I Returned to NYT Modern Love to Talk Divorce, Marriage, and Gaza

Two years after my essay was published, the team at Modern Love invited me to join their podcast. This time, there was a new chapter to share.

I remember the summer Sania Khan was killed in Chicago by her raging ex-husband. It was an extremely upsetting story, and what got to me was that in the days before she was killed, she was sharing more about divorce on her social media as a way of helping to de-stigmatize it within the South Asian community.

Her story took me back to six years before then, when I had gotten divorced myself; I understood the stigma and shame she was talking about very well. And while I would never seek to draw a comparison about physical abuse and violence to my experience, it was her exploration of stigma and shame related to ending a marriage that I sought to give words to. I sat down and wrote and wrote: the editorial went to Muslim Matters, and the narrative essay was what I submitted to NYT Modern Love. (← paywall-free link).

I didn’t expect to hear back. The Modern Love column is notoriously difficult to get published in. Daniel Jones, the editor of the column, receives something like nine thousand submissions a year, and he selects maybe 0.5% of those for publication. In fact, I had submitted an essay years prior, where the story ended with me in Italy, single. It was rejected.

I’m also not a trained writer. I love writing, from the time I won 6th grade UIL in editorial writing and my stint in 8th grade newspaper, to the term papers I wrote for my Women and Gender Studies minor. I just never thought it was a subject I could actually pursue with any seriousness.

Three months after my submission, I got a response from Dan Jones saying, “Nice essay - I’d like to talk to you about it.” I couldn’t believe it. I was jumping up and down with disbelief, partly because of my achievement streak and imposter syndrome; this felt like the pinnacle for a writer—which I’d never called myself, which I’d never even believed myself to be. But Dan Jones at The New York Times was saying I was a writer–and that external validation said something to me in that time where I did my writing mostly in secret.

More than the proof of my abilities though was excitement about my work being out in the world: as a creator of any kind, isn’t it an incredible feeling to be able to share your creation?

But then my stomach immediately went to that shame place again. People were going to be reading the story of one of the lowest points in my life. The exposure, the vulnerability, the discomfort; it felt intrusive, yet I was the one that put it out there—I hadn’t thought anyone would actually see it.

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This winter, almost two years after the essay was published, the team at Modern Love reached back out to me to ask if I’d be willing to speak about the essay on the podcast. I hesitated; I didn’t want to appear like I was rehashing something that happened nearly nine years ago. Sometimes the end of a marriage has no victims nor villains; there is no blame, only learning. Yet stories like this also tend to bring out the vitriol in men who feel scorned and seek a place to vent their anger. However, I also hear from people who read the piece and can see themselves in it, and to know that it’s helped even one man or woman going through it feels worth it to share.

Women, in particular, bear the brunt of shame and stigma when it comes to divorce, and I feel that a personal story helps in whatever way to shift that narrative some. A woman who is left is assumed to have something wrong with her, and a woman who leaves is assumed to have something wrong with her. It is women who are told to “tolerate” and be “patient” far more than it is men who are told to be kind and responsible. Women who seek something in marriage are often pegged as “needy” or “difficult” or “high-maintenance” or “impossible to please.”

But the most significant evolution was that my story was no longer only about getting divorced and then married again. It had progressed in the last year, since the latest war in Gaza. It became a story about willing to lose the love you have found for a greater love: the love of God—and faith in Him, the love of humanity, and the love of the person you love.

In a far-ranging conversation about the marriages we see as children that we model ourselves after, ending a marriage that isn’t working, getting on and off the apps, finding your person, choosing to marry a second time, and then what it was like for my husband to leave for Gaza and be stuck there after the Rafah invasion, host Anna Martin got me talking. It was a change of pace from being the psychiatrist who is usually the one asking the questions and getting others to open up.

I appreciate the sensitivity toward and enthusiasm for my story. I also am grateful for the opportunity to share a Muslim love story on a show that doesn’t see many of them, and within our own community where we don’t often vocalize stories of marital love: of attraction (not just physical, but emotional), choosing a partner, and sustaining a bond of mercy and compassion. It was heartwarming even to hear our language, words like assalaam alaikum and alhamdulillah, included in the episode.

I’ll conclude with a quote shared with me about the ending of the episode: “The heart in its journey to God is like a bird. Love is its head, and fear and hope are its two wings.” - Ibn Qayyim

You can hear the episode at this link or below. If you have a chance to listen, I’d love to hear what you think (drop a comment below!).