The Whirling Leaf Letter
Reflections written in real time on faith, womanhood, and the quiet return from doing into being.
A few favorites from the Letter live here. New reflections arrive in your inbox weekly.
These reflections are original works by Madina and Whirling Leaf and are shared with care.
Please do not reproduce or republish without permission.
beyond the bio: who are you beyond your roles?
Set aside your title, your roles, and your résumé, and finish this sentence: I’m ______.
different, but still the same?
Returning to yourself isn’t going back to who you were. It’s meeting who you are now, and saying, “Oh, there you are.”
the grief beneath the carrying
Some of what we call exhaustion may be grief we haven’t named.
on tending rather than fixing
Somewhere along the way, we began treating ourselves as problems to solve rather than people to listen to.
the wound is not my address
Sometimes healing isn't about changing the story. It's about no longer living inside it.
the day I put the world down
On the Day of Arafah, with nothing to organize and nowhere else to be, I put the world down and remembered I was never meant to hold it all.
living inside an answered prayer
We learn how to carry our hopes, but we don’t always learn how to receive them.