For months, perhaps even for years, I had been composing in my mind the letter I was going to write to my daughter before she left for college. I wanted to fill it with wonderful memories and maternal wisdom, with practical advice and big doses of encouragement. I wanted to…
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Question #1 Dear Salma, I have a teenage daughter and am concerned about how to explain interfaith marriage to her. We have a growing number of Muslims in our community–both men and women–marrying outside of Islam. She and I will talk about these sorts of things and I’ve explained to…
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A reader once told me in an offhand way, “Of course, you’ll do differently with your own daughter.” She’d just finished commenting on a draft of my memoir, and her remark caught me off guard. I’d written of my engagement at eighteen to the son of our closest family friends, but I hadn’t meant to criticize my traditional courtship. A critique would’ve implied that I had regrets, that I wished I had dated other men, that I’d now seen the light and wouldn’t do the same given the chance.
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Ask Salma addresses sibling interactions and interfaith relationships.
Dr. Farber bounced a black, leather whip in her palm when she said the ladies in our classroom would find Taoist sexual philosophy especially interesting. Taoist men, she explained, trained themselves to last.
“That’s why a Taoist man is hard to find.”
The room broke into an easy laughter. My lips went tight. Last at what?
After class the curly-haired blonde guy that sat two rows over motioned me to his desk. He introduced himself as Matt and the woman standing next to him as Jen and said, “We’re getting a study group together. Interested?”
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In today’s AskM column, M responds to one woman about how to deal with her mother-in-law, and another about her racially-conscious suitor.
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At 21 I married a man five years older than me. The second time around, at 31, I married a man five years younger than me.*
Eight years into our marriage, it still sends little shock waves through people when I mention this. There are sometimes oooohs and aaahhhs, eyes get bigger and rounder, and I can almost see folks wanting to high five me and slap my husband on the back for biting the bullet and marrying an older, divorced, single mom. I have, no joke, been asked at least a dozen times how I managed to pull this off.
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Today Salma responds to a worried wife and a misunderstood child.
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“Do you have any children?” a nice woman making small talk asks me.
I reply pleasantly, “No, I don’t,” but my inner monologue is racing.
“Children? I don’t have children because I don’t have a husband.
I don’t have a husband because I never had a romantic relationship with a guy.
I never had a boyfriend, I’ve never even been kissed and I’m way older than
Drew Barrymore was when she was in that movie with Michael Vartan!
I’m older than Jesus ( AS) when he was on this earth! Oh God, what if it’s too late for me to have children?“
Please welcome Salma Abugideiri as our newest relationship columnist. Her column will appear bi-weekly, alternating with our other column, AskM. Salma is a licensed, professional counselor with over fifteen years of experience. Her practice is in Northern Virginia. You can find more information on her website: wellnessthroughcounseling.com. She is also a founding Board Member of Peaceful Families Project, a national organization dedicated to domestic violence prevention in the Muslim community.
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