the sweetness of eating jelly beans as we watch the horses sway by.
• The ‘heart in the right place’ playlist.

July

• The harshness of holding on to detachment.
• Long night-time conversations with my sister.
• 4-hour bike rides in the woods.
• Watching Stranger Things to have something in common with my sister and actually liking it.
• My sister and I fasting Arafah day!
• The sweetness of my sister and I’s ‘religion’ conversations.
• Experiencing a deep aloneness by the seasides- a metaphor of the tide shattering my heart.
• The intention of self-love on my birthday.
• Feeling the brokenness of my heart and it leaking so terribly.
• Steps towards self-love.

August

• My sister learning how to pray and read Qura’n.
• The blackberry season adorning endless bike rides.
• Walks at sunset.
• Reading ‘Ihyaa’ Olum ElDin’ and many of Ghazali’s works.
• My companion and I making real intentions of togetherness, resurrecting my heart with boundless gratitude and love.
• Having endless conversations with Toqa.
• Discovering forgiveness and reinforcing the ritual with myself.
• Sketching in the meadows with my sister.
• Seeing love in my eyes, and my whole body reacting with softness and ease.
• Missing home.

September

• Saying goodbye to the dearest countryside with so much gratitude that it welled in my eyes.
• The airplane ride back home.
• Returning to work and decorating my class.
• Teaming up with my co-teacher, Yasmeen.
• Being head of the ‘Astranova’ house in my school. :)
• My new learners, and their in-coming craziness and rebellious dispositions.
• Feeling the strength of experience surge in my classroom.
• Intentions of togetherness changing everything, and bringing everything as a gift.

October

• Ease and effortlessness enfolding home plans.
• Collecting tree-pods and extracting seeds.
• Our moringa tree growing!
• My learners’ creativity in their projects.
• Harmony and collaboration with my co-teacher, forming a beautiful relationship together.
• Encountering the first roadblock in teaching: my learners’ obsession with media and endless streams of distractions.
• Receiving negative feedback from work, criticising the holistic approach.
• Feeling confused regarding systems change, but surrendering it to the right time.
• The elegant October clouds, silk floss blossoms adorning the skies with so much grace.
• Forming beautiful relationships in Astranova.
• Feeling at home in my body.

November

• Navigating burn-out and exhaustion, deciding to cut down my obligations to prioritise wellness.
• Autumn leaves on the grass.
• Reading countless books and sprouting wings.
• Spending mornings in the November sunshine, watching our sunflowers get kissed by the bees.
• Navigating some waves of doubt and self-criticism.
• Working tirelessly to solve problems regarding my teaching.
• Waiting for the bus whilst the sun rises with so much beauty.
• Endless morning walks.
• Talking to Sheikh Salah.

December

• The blackbird song, at last.
• The climax of self-criticism tearing me apart, making me believe I’m not worthy.
• Talking to my sister about her stress at school.
• Doubt and uncertainty about so many things in life.
• Things enfolding towards love, even with all the waves.
• Spotify playlists captivating my days.
• Melting into the beauty of ephemeral melodies.
• Feeling out of place and not belonging in this world.
• Surrendering to the only mirror of love I know.
• Writing this post.. and letting go.

In the end, I return to the essence of where my dreams have begun: midst the trees, children, companionship and community. Now that I have caught glimpses of my highest self this year, it is time to come to terms with the wholeness of the experience, to meet the foreordained more intimately and surrender to the secret of love alchemising this instrument that I am into the potential of its becoming.