Hello and Salaams, friends!

There are a lot of ways to look back at the past several months – nearly a year of living with the COVID-19 global pandemic – and we've covered a lot of these stories. Now, with the weather warming up and COVID vaccines gaining hold, we can feel a shift, a feeling of resilience and endurance that was always there in the background but now taking a stronger hold.

We've all been through a lot, whether sickness and/or loss of life, loss of jobs or stuck at home doing virtual learning. But what is so powerful and inspiring is our ability to persevere, to keeping moving forward and working towards something better.

We've always known that our communities of Muslim women are powerful, grounded and resilient. These are the stories we want to highlight now, the shout outs we want to give back to you.

How have you shown up for yourself? Your family or your community? How have you persevered in the past many months? We want to hear from you! If you have a story of strength and resilience, whether about yourself or a friend or family member, we invite you to share it with us so that we can feature it here on the blog later this month!

Remember, no story is too big or too small, whether it's helping your child make it through kindergarten online, completing a project at work, caring for a loved one or just making sure you got up, day after day, despite feeling stuck or low. Know someone who would never tout them self? Shout them out in an email to me for inclusion on the blog!

1. If you want your story to appear on the blog, email me here (dilshad@hautehijab.com). Send me no more than 150-200 words about your story of strength and resilience.

2. Please include a photo to go with your story.

3. Please include any social media (Instagram, Twitter, etc.) handles you want to have appear with your story.

3. Send me your submissions by Friday, March 12. I won't be able to accept submissions after that time.

4. I'll be editing and compiling these stories into a blog post of shout outs and stories, which will be published at the end of March.

Please know that I am looking forward to reading your stories, however I won't be able to publish all of them due to limited space. But, I'll try my best! We hope to shout out some of your stories as well on our social media platforms!