Written with care for those living it and those witnessing it

Even before I begin writing, I’m assailed with this paralytic dawning that everyone will know. For so long, my infertility has been solely mine, but now everyone will know.

It’s a question my therapist and I grappled with: what drives this instinct to withdraw, to close doors and embrace isolation like ivy clinging to a crumbling wall, even as it decays? In her reflections on grief, author Chimamanda Adichie observed, “There is a desperation to shrug off this burden, and then a competing longing… to hold it close. Is it possible to be possessive of one’s pain? I want to become known to it, I want it known to me.” Adichie has voiced what I struggle to put into words. In grief, there is a dialogue between the self and its suffering—perhaps a sort of mutual recognition? Grief isn’t simply endured but becomes a mirror for introspection, where identity is forged in loss.

It makes sense, then, this instinct to hold my grief close because it’s too sacred to just give away. My grief becomes me just as much as it condemns me. Mourning privately allows me to control my narrative of pain in this turbulent odyssey, and I can hold it without the interference of others’ expectations.

It’s fascinating to me that C.S.Lewis, a novelist of over thirty books including The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, only chose to publish his grief journal (A Grief Observed) under a pseudonym as if grief was too personal, too exposing even for him.

There’s an existential idea here: by not sharing my grief, I, the mourner, keep it as a part of my inner identity. My loss is too large and too complex to translate into words, so I cradle it instead, letting it shape me from within. The irony is that I am not alone. There is a whole community of Muslim women in silent mourning.

Discourse around infertility within the Muslim community is often laced with cultural expectations and whispered assumptions about womanhood and worth. I’ve carried the weight of shame that was never mine to begin with, and questioned my identity and my faith, wondering if Allah ﷻ had turned His Face from mine.

Let’s peel back the layers of isolation and create space for compassion. I want women like me to know that our stories matter, that our pain is not weakness, and that vulnerability in all its forms is a remarkable strength too.

And the women who haven’t walked this path? I want them to know that infertility doesn’t diminish the beauty of motherhood, and neither does motherhood define the worth of a woman. Just as Allah gives sustenance in many forms, so too does He write our tests with wisdom we can’t comprehend.

Empathy is a sunnah. When we listen without judgement, without pity, we honour women’s battles and embody Islam’s mercy. I share my story as a hopeful reminder that there is space for us all.

What Came Before: Surviving the Silence

I cannot think of anything more silent yet weighty than grief itself—some griefs thunder through sobs and wails. Then there are griefs eclipsed by stillness and silence. Infertility, at least in the way that I know it, is often the latter.

It lives in the baby name I dare not say aloud. It’s in the quiet promise of a home that will never echo the babble of the child who was meant to make me whole. It’s in the maternity leave I’ll never take. In my womb that will never cradle a child. In the children’s books I will never share, the pregnancy reveal I will never prepare. It’s in the cruel discomfort of someone else’s joy. In the quiet shame that dictates I must change – be better, do better – before God blesses me with a girl or boy. It lives in an incomprehensible irony of grieving a soul that never quite lived.

And yet, just as much as my grief breaks me, it also builds me. That’s the wonderful thing about grief. It teaches you; it humbles you. It reminds you of Allah’s power and that nothing happens without Him. Yes, we know it, but do we truly feel it until we are forced to acknowledge it in its absolute truth?

Grief teaches us in fragments, and that shift from broken to built comes in these very fragments. One of those fragments is du’a.

In our communities, du’a is offered as a balm or divine to-do. As well-intended as this is, they land like nettles against bare skin, sharp and misplaced. I can’t describe my burst of anger upon hearing, ‘It will happen, just keep praying,’ because I was praying. And I wasn’t angry because I had lost hope; my anger was an expression of my acceptance that it may never happen. That realisation – that this might not be written for me – that is the source of my grief.

This isn’t a lack of faith. This is a mature, painfully earned understanding of divine will. I know of God-conscious women who aren’t mothers. Allah in His Wisdom wrote a different path for them, and now, I had to wrestle with the possibility that I might be one of them.

My wonderful friend Lamyaa, who has lived the test of infertility, albeit in a different way from mine, shared an analogy which captures this loss.“I’ve been standing at the start line of a race, of being a Muslim woman. I’ve trained hard: through my education, career, faith, and to be a good person. I’m ready – I’m waiting and waiting for the whistle to blow, signalling my turn to run. But the whistle finally sounds… only to announce that the race is over. And I never ran.”

This really captures the essence of grief that feels like being mere spectators in a life we were told was ours to live. This kind of reckoning of staring into a future that doesn’t include something you’ve prayed for with your whole being is devastating. It’s also a surrender.

And so I’m prompted to ask deeper questions about what truly matters. Is our worth ever in just running the race? Or is it in the integrity of how we prepare and endure?

We are raised to believe that motherhood is a measure of identity and piety. In this context, infertility feels isolating as though womanhood and worth are somehow called into question. But Islam never equates trials with punishment. And Allah’s love isn’t measured in children, careers, or other worldly milestones. His mercy is always present, especially in what is withheld.

As my grief quieted and my relationship with Allah healed, my du‘a changed. I no longer ask for what’s next; I ask for peace with what is. This shift from requesting outcomes to sacred surrender warrants peace of mind.

Sit With Me, Not My Suffering: Presence Over Platitudes

There is a unique tenderness in the kind of friendship that doesn’t try to fix you. Maybe she made you tea or cried with you when your eyes welled up. Maybe she held you, or texted, ‘I’m thinking of you. No need to reply.’ In a culture that often prizes patience performed loudly and pain buried deep, that kind of quiet companionship reminds us that sometimes, the most sacred thing we can offer one another isn’t an answer but the presence of heart.

There’s a concept in grief counselling called ‘therapeutic presence.’ This perspective aligns with the understanding that grief is not a problem to be solved but a process to be supported. Such presence fosters a safe environment where individuals feel accepted, facilitating healing on both emotional and physiological levels.

How rarely we allow space for that kind of quiet holding in everyday life. What would it mean to show up not with solutions, but simply with the kind of presence that says, “You don’t have to be okay for me to stay.”

Reaching out in periods of grief is difficult. It is, quite honestly and quite painfully, the one thing I could not, and sometimes still cannot, do. The vulnerability is too raw to expose, particularly when framed with the assumption that, as time passes, we should be past it by now, as if healing runs on a kind of schedule. And yet, healing rarely honours our timelines – it unfolds in its own aching rhythm.

Perhaps what we need most is not to be asked how we’re doing, but to be met where we are, without expectation. In that unspoken understanding, something tender begins to stitch itself back together.

I am Whole: No Child. Not Childless. But a Woman with Stories.

When we think of the women from the early Islamic Era and the Islamic Golden Age: Asiyah, wife of the Pharaoh, Rabi’a al-Adawaiyya, Fatima al-Fihri, Fatima al-Samarqandi, Lubna of Cordoba – why does history speak of them? Not because of the children they bore or not, but because of the science, art, theology, poetry and resistance they nurtured into the world.

Their stories are not prefaced with ‘she didn’t have children but she…’ or ‘she had three children and she ….’ Their stories are merely their own because they were more than their reproductive functions. I know my Iman, as weak as it felt at the time, was the resisting factor behind a real, physical yearning to be taken from this world. I wanted the ache to stop. I wanted to see how Allah was going to make it all better. I didn’t want to be ‘broken’ any more. That there was a higher, better purpose. There is a higher, better purpose. I just had to find it. Or more accurately, perhaps, keep searching for it because this journey isn’t a straight path to clarity. It deepens with each step and asks new questions as it reveals new layers.

This wasn’t an epiphany, more a non-linear journey of discourse and discovery with my therapist and quiet realisations and appreciations for how full my life is. When I began to recognise my innumerable blessings, did I understand I am already whole. No child, not childless, but a woman with stories to live and tell.

The Tension Between Destiny and Desire: Qadr and Grief are not Mutually Exclusive

A while after our diagnosis, my husband and I were on a stroll where we encountered a father on a bike with his little girl. I felt the physical pangs of yearning so distinctly that I was overcome and stopped walking. I asked aloud how my suffering could ever be compensated, and my husband replied, “On Judgement Day, when Allah shows us our reward for our unanswered prayers, we’ll regret every answered prayer in this world. Our wildest fantasies cannot construct the pure joy we’ll feel in Jannah.”

I come back to that often: I can’t always understand Allah’s Wisdom, but I can trust in His promise of eternal happiness.

Imam Omar Suleiman speaks of tawakkul (trust in Allah) not as the certainty of receiving what you want, but as trust when the entire plan is invisible. A reminder that despite the invisibility, Allah is there, always near, not promising a life of no suffering, but assuring us of His protection through it.

So if trusting Qadr is part of the process, what erases the ache? Is it un-Islamic to grieve deeply for what never was?

Simply, pain is a natural reaction to loss. Denial, anger, depression – every single one is natural. Islam doesn’t negate or diminish the human experience of these feelings, but rather guides them through it.

When the Prophet ﷺ died, ‘Umar RA denied the news of his passing due to the enormity of the loss. Prophet Yaqub AS’s eyes became white from grief because of his separation from Prophet Yusuf AS. The Prophet ﷺ himself wept at the death of his ﷺ son Ibrahim, and there is an entire year in his ﷺ noble seerah named the Year of Sorrow in which the Prophet’s ﷺ beloved wife and uncle passed away.

These examples illustrate that grieving isn’t a sign of discontentment with Allah’s decree. How can it be when even the best of creation experienced sadness? Allah didn’t reprimand them because emotions, just like the human soul, were created by Him and serve a purpose. To deny this is to deny an essential part of the human process.

Instead, Islam encourages the process of grieving and seeking help while still reminding a believer to trust in Allah’s plan.

“Your Lord has not abandoned you, nor has He become hateful of you.” (Surah Ad-Duha 93:3)

A compassionate reminder that destiny, desire and grief can sit side-by-side and that sadness does not dictate one’s distance from or nearness to Allah.

Life didn’t stop when we were given our diagnosis, even though for a while, I thought life wasn’t worth living. Now I am grateful because grief teaches me that I am whole, I am worthy, and I am blessed. I am anxious about my future – yes, uncertain even – but also strangely excited. I understand that I can mourn what my old future was while living my new one, too. Reality has shifted, there are butterflies fluttering in my stomach, my body learns to carry what my soul can’t let go, but I am not broken. I am grieving.

Grief in all its roles – humbler, captor, teacher, mirror – is my companion now, but Allah is too. And maybe that’s the point. That in all we lose, we are also being returned to ourselves, to others, to Allah. There is no neat bow to tie around this story, but there is presence and there is purpose.

Beyond the empty cradle, I really am finding the sacred fragments of myself.

References

Amreen Pathan

Life After Infertility: Finding Hope Beyond the Empty Cradle