We Are Not Our Parents

DAILYREFLECTION

For many of us, the story of our parents is complicated. One parent might have had to unlearn a harsh upbringing and try to be the gentle mother or father they never had. A grandparent who was once distant with their own children might soften and pour love into you. Sometimes you can almost see them trying to repair the past through the way they hold a grandchild.

Sometimes your parents’ childhoods were complete opposites. One grew up in chaos, one in calm, yet both found their way to Allah through very different roads, and then to each other. You are the meeting point of those journeys.

Childhood as a Second Womb:

In many ways, childhood is a second womb. Inside the first, your body was formed. Inside the second, your personality, habits, and emotional reflexes take shape. That “second womb” is almost always a mix of good and bad.

There might have been moments that still hurt to remember. There were also moments of quiet mercy that you may have forgotten. A hand that held yours. Someone who stayed awake with you when you were sick. A meal cooked with worry in their heart.

It is important to be honest about real wounds. But it is also important not to rewrite the entire story as only trauma and erase every trace of care that was there when you were most vulnerable. Both can be true at once.

Making Peace With Imperfect Parents:

No parent is perfect. Some are deeply flawed. Some repent and grow. Others never do. Part of maturing is learning to name their shortcomings without letting resentment become your identity. You can say, “What they did was wrong,” and still choose not to carry hatred forever.

Your parents are your greatest influence, but you are not your parents.

• You do not get to automatically claim their goodness as if you earned it
  

• You also do not have to wear their mistakes like a label
  

You are responsible for your own character. You are answerable for how you respond to what you were given. You can start by embracing the God given qualities inside you. Some of them you saw clearly in your parents. Some of them you wished you had seen from them, so Allah planted them in you instead.

For The One Who Never Had That Parent:

Some people had a parent who was absent in every sense. Others were orphaned, abandoned, or raised by people who never acted like family. If that is your story, remember this: we are an ummah adopted by an orphan.

Our Prophet ﷺ never knew the warmth of a long life with his parents, yet Allah made him a mercy to the worlds and a father figure to an entire nation. In him, you have an example of the most tender, present, emotionally intelligent “parenting” even if your own parents failed you.

You are allowed to grieve what you did not receive. And you are also invited to build what you did not see, using the Prophet ﷺ as your model.

REFLECT ON THIS:

Where in our story with our parents do we feel invited right now to move from blame or denial toward a more honest, merciful response that brings us closer to Allah ﷻ?

^{Share your reflections in the poll at the end of the email.}

WATERMELONWATCH

• Ceasefire violations in Gaza have reportedly reached more than 500 incidents since the October truce began, with at least 347 Palestinians killed under the “ceasefire,” yet Palestinian media offices and rights groups continue to log every strike and press mediators to enforce real protection on the ground.

• Aid bottlenecks persist as Israeli authorities claim thousands of trucks are entering Gaza while the World Food Programme says only about half the needed food is getting in, even as UN-supported community kitchens and local volunteers now serve roughly 1.55 million hot meals a day and have reached over 186,000 families with food parcels.

• Health services remain overwhelmed, but four hospitals have reopened since the ceasefire and more than 160 patients have been medically evacuated, while child-protection teams are scaling trauma support, reuniting 166 separated children with their families and providing rehabilitation tools to wounded children.

• Learning spaces now host over 154,000 children in 303 temporary classrooms, and UNRWA’s digital platform reaches nearly 300,000 more, so even in tents and damaged buildings teachers keep lessons, drawings and stories going to give children a fragile sense of normal routine.

• West Bank raids have forced entire communities into lockdown with dozens injured and more than 160 people arrested in the Tubas area alone, while Save the Children and local NGOs work quietly in the background to provide remote schooling, psychosocial support and legal aid to families facing curfews, demolitions and fear.

QURANCORNER

Law (لَوْ) — If / If Only

Law is the word of imagined pasts and unreachable futures. In the Qur’an, it often comes from those who lost faith, who say “if only we had…” or “if we could return…”. It speaks from a place of regret. But the Prophet ﷺ taught us: “If” opens the door to Shayṭān. Because law looks back, while belief moves forward, trusting in what Allah chose.