Diana Alghoul

I always say this, but: bloody hell, long time.

Gosh, I miss when my website was called http://www.dianaism.com. I need to contact WordPress and get my old domain back.

Anyway, I completely forgot about this blog when I saw no use for it. Maintaining it became a chore and I was uninspired to the point I lost all touch with even documenting the beauty around me. Did I want it to become a food blog? Did I want to conceptualise and write solid articles? But why do that when I could just pitch to magazines?

Well, my journaling story and being cuckolded by depression and anxiety have answered all of my questions for me. I have been trying to recover using so many means from the outside, because I felt like healing from within is useless and overrated. I felt like mindfulness, yoga and meditation were all band-aids and ways to trick myself into recovery. Every time I felt something “strange” happen, which looking back were mini revelations that I suppressed because I wasn’t taking myself seriously, I would stop and start scrolling through Instagram.

How fucking toxic?

Work, gym, home, friends and repeat. My only real sanctuary was writing in my diary, which in all honesty, I would only do when things got too much. It was temporarily therapeutic, but did nothing for me in the long run because I was irregular. I mean, who has time to write two pages a day about how shit life is?

It wasn’t until last month I was with a friend, her niece and her sister. The niece got restless so we took her outside and ended up in Waterstones. There we saw a one line a day journal, which my friend’s sister has and she started to talk about how amazing it is. You have one page for one day, enough for five years. You fill in the year and write a memory. I got curious. I then saw a similar one in which you answer one question per day; so being indecisive, I got both.

I usually write before bed, which forces me to have a good enough bedtime routine so I’m not too exhausted to write. It’s as much of a must as removing my makeup.

The notepad below is my diary I’ve had for years and it’s the one I’m hardly regular with. It’s more of a vent book. Being a writer, I undoubtedly have a crazy amount of notebooks lying around, so yesterday I decided to rip out the used pages of the watermelon and coconut one (which I initially used when I was doing vox-pop interviews for work) and turn it into my mantra book.

One mantra per page and the rest of the page, I elaborate with bullet points, other quotes, Qur’an verses, etc.

I have been journaling daily for a month now and I find that even though I only write a few lines a day, my mind is less cluttered. I’m able to think. I’m able to meditate and I’m unafraid of my own thoughts when doing so because at least I know I can figure them out after. My mind re-arranges itself and I affirm and assert through my writing.

With my mantra book, so far, I’ve been trying to advise myself through either quotes I’ve already heard or read, or stuff I’ve made up alone. I realised very recently that I have an attachment problem, so I used it to project the attachment onto myself instead. I’m using it to become my own self-love coach.

There are so many ways to journal – usually, do what your soul needs. Do you need to vent? Do you need to have a journal for a thought which you unpick daily/weekly to see how it develops? Do you want to compare and contrast with five year journals that you can use as a time capsule? Do you want to journal your goals? Your recovery? No one can tell you how to do it. It’s your own story that you’re writing for yourself, and will look back at for yourself.

Pop into Waterstones or stationary stores that do journals and try to find a customised one. Or just look around on Amazon. A simple Google search does the job with different ideas for a blank journal, or structured journals like the five year Q&A one I have. I’ve even seen a journal for those who are experimenting with the law of attraction.

Here are some titles and themes – you can either buy specialist journals or use your own notebook and turn it into a themed journal:
– 52 Lists for Happiness by Moorea Seal
– Good Days Start With Gratitude by Pretty Simple Journals
– Five Year Memory Journal by Sterling Publishing Co Inc (I found this on Urban Outfitters website)
– Do One Thing Every Day That Makes You Happy: A Happiness Journal By Robie Rogge and Dian G. Smith
– Diet journals
– Exercise journals
– Prayer journals, rather than writing about what you’re anxious about, turn it into a prayer. Pray for your broken heart to be mended, get fit, etc
– Picture scrapbook – either draw or print photos out and write underneath
– Song lyric journal – write one lyric that relates to you and elaborate
– Self love/confidence journal – write one thing that you like about yourself and elaborate
– Or just old fashioned venting in a notebook

THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ABSOLUTELY ENDLESS! I would say take your time, but it’s only journaling. Just do what feels right in the moment and keep it up. You’ll find that going with your gut is the best way. Deep down, we all know what we need. Best thing to do is to ask yourself what you feel lacking in your life and do something about it. I started the mantra journal when I needed guidance.

Good luck and God bless.

xox

يقين – yaqeen – a word which has no real translation in English.

It’s a cross between certainty and conviction. It’s like taking a blind, yet somehow calculated leap of faith. In Islam, when we pray, we pray with a sense of yaqeen, knowing that God will answer our prayers. He is there, he is listening and we will get what we want, even if it’s not in the way we imagine.

This notion can sometimes be a daunting one when coupled with a stubborn demeanour. We want something, we want it now and God will give it to us for as long as we pray for it and stop at nothing to achieve it.

We forget life doesn’t work out this way. We’re imbeciles, to say the least. We lock ourselves in our dungeon of desire, where we allow dreams to rob us from very grim realities in front of us. We use yaqeen as a shelter from the truth.

“It will happen, I know it will happen. I prayed for it to happen and I’m certain God will make it happen and God will reward me for having faith in him.”

The tides start to turn against you, everything you do in obtaining this gem of a prayer seems to be faltering, you’re finding yourself forming an uphill struggle and you even lose yourself in trying to get this prayer answered. You become someone else; even do things you never thought you’d do.

This is not yaqeen, it’s a masked addiction.

To pray with yaqeen is to be able to let go. To be able to see the bigger picture. To know when your heart is so attached to something that your ontology is drastically skewed by an air of disillusion. Yaqeen is not an excuse to hold on, it’s to give you the courage to let go.

It’s hard. It’s hard to admit that we were once wrong. It’s hard to come to the reality that our dreams may not be materialised. It’s hard to wake up and fix our mistakes.

Over the years, I learned that praying and acting with true conviction, with true yaqeen, means to face tough choices and make them. To pop your bubble and leave your comfort zone.

Be prepared to break your own heart and to realise people whom you may care about may not feel the same way.

Swallow your pride by putting yourself in a risky situation and cry as you escape what could have been a cycle of toxicity. You’ll thank yourself later.

If the risk proves that things are going right, thank yourself regardless.

Either way, rest assure. It will be okay.

Alhamdulilah.

at ab felA
Selling dreams of sultry surroundings
Sordid coffee
Scandalous serenity
Of the silenced voices
Within the locutions that have constrained my fading Arabic tongue

Squiggles
Vowels
Seens س and sheens ش
Leave nostalgic backdrops
Oh,
To fluently embrace the outcasts of the old Middle East

Silent reconnections
Of sepia screams
Unwrapping rebellions
In old texts that mama and baba would never let us read.

Alef ا
ba ب
ta ت

NOTE: This is re-published because there have been some difficulties in people accessing the original article on Middle East Monitor. Click here for the original.

Eating disorders have for long haunted the lives of girls and women all over the world. The thought of a girl as young as 11 scrutinising herself and starving herself is no longer seen as farfetched, but more of a sad reality that millions are forced with. In the Middle East, however, while girls and women are routinely scrutinised about their weight and the way they look in general, there is little awareness of the extreme lengths in which girls and women take to reach these standards of beauty.

The amount of studies on eating disorders in the Middle East is shockingly disproportionate to the actual effect of eating disorders within the region. Like with most mental illnesses, eating disorders are considered a taboo within Arab communities. However, the obsession with weight and scrutinisation of the appearance of girls and women are overly discussed. Girls and women are often forced to listen to vindictive comments about themselves and deal with the mental scars that follow, but are shunned when they suffer as a result of them.

 

In 2013, a study in the Zayed University in the UAE found that 75 per cent of female students were unhappy with their bodies and almost a quarter were at risk of developing disorders. The experts who conducted the studies largely blamed “Western ideals and beauty standards”.

“To be honest, I blame both Western and Arab standards of beauty,” Samira, not her name, a former eating disorder patient from Saudi Arabia told MEMO.

“Growing up, I suffered from an eating disorder that was caused by two things; one was my sudden exposure to Hollywood after having been monolingual for the first 13 years of my life. The second was my brother marrying a woman who was very Arab, not influenced by the West at all, but had an obsession with perfection.”

“She bullied and harassed me a lot about my body growing up,” she said.

“People don’t understand that eating disorders are a psychological issue, not only physical. They assume it’s a choice, which is completely sad,” Dana Al-Jawini, also from Saudi Arabia told MEMO. She recently opened up about the death of her sister at the age of 22 after battling with anorexia.

Extreme procedures

Taken to extreme forms, methods of weight loss are becoming more popular in the Arab world. More women are resorting to procedures to lose weight, such as jaw tightening to prevent women from eating, or injecting botox into the stomach to trick the individual’s brain into thinking they are full.

“It is very safe and can even be used to maintain your weight,” said Dr Nader Saab. He is one of the most famous plastic surgeons in Lebanon and among the prime instigators of the procedure. He has even said this in a video advertising the procedure, claiming injecting botox into your stomach has “zero side-effects”. Unsurprisingly, he made such claims with no scientific backing.

Still, self-starvation and bulimia remain very common, especially among teenage girls. A study conducted in Jordan in 2014 and which surveyed students between the ages of 18-27 showed that 71 per cent have skipped at least one meal and 86 per cent believe women in Jordan struggle with body image. Some 72 per cent believe eating disorders among women are a problem in Jordan, however only 18 per cent felt adequately informed about eating disorders.

Arab women fight back

Despite patriarchy and stigmas surrounding eating disorders and mental health in general, Arab women refuse to give up on fighting for their voices to be heard and for their struggles to be known.

“We definitely need to be outspoken,” Dana said. For her, it was her personal experience that encouraged her to come forward. “I couldn’t sit and keep quiet about what happened to my sister because I don’t wish it upon anyone.”

Dana is a staunch believer in women supporting other women to remedy the problem.

If someone sees a friend or a sister or even a stranger going through something like this I think it’s our duty as Arab women to speak out.

For Samira, it was making new friends that inspired her to embark on the road of body-positivity. “I met new people, made new friends who helped me change my perspective on what it means to be alive,” she explained.

“Weight loss in general in the modern Arab world is praised and no one stops to think of how and why someone lost weight,” she added. “You realise as you’re healing, there is just so much more to the human experience than all of this.”

Sara Sherbaji, a mental health campaigner from the UAE is currently working with a team to establish mental health provisions in the Arab world. She and her team are currently producing a documentary on mental health in the region and view the topic of eating disorders as a part of a larger stigma on mental health.

“We want to establish a platform that will be up at all times on all days to support people with mental illness and offer both education and links to professional services. We’re currently working with a team of professionals and an established clinic here to see this through,” she told MEMO.

Her team is also trying to initiate a year-long campaign on mental health in the UAE, which is something relatively new. “Our main concern is that we have very short campaigns in the country,” Sara said. Despite this, she spoke of the support she is receiving, and that one of the top English-language news outlets in the UAE has repeatedly featured them and their campaigns.

While there remains a long battle in destigmatising mental health and eating disorders in the Arab world, Arab women are refusing to stay silent. Their fighting spirit is ignited by a love for justice and a need to overcome cultural setbacks, which can only be done through unity. By supporting each other and listening to one another they are slowly but surely instigating change within their communities.