I genuinely believed that as my kids got older, Ramadhaan would somehow get easier. That as they needed me physically less, as the feeding stopped and the climbing stopped and they stopped tumbling over me mid-sujood like I was a human-jungle-gym, my spirituality would naturally rise to fill the space. I held onto the belief that I would get some version of myself back that felt present and connected, like I was actually in this month rather than just surviving it.
Somehow, it's doing the opposite... and I'll be honest, it frightens me a little.
If this is what Ramadhaan feels like now, when my kids are still young and the demands are still heavy and the exhaustion is the kind that feels like it has no relief, I find myself asking, when exactly does it get beautiful? When is it going to feel like the Ramadhaan I keep reading about, where you cry when it leaves because you know something sacred has passed through your life? I keep waiting for that version of this month, and I keep wondering if I'm the problem, or if I'm just in a season, or if the two things are somehow the same.
People say, wait until your kids have grown and moved on and married, and then you'll have all the Ramadhaans in the world... I receive that du'a and I hold it with both hands…But as a Muslim, I know what I know, which is that I don't actually know how many Ramadhaans I have left. None of us do. Deferring this month to some future version of my life that may look exactly the way everyone has promised me, or may not come at all, or may only give me one or two of those Ramadhaans before something else changes, is not something I'm willing to keep doing…so I've stopped waiting.
What I do know is that I don't want to walk out of this month feeling like I missed it- Not spiritually, not in terms of reward, not in any way.
The Comment That Renewed My Perspective…
A few days ago, I put something out on my page about how this Ramadhaan had felt a bit off, and the response was overwhelmingly the same. There were so many women who felt utterly and completely defeated. Someone in the comments said something I keep coming back to. She said that she doesn't wait to feel motivated in Ramadhaan, she just looks at everything through the lens of where the highest return is, then focuses there, because she knows that everything is compounded this month.
The Prophet ﷺ said: "Whoever draws near to Allah during it with a single characteristic from the characteristics of voluntary good deeds, it is as if he performed an obligatory deed in other than it. And whoever performs an obligatory deed in it, it is as if he performed seventy obligatory deeds in other than it." (Ibn Khuzaymah, authenticated by Al-Albani).
Seventy times. That multiplication is happening whether the feeling is present or not, which means the month is working for you even on the days it doesn't feel like it is.
The way she described her excitement about the return she's getting reminded me of how I think about business. There's something quite rational about identifying where your effort yields the most reward and directing your attention there, especially when your time and energy are limited. We do it without thinking in every other area of our lives, so why not here too?
Enter: The Menu Idea
We are all planning menus right now: Eid menus, Suhoor spreads and Iftaar courses. Every second scroll on Instagram is someone's food layout with starters, mains and desserts that makes you excited just looking at it. There's something about that anticipation, about knowing what's coming, about having chosen something and looking forward to it, that carries its own pleasantry... and I started wondering if that same energy is exactly what my ibadah has been missing.
The idea actually came to me from something I used to see on Pinterest, one of those activity menus that breaks things down by hormone: dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and then lists activities underneath each one that trigger that release. The idea is that you look at the menu, pick one or two things from different categories that feel doable for the day, and you're essentially curating your own DOSE. It's simple, it's visual, it doesn't overwhelm you because you're choosing what’s within your capacity rather than being told.
I started thinking about the acts of ibadah I had been reading about, the ones that are low effort but carry an exceptionally high reward, some that take two minutes, some that take a little longer, and I thought about how I could organise them the same way. A starter, something short and light that you can fit into almost any moment of the day. A main, something that requires a bit more time or intention but yields a significantly higher reward. A dessert, something small to close the day with that takes very little but still lands quite high on the scale.
The intention was to give myself a starting point on the days I don't know where to begin, to make a deliberate choice in the morning and then carry it through the day in whatever increments my life allows. Essentially it’s two short, one long act of ibaadah, spread across the day as and when there's space for it.
What made this feel urgent to me is the compounding. We are already two weeks into Ramadhaan and every act of ibadah is multiplied seventy times, which means that two minutes of something in this month is worth sitting down and doing seventy times outside of it to yield the same return. When Ramadhaan leaves, you're back to the standard reward…Knowing that, I don't want to let the month pass without having capitalised on it as much as I can. If I'm going to cry when it leaves, I want it to be because I made the most of what it offered me, not because I spent it waiting to feel ready.
A Note on the Printable
I have put together a free downloadable menu below with options under each course. I want to be upfront with you about something before you open it, though, because I am not a learned person and I would never want to present myself as one. Everything I have included is based on my own reading and research into authenticated hadith, things I feel reasonably confident about, but I am human and my knowledge has limits. If something on that menu doesn't sit right with you, if you've heard differently from someone more knowledgeable, if you want to verify it further before you act on it, please do. There is no obligation here. You can take what resonates, leave what doesn't, skip the download entirely if you'd prefer, and none of that changes anything. This is simply something I made for myself and thought might be useful to someone else.
If the Menu Feels Like Too Much
Someone else said something to me recently that I thought was worth passing on. She said: you are a human being, not a human doing. Come to Allah as you are, because He accepts you in all your versions and He simply asks for your authentic self.
On the days when the full menu feels like too much, just pick a starter. On the days when even that is too much, pick a dessert, something small, quick, something that takes two minutes but is not “nothing”. On the days when you genuinely cannot manage anything at all, remember what she said, that you are a human being, not a human doing, and that showing up as yourself, raw in all your vulnerable beauty before Your Lord can be its own form of ibadah.
There are two weeks left. The feeling may or may not find its way back before Ramadhaan is over, and that's okay... the reward doesn't require the feeling to be present. Whatever you put in from here still counts, and I hope this helps you find a way to put something in.
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