The Missing Villiage

🍼 This is for all the Muslim mothers who wanted big families and set off straight away after marriage to make that happen with the help of Allaah.

🍼 You get married. You beg Allaah to have a beautiful Muslim family. And a large one at that.

🍼 Then AlHamdulillaah, Allaah grants you many children one after the other.

🍼 But somewhere after child number three, things start to kick up. But you keep going.

🍼 Then another, then another ….

🍼 All of a sudden you realize that the many roles you’ve been playing are actually roles in which it generally takes departments of people to fulfill.

🍼 If you homeschool, you’re taking the place of an entire school construct.

🍼 When you cook all the time for your family, you are cooking similar to the amount of mom and pop restaurants .

🍼 When you’re dealing with all of the emotional and religious issues that come about in and outside of your family, you are playing the role of a professional counselor.

🍼 These are only a few examples.

🍼 You see, in many other places in the world these jobs are spread out amongst several people so that the mother does not become overwhelmed and self destruct.

🍼 Some countries have paid maternity leave from work for one year.

🍼 Some cultures invest in one big family home wherein three generations live in one big house in order to help the parents raise children.

🍼 Some people live on the same block as family in order to send each other food, resources, or even babysit each others children.

🍼 The “Villiage” doesn’t just work or look one standard way. There are various ways to be a Villiage.

🍼 We talk a lot about burnout and being burdened in the West because the western construct does not support the “villiage” mentality.

🍼 Wherein an entire family unit helps one another raise children. Not just the mother and father.

🍼 In the West, the same children sometimes grow up and migrate leaving their elderly parents to themselves after all the hard work and sacrifices. This is also due to the “grind hard” mentality that the west promotes.

🍼 No one cares about the next person when everyone is about themselves.

•Islaam promotes family.

•Working together.

•Community.

🍼 One of the ongoing charities that are left behind is righteous offspring AlHamdulillaah.

🍼 But Muslim parents are often trying hard to work against these ideologies so that their children grow up appreciating and valuing family.

🍼 Parents are tasked with creating their own villiages filled with trustworthy, like-minded relatives and community members. But sometimes they can be far and few.

🍼 So it is upon this generation of Muslim parents to strive and break these selfish Western ideologies within our own families In shaa Allaah.

🍼 Hopefully we can pave the way so that they will not have to go through the same hardships that we had to.

🍼 As did our previous generations of Muslims in the West opened many doors for us AlHamdulillaah.

🍼 Our children need to have the natural inclination and knowledge that they should be there for one another so that no one is left struggling in the family nor the community.

🍼 It’s not normal nor ok for a mother to be postpartum struggling for her life. Or be made to feel bad because she’s having many children as a married Muslim woman.

🍼 She needs support. She needs a Villiage and she is the Villiage. She should pay it forward whenever she can as well to other relatives and mothers as she gets stronger and likewise others should be supportive.

🍼 And here’s the hard truth that some of you may need to think about.

🍼 Know your limits.

If you clearly see that you do not have an option to have that support system in your life, then you may need to consider spacing your children in ages.

🍼 Meaning, you may need to wait some years in between having more children in order that you give yourself time to properly heal, raise one child at a time without being overwhelmed, and have enough family support per child.

🍼 This can at least allow you to pace yourself and not breakdown. Because an overwhelmed broken unhealed mother is a dangerous mother.

🍼 So you must be mature enough to realize this ASAP.

🍼 Yes it appears cool to have many children but not if you can’t handle it or else they suffer! And you as well.

May Allaah make it easy for all of the Muslim mothers and bless us all Aameen 🤲🏼 .