Pen and Paper

  صَبْر The Philosophy of Sabr: How to Stay Patient When Everything Falls Apart Merging timeless spiritual wisdom with modern psychology to survive life's hardest storms. Introduction When Everything Collapses at Once There are moments in life when everything seems to collapse at once. The financial pressure becomes unbearable. A relationship you treasured falls silent. A loss arrives that you were never prepared for. In those moments, well-meaning people often say the same thing: "Just be patient. Things will get better." And while the advice is given with love, it can feel completely hollow ” even cruel ” when you are standing in the middle of the storm with no shelter in sight. But what if the problem is not patience itself, but how we have been taught to understand it? What if everything you believed about patience was only half the picture? This is where the philosophy of Sabr changes everything. True Sabr is a fierce, active psychological and spiritual discipline ...

Personal growth · Real talk · Life at 25 Things I wish someone had told me before I turned 25. Not the advice you find on posters. Not "believe in yourself" and "stay positive." The real things. The ones that would have saved me months of confusion, guilt, and 2 AM spirals. June 10, 2026 9 min read Pen and Paper · Mariam  Nobody prepares you for 25. They tell you to work hard. They tell you to be grateful. They tell you that these are "the best years of your life" which, if you're currently drowning in pressure and self-doubt, is genuinely unhelpful advice. So here is what I actually wish someone had sat me down and said. No fluff. No motivational poster energy. Just the things I had to learn the hard way. 1 Being confused is not the same as being lost. At 25, not knowing your exact path does not mean you are failing. It means you are still figuring it out — which is exactly what this age is for. The people who seem certain? Half of them are perfo...

  Opinion & Voice She Was On Duty. No Place Was Safe. The acid attack on Dr. Mahnoor Nasir at Civil Hospital Quetta — and what it says about us as a society. June 7, 2026 There are some news stories that stop you mid-breath. That make you put your phone down and just sit with the weight of what you've read. For me, this was one of them. A young woman. A doctor. Serving patients on a routine duty shift inside one of Pakistan's largest public hospitals. And in the middle of that ordinary, noble day — someone walked up to her door, knocked, and threw acid on her face and body when she answered. Her name is Dr. Mahnoor Nasir . A postgraduate trainee in general surgery at Sandeman Provincial Hospital, Quetta. She had dedicated years of her life to medicine — to healing others. And she was attacked, not on a dark street, not in an alley — but inside a hospital ward where she was supposed to be safe. "If a woman is not safe in a hospital, in her workplace, in a place built to...

عید الغدیر 18 Zilhaj — A Day of Divine Proclamation Eid ul-Ghadeer: The Day That Completed the Faith A reflection on one of Islam's most significant occasions 18 Zilhajja What is Eid ul-Ghadeer? On the 18th of Zilhajjah — the final month of the Islamic lunar calendar — the Muslim world commemorates a momentous occasion: the event of Ghadeer Khumm. It was here, in the year 10 AH (632 CE), as the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was returning from his farewell pilgrimage (Hajjat ul-Wida), that he delivered what many scholars regard as one of the most consequential sermons in Islamic history. The name "Ghadeer Khumm" refers to a pond or watering place between Makkah and Madinah, in the Juhfah region, where approximately 100,000 companions had gathered and the Prophet ﷺ delivered his final, decisive address. The Divine Revelation — The Verse of Completion Before delivering his sermon at Ghadeer, the Prophet ﷺ received one of the most celebrated verses of the Holy Quran: اَلْیَوْمَ أَکْمَلْ...

Faith & Reflection Dua in the Dark: When You've Been Praying for Years With No Answer A letter to every soul who keeps raising their hands — even when the sky feels silent. MA Mariam Awan Pen and Paper  ·  May 27, 2026  ·   " And your Lord says: Call upon Me; I will respond to you." — Surah Ghafir, 40:60 There is a kind of prayer that doesn't look like prayer at all. It doesn't have tears rolling down cheeks or hands raised dramatically in the golden hour. It looks like a person lying in the dark at 2 a.m., staring at the ceiling, lips barely moving — asking, again, for the same thing they have been asking for years. Quietly. Desperately. Without an answer. Maybe you know this prayer. Maybe you are living it right now. You have made dua for a person you love to come back. For an illness to leave. For a door of provision to open. For peace to return to a heart that forgot what peace felt like. You have asked in sujood. You have whispered in the stillness of F...