Burning Beneath: Author Blog

I keep thinking about how strange memory is. Two people can live through the same family, the same years, and still carry completely different versions of what happened. Some people remember full scenes. Some remember only feelings. And some, like me, are left trying to understand the blank spaces. Lately, I’ve been talking to family members in a deeper way, not just as relatives, but as people…

The weather is nice and sunny, and that is always my favourite time to get things done. It wakes something up in me. My mind starts overflowing with ideas, projects, plans, and visions of everything I want to finish. I can already see it all done in my head before I even begin. Lately, that has meant finishing the electrical setup in my van, which thankfully, I have done. But doing work like…

Yesterday I saw a clip of a puppet. A fabric puppet with a wooden head. No facial expressions. No visible feelings. Nothing in its face that should have made me feel anything so deeply. And yet it did. In the clip, the puppet notices the strings attached to its body. Then slowly it follows one of them upward, tracing it from its arm until it finally comes face to face with the one controlling…

I think it is okay to just say that. I am here, and I have nothing to say. I am just here. My mind is still moving, but the words are not coming. Maybe this is a pause. Maybe this is a small kindness after restless nights, bad sleep, and too much looking inward.

Grief is not always about losing a person. I felt this deeply after watching The Madison. On the surface, it was a story about a woman grieving the death of her husband, and the love they shared. But what it stirred in me reached somewhere else entirely. While I was watching, the feelings came so strongly that I could not fully hold them. I only wrote down a few notes so I could come back to…

Lately, I have been wondering why I notice every small feeling in my body now. Is it age making me more aware of what my body is doing? Or has life simply slowed down enough for me to finally sit with what was always there? Maybe my body was always speaking. Maybe I was just too busy to hear it. My first panic attack changed everything. At the time, I did not know it was a panic attack. I…

The other day while watching a show, I noticed something in myself that made me pause. There were two scenes that felt very similar. In one, two men were sitting together talking about life. In the other, two women were doing almost the same. The setting was calm, the conversations were thoughtful, and yet my reaction to each scene was completely different. While watching the two men, I felt…

There has been a strange silence around my phone these past few days. Not just for a moment. Not just for a few hours. For a while. I have been staying in more. Keeping to myself more. Stepping away from people more. Slowly, I am starting to go out again, but something has shifted in me during this quieter stretch, and I noticed it clearly today. For the first time, when I opened my eyes in…

Today marks a big step toward what I have always dreamed of. Today marks a milestone. Today marks the birth of something I have always believed in. Today, Burning Beneath Foundation has officially been incorporated in Ontario as a nonprofit organization. This is more than paperwork. This is the birth of a dream. My dream. My passion. A dream built to help people, help community, and help…

There was a moment today that stayed with me longer than it should have. A simple post, asking for one word to describe someone. And I couldn’t do it. I never could stick to limits like that. Even as a child in school, when they gave us two pages or a word count, I always went over. Not to show off, it just felt unnatural to stop when I still had more to say. And thinking back now, I…

There comes a moment when exhaustion speaks louder than hope. Not the kind of tired that sleep can fix, but a deeper fatigue, the kind that settles quietly inside after chasing something for far too long. After reaching forward again and again, only to feel the same thing happen every time. Like holding sand in the palm of my hand. No matter how tightly my fingers close around it, the grains…

Today I feel romantic. Not the kind of romantic that comes from being with someone. The other kind. The one that builds quietly inside you when there is no one there to receive it. I don’t think it’s manifesting someone. It’s more like something inside me trying to breathe. A kind of energy that has been held back for too long. Because there is a part of me that wants to love someone with…

Lately I have been confronting something inside myself. One of those moments where I stop, step back, and start looking at my own patterns with complete honesty. Not blaming anyone else. Not trying to justify things. Just looking at myself and asking questions that are not always comfortable. I have realized that sometimes I settle for what is simply in front of me. Not because it is what I…

I was watching a Ramadan series today. One of those Kuwaiti shows that take place in the 1970s and 1980s. I always find myself drawn to them because they reflect a different time and a different social world that am trying to understand as a grown woman. In one of the scenes, a young woman risks her reputation just to ride in a car with the young man she loves. Something so simple carried…

I have been going through a dating app, scrolling through faces. Endless faces. Angles, poses, filtered moments frozen in time. My finger running over the X so fast it almost became second nature. So many strange things appear on that screen. I find myself wondering why someone would portray themselves in such a way, or describe themselves the way they do. Some profiles are extremely…