I wrote my book “Soulful Sexual Health for Muslims” after 17 years of soul work. Before I could teach it, I had to walk it.

I’ve been sitting with something uncomfortable lately—something I didn’t expect to feel so strongly as I approached my book’s preorder date. Soulful Sexual Health for Muslims is the first of its kind, and that should feel exciting, right? And yet, as I think about how to share this with the world—how to promote it, how to invite people into its pages—I feel stuck. Not because I don’t believe in it. I do. I believe in it with every part of me. But because the usual approach to marketing a book doesn’t fit. I didn’t write this book from a place of strategy or sales funnels. I wrote it from the depth of my soul, from years of holding pain—mine and others’—and from a quiet, determined commitment to keep doing the inner work.

So the question I’ve been asking myself is: How do I promote something that isn’t just a book, but a reflection of my own journey?

The Soul Work Beneath the Surface

The truth is, I couldn’t have written this book without doing the work. And I don’t just mean the academic or professional training, or the hours spent in workshops or therapy sessions—though those were part of it. I mean the soul work. The wrestling-with-nearness-to-Allah work. The facing-my-own-shame work. The “Who am I to write this?” and “How can I not?” tug-of-war that has followed me for years. Soul work, to me, is not a vague or sentimental idea. It is rooted in compassion, self-accountability, the unfolding journey of the soul, and in our inseparability from Allah. These four values have quietly shaped everything I offer to the world, even when I didn’t yet have the language for them. And they’ve demanded of me not perfection, but presence. Not certainty, but sincerity.

A few months ago, my ontological coach, Parvez Khan, said something that landed with sacred clarity: that for me, being with what is hard leads to clarity about how to show up (i.e. the doing)—and that clarity leads to aligned results from Allah’s bounty. Be. Do. Have. Not the other way around. And that’s exactly what this book embodies. It came from being with what was hard. From letting my heart break open in the presence of clients’ unspoken pain. From honoring the grief of my own wounds. From unlearning the stories that told me I had to stay silent or small. From trusting that soulfulness is not a detour from professionalism—but the very thing that gives it depth and meaning. And the more I witnessed and worked on my own wounds with compassion, the deeper I could hold space for others from a place of lived wisdom. From being guided by Allah, even when it's painful.

Especially when it's painful.

What this work has taught me is that we don’t avoid what’s difficult—we learn how to stay with it. Soul work doesn’t demand that we push through discomfort or force transformation. It teaches us to slow down, to move gently, to pause when we want to run, and to meet our own resistance with honesty and tenderness. It’s never been about powering through—it’s about being present with what arises. And it’s not about changing the story we tell ourselves to something shinier or more palatable. It’s about developing the nervous system capacity, the spiritual spaciousness, to sit with what hurts. The sadness, the shame, the vulnerability we’ve spent years trying to outrun. Soul work doesn’t give us a different narrative. It teaches us how to stay with the truth long enough for it to transform us.

People sometimes ask me where my confidence comes from—how I speak, teach, or write with clarity. But the truth is, I never set out to be confident. I set out to be honest. And I’ve learned that confidence is not a personality trait or performance skill. It is the result of integration. It’s the quiet knowing that you are not separate from God. That even in your rawest moments, you are still being held. Confidence, for me, is what emerges when soul work ripens. When I’m no longer trying to perform clarity, but simply embody it.

A Journey Lived Before It Was Written

This inner work—this ongoing, often unseen, quiet, and difficult journey—has been with me for as long as I’ve been working professionally. I was 26 when I started my career in sexual and mental health, full of passion but often overwhelmed by how much emotion I felt in my work. At first, I didn’t understand it. I thought perhaps I was too sensitive, too porous, too deeply affected by the stories I was holding. But slowly, that confusion gave way to something else: the realization that my emotions weren’t a liability—they were a guide. A gateway. A signal that I was being invited deeper into healing, into presence, into authenticity. That to do this work with integrity, I would need to stay close to my own heart, no matter how uncomfortable that felt.

Now, at 43, I can say with certainty that this inner work—the spiritual, emotional, and soulful labor—has never stopped. It continues, and God willing, it will continue for as long as I live. Because I don’t believe we’re meant to arrive at some perfect state. We are meant to keep returning to what is real. What has shaped me most over these years hasn’t been degrees or trainings alone. It’s been the decision to meet struggle with curiosity, to stay when I wanted to escape, and to pave roads where there were none. It’s been the slow trust in what I knew to be true, even when I couldn’t explain why. And I certainly haven’t done this alone. I’ve been held by mentors, friends, therapists, teachers, and above all, by God. There have been so many moments when it would have made sense to quit—not just the work, but the quiet commitment to staying with myself. But I didn’t. And that is why this book could be born.

A few weeks ago, my Somatic Experiencing therapist said something that landed with the kind of truth that needs no elaboration: “Your emotions are what make you so good at what you do.” She’s right. My sensitivity has become a source of precision. My emotionality has become a channel for attunement, not just performance. The more I’ve accepted this as a gift rather than a flaw, the more I’ve come into alignment with how I’m meant to serve. This is what it means for me to Be, and from that place, to Do. And whatever I Have—including this book—is simply a reflection of that sacred order.

Why This Book Had to Be Written

Soulful Sexual Health for Muslims is available for preorder and will be published on August 20, 2025.

I often say Alhamdulillah, and I mean it. But I’ve also learned that gratitude doesn’t require me to downplay the work, the heartbreak, or the effort that shaped this offering. Gratitude can live right alongside labor and growth. So I say Alhamdulillah, and I also say: this book didn’t come easily. It came from years of showing up as a client, not just a therapist. It came from turning to Islamic tradition not just for knowledge, but for healing. It came from staying with my own edges until I could begin to write something that might reach another’s.

Years ago, I saw a deep gap in the field of sexual health. There were frameworks and resources, yes—but they felt fragmented. On one end were secular models sprinkled with Islamic references, often reducing sexual health to rulings or limited definitions of intercourse. On the other end were trauma-driven calls to reclaim sexuality through purely secular, pleasure-based frameworks—ones that centered liberation of the self but neglected the spiritual liberation from the lower self (nafs al-ammarah). Both paths missed something vital: the soul.

I’ve sat through workshops that were technically correct but spiritually vacant. I’ve watched as Islamic terms were used without anchoring in Divine proximity or the Quranic principle that “Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves” (Qur’an 13:11). Clients came to me holding pain that couldn’t be reduced to either rules or pleasure—they wanted compassionate witnessing. They wanted healing. They wanted to feel whole.

So I began asking: What would it look like to center the soul in sexual health? What if we could speak of sexual desire and sacred responsibility in the same breath? What if we accept that all of us as Muslims will experience what we now call trauma, but what our Islamic tradition refers to as struggles on the path to God? What if we could return to our tradition not to restrict, but to remember who we truly are? Soulful Sexual Health for Muslims is my answer. It’s not a replacement for fiqh, nor a substitute for therapy: It’s the holistic embodiment of theology, ethics, and spirituality. It’s an offering for those who want to understand their bodies, relationships, and sexual health from within their soul’s unfolding.

This is not a detached academic text, nor is it a generic self-help guide. It is steeped in lived experience, in spiritual roots, and in clinical insight. It is a bridge between worlds—of theology and therapy, of tradition and tenderness.

An Invitation to Walk Together

What makes this book different is not just what it says—but how it says it. Every chapter honors the reader’s dignity. It’s written with the intention to invite you inward, to offer companionship rather than instruction, and to reconnect you with the compassion of God. It draws from Islamic psychology, trauma-informed care, medically accurate sexual health content, and over seventeen years of walking alongside Muslims—myself included—through the silences, the shame, and the sacredness.

This book explores topics like abstinence, sexual intimacy, pornography, infertility, parenthood, and aging—not with formulas or fixes, but with soulful depth. I wrote it for the Muslim who feels alone in their questions. For the one who was told to stay silent. For the professional, educator, or parent who knows our ummah needs something deeper. Something that doesn’t bypass the soul, but begins from it.

So if this speaks to you—if you’ve been longing for something different, something rooted and real—I invite you to preorder Soulful Sexual Health for Muslims. It doesn’t promise easy answers. But it does offer a path. One that is grounded in the Islamic tradition, guided by soul work, and open to transformation.

I’ll be sharing more in the coming weeks—not just about the book, but about the soul work that continues to shape it. I hope you’ll walk with me.

If you feel called to begin this journey, you can preorder my book here. Share it with those you love, those you work with, or simply keep it beside you as a companion on your own healing path. May it serve you in the ways you most need—and may it bring you closer to Allah, through the sacred terrain of your soul.