Our lives are like a book, with scrambled pages that we wrote while living. Every single page signifies our emotions, actions, and tones. Through these pages, we see for ourselves who we’ve become and who we want to be! Through these pages, we erase an experience and craft a better version of ourselves; through these pages, we can be where we want to be.
Approaching a new year, I flip through the pages of the aging one like I’m re-reading and analyzing a book; I grab my orange sharpie and start highlighting words that require replacement and striking out sentences that interrupt the reading pace, and foremost adding rhythm to every flipped page.
Moms. Dads. Family members. Workers. Single moms. Everyone. Applaud yourselves for your hard work this year. Look at the mirror, but this time for a significant purpose, that does not include shaving beard or putting make-up on. This time, wipe all the excess of your days and look through your eyes. Feel your heart beating. Listen to the sound of the air coming in and out of your nose while inhaling and exhaling. Gaze at yourself without thinking, just breathing and feeling and seeing who you’ve become.
Myself. Self-work is not done. I’m still in the process of fathoming life. I’m still an avid learner who believes that applying what I’ve learned is the challenge. As I look at myself, I see a self-healing and demanding deeper change. A self-healing, demanding her own image to apply uplifting changes, which are personal for each one of us, yet alike —
Yesterday, as I opened 2017 book and flipped to page 245, I realized what I’ve crafted with my own hands on a rainy day. I crafted an iron mask around my own heart, and I detached it from my body: without arteries to carry blood away and let go of the pain and loss and tears. Yes, I admit it: It hurts.
Being moms, we feel the need to manage our feelings against criticism of life and raw dialect; we feel the need to be role models to our children and teach them about life that “we” parents are still learning about; we feel the need to stay strong to the ones we love and lost because that’s what they’ve taught us and aimed us to be.
Yes, on page 245 is where you find orange highlights everywhere, fragmental writing structure, erased events, and serious tone. It’s a page in my book that I re-opened before 2017 comes to an end, and set my heart free and far away from mourning for her absence in my life. She is the woman who taught me not to follow her foot steps in life and solely follow God. She’s the woman who gave me the courage to open my ears to the resonance of his voice inside of me and gently move my lips to vibrate hearts with words of faith and love. She’s the woman who taught me to take care of my well-being and appreciate sorrow as much as happiness.
As a fresh year arrives, I skim through the last pages of the year and seal off traces of grief; I seize a brand-new book entitled “2018”, with 365 empty pages, and upheld by a humble, grateful, and motivated being.
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Today, after thirty five thousand and forty miles of creativity and exploration in her academic walk, she sets aside her gym garment and puts on her graduation gown to simply celebrate an innovative self.
Today, she walks the stairs of the stadium with new perspective of life and with leadership skills of wider vision of growing, learning, and discovering. She walks the stadium while she hears her name proudly pronounced: Kalida Abdul Khalek. And as she walks, she
Kalida Corner 