context

Assessment period is here! 

And that means it's time for us to write, write and write some more!

Transitioning from a career woman to a student again has been okay for me so far and I guess it's partly due to the "soft landing" I've had in the past 2 years (more on that later in a much longer post, I suppose).

I have always looked forward to becoming a student again. After all, I was (back in my undergraduate days) one of those annoying girls who would sit at the front of the class, vigourously taking notes and asking questions when the rest of the class was ready to leave for lunch. Hehe.

And though in this round of being a student, I am also a wife... and mother and those roles come with challenges of their own, I have come to terms with the fact that there can never really be perfection in any of these roles. Most days, I'm just winging it. 

I'm currently sitting in the library, with a huge window before me, basking in the sun (well, whatever is left there for the day, that is). And in this past week, I have thought alot about how sometimes, people need to be given context -- about me and my life now. 

While it's true that I've become really good at ignoring what other people think of me, and my focus after I turned 35 was basically to keep on going in a direction that my future self would thank me for, there are times when I tell things to people about myself, just to give them a little bit of context. 

My life as it is hasn't always been like this and I wasn't always like this. 

"You're so lucky" is the impression that most people have about me and I admit that to a large extent, I have been blessed in so many ways. But, like I said before, my (our) life wasn't always like this. Our "luckiness" didn't appear overnight and it's existence has a direct correlation with how hard we worked -- on our jobs, our marriage, our children and also our personal development. 

Were there blood and tears? Well, of course there were, there was plenty.

Hence, sometimes, when speaking to people who have not seen me go through it all, I give them a little bit of context -- of the many long years we were in a long-distance marriage, of the 7-year itch which apparently isn't a myth (please don't ever think that you won't ever get bitten by it no matter how strong your marriage is) and of generally how tough some times were (I initially wrote a really long paragraph about this and then deleted it because I can't, to this day, write about it).

I need to give them context because they need to know that sometimes, when it all adds up, it makes sense that we are who we are today and that our lives are the way it is today. If that explains anything at all. 

Of course, it's always easy to think that someone has it easy because they are lucky...

 ...but even if have been blessed in so many ways MasyaAllah, in so many ways, we have also learned to count everything we've been granted with as a blessing. 

So, yes, read that last sentence again.

And we hope that you could now put it all into perspective.