My value as a woman is not measured by the size of my waist or the number of men who like me. My worth as a human being is measured on a higher scale: a scale of righteousness and piety. And my purpose in life-despite what fashion magazines say-is something more sublime than just looking good for men.

We often wonder why God gives and takes, constricts and expands. What we forget is that human beings understand things by their opposites. Without dark, we can’t understand light. Without hardship, we wouldn’t *experience* ease. Without the existence of deprivation and loss, we couldn’t grasp the need for gratitude or the virtue of patience. And without separation, we wouldn’t taste the sweetness of reunion. Glory be to the one who gives—even when He takes.

When someone hurts you, your first thought may be to wish you had never met them at all. But remember that even those who've hurt you, came into your life for a reason, and left for a reason. It’s for the best and healing starts with acceptance.

People think it's the mind that drives us. It is the heart. The mind is a slave to the heart. So check the condition of the heart.

Salah is the first thing we will be asked about on the Day of Judgment, and yet it is the last thing that is on our mind.

Don’t despair if your heart has been through a lot of trauma. Sometimes that’s how beautiful hearts are remade: they are shattered first.

Hope shouldn’t increase with good deeds and decrease with sin. In good deeds, my hope is for Allah to accept. In sin, my hope is for Allah to forgive.