The girl who showed up anyway

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh,

If you'd like to hear this chapter read aloud in my voice, the audio is just below. You can listen while you read, or set the letter down
and simply listen. Either way, I hope it finds you well.

Before we go into chapter two, I want to pause for a moment.

Some of you wrote back after chapter one.
About the holding, about roles you didn't realize had quietly become the only thing you knew about yourself. I read every single one.

I'm not going to read them out loud what you sent me stays between us. But I want you to know that I read all of it.

Okay.
Let's continue.
Welcome back to From the Nest.

The girl who showed up anyway

I left my first school in 8th grade.

Not because I had to. Because the school I had grown up in was the one I loved, the one where every teacher knew my name, I left it. And walked into a building that had no space for what I was.

The adjustment was hard. I won't dress it up. There was nepotism. There was partiality. The girl who had been chosen for everything was, suddenly, not chosen. I remember looking around and realising: the rules here are different. And they are not written down anywhere.

I still showed up.

Not because I had found some graceful acceptance. Not yet. But because something in me, stubborn and a little naive and refusing to quit, kept walking through the door even when the door hadn't been opened for me.

I loved participating. Every activity. Every opportunity. I wanted in. And I had to learn, slowly and sometimes painfully, that wanting in and being let in are two entirely different things.

Here is what I didn't understand then, but do now.

You can be the most capable person in a room and still be invisible. Not because something is wrong with you. Because the room has already decided what it's looking for, and you're not it. Not today. Not here.

I know you know this. And I also know that knowing something and feeling something are entirely different. Because every time they don't choose you, the job, the opportunity, the recognition, something small and quiet wonders if they're right. If the gap between what you know yourself to be and what they see is somehow your fault.

It isn't.

The school didn't fit me. I was not the problem.

And neither are you, in the space that isn't making room for you right now.

But here is what I want to say to you gently, as a friend, and as someone who has spent years trying to find mercy in places that held none:

“You're so busy, aren't you?
Trying to prove yourself to every person who has ever disapproved of you. To every teacher. To every figure who once told you, with their words or just their silence, that you were not enough. Or that you were too much.

And you're still carrying that. Still walking into rooms hoping this one will finally say: I see you. I choose you.

But some rooms will never say it. Not because you haven't earned it. Because they were never yours to earn.

Get up and look at yourself.

Look at your shadow weaving through the world by your side. Look at your reflection waking up with you every day. Look at your body that has carried you through the dark and through the light.

You are the only one who has been with you this whole time. Not the teachers. Not the rooms. Not the people you wanted so badly to hold you by the shoulders and say, ‘I'm proud of you’.

They're not here. But your Creator is. And He was never waiting for the room to choose you first.

The Lord of the worlds who did choose you, who fashioned you, exactly as you are, from nothing, and who will choose you every time. The Lord who is proud of you for remembering Him. Who says to His angels: ‘Look at my servant’.

He is above all others. And you are His.

So take yourself by the shoulders, look at your reflection, your shadow, and your body, and say to them: ‘I'm proud of you’.

And then stop proving yourself to the rooms. Prove yourself to the One who made you.

Because He already knew you would spin straw into gold.”

Your value is not determined by who chooses you.

Allah placed you in every room with a purpose. Not every room is your room. And some rooms you walk through not to become something there, but to become something by having survived it. By choosing dignity over bitterness. By staying curious when resentment would have been easier.

The room that didn't choose me was teaching me something the welcoming ones never could. It was teaching me to stop anchoring my worth to the room's assessment.

You are not behind. You are being shaped.

A small gift before you go; the reflection, the action, and something to carry with you are yours this week as a gift card. Download it below.

And one more thing: Is there a room you've been trying to earn that was never yours to earn? You don't have to say much; you can reply via email or comment below with what you want to say.

Until next Sunday,

Aiman Hafeez

The Rising Nest · A sanctuary for growth, protection, and clarity.