As salaamu alaikum and hello everyone!

Well, this year has just flown by, hasn’t it?

For those of us who thought that by now we’d be in a world far removed from COVID-19, well that pipe dream was blown away. But Alhamdullilah, with the COVID vaccine now widely available for nearly a year now (and recently approved for children; click here to get all your questions answered around that), a lot of us have returned to living our lives outside of our homes with many of our kids being back at school.

Yes, that living has fundamentally changed for many of us, and often for the better. COVID and sheltering in place was a sort of reckoning for many of us, from how we worship in Ramadan to the friendships and relationships we value to how we approach our careers and work life in conjunction with our family life.

I’m sure you, just like me, have been asking yourself throughout all this – what really matters to you? What is it that you value? Where, how and with whom do you want to spend your time?

For our family, because we live a different sort of life with our autistic eldest child and his two younger siblings, the way the pandemic has altered our living, our ability to travel and our reality was in a way not that unfamiliar to us. I pray that the things we’ve learned from all this in regards to ourselves, our families and our communities is something we carry forth with us in the years to come, as COVID isn’t something that is going away.

In a way, if we don’t learn something from all this, if we don’t renew our intentions to live with purpose in accordance with Allah’s (S) guidance, then we will be at a loss.

That’s the beauty of renewing intentions. It isn’t beholden to a certain time of year or can only be done once. You can make a mistake, lose your way, find yourself questioning things or not “feeling” things. And, it is with a deep look at our intentions – the “Why we are doing this? Whom is it for?” – that you can Insha’Allah resolve to keep going forward or make a change in your life. And, we can renew our intentions constantly, over and over. Allah (S) is that merciful upon us. He gives us ample opportunities to atone for our mistakes, renew our intentions and try and better ourselves.

I don’t know about you, but I find a lot of comfort in this as well as the push to reexamine what I am doing in my life and my intentions for what it is I’m doing – like wearing the hijab.

The past two Decembers we have urged you (and ourselves) to renew and refresh your intentions behind wearing hijab and our faith practices with our #LikeYouMeanItHH campaign. The idea is that one should “wear it like you mean it,” meaning try to wear your hijab with intent and meaning and not as a rote exercise. The same goes for your faith and life practices, like (for example) salah or how you nurture the relationships in your life.

And so here we are in December, and we are bringing back #LikeYouMeanItHH. We aim to go there this month on the blog, asking uncomfortable questions and pushing each other to consider our relationship with our hijab and our Allah (S). Why do we wear it? Why does Allah (S) want us to wear it? Why do some of us take it off? What is holding us back? What are our intentions? How do we renew our intentions? How do we make sure our intentions are meaningful and God-guided?

We invite you to join us on this journey! Follow along on our blog and social to join the conversations.

In addition to this, we’ll be bringing you our fun year-end round ups, looking at the 2021 year in modest fashion, Muslim women doing cool things, the best of Muslim Tik Tok and more. I’m always amazed how much has happened when the writers and I compile these roundups for you!

So, settle in and join us on the blog and on social media to get real with our focus on “where it like you mean it.” Let’s talk about our intentions. Let’s have some hard conversations and ultimately lift each other up. Insha’Allah it’ll be a conversation worth having. As always, make good choices and start with Bismillah!

Editorially yours,

Dilshad