Ramadan Should Not Cause You Pressure or Make You Feel Stressed
As we know, our ibadah goals shouldn’t only occur during Ramadan. We should be implementing our worship on a regular basis and throughout the year. Ramadan is a time to intensify what already exists—not to suddenly begin everything at once.
Yet as a busy mom, I have noticed that the online sphere becomes extremely hectic in preparation for Ramadan. Everywhere you turn, there are schedules, challenges, reminders, and expectations. It makes a person feel super pressured, and you can easily lose your excitement and anticipation for the blessed month if you fall for all the hype.
Ramadan should not feel like a gigantic mountain you have to climb. Instead, it should be a beautiful time of the year to connect with your Lord and find tranquility.
The Unrealistic Ibadah Reset
In Ramadan, everyone aims to aspire toward all their ibadah goals, sometimes after lapsing for eleven months of the year! It’s ridiculous and unrealistic to start focusing on your worship goals during Ramadan only. Yes, worship should absolutely be intensified in Ramadan to reap the maximum rewards, but it should not just begin there.
Yet we enter the month hoping to suddenly accomplish things we have not built up toward.
In Ramadan we wish to attain goals such as:
Completing the entire Qur’an recitation (without having done it before).
Praying twenty rakats of tarawih each night (without having prayed sunnahs during the year).
Waking up for tahajjud and then suhur (and not catching up on sleep in the day).
Making extra duas and dhikr (when you haven’t practiced this habit during other months).
Being extra charitable and giving more sadaqa (when you’re out of practice).
Some of us even take it as a competition to surpass our previous year’s goals to feel more worthy the next year.
Subhanallah, when you really think about it, that is a heavy load to place on one single month.
The Pressure Beyond Worship
Never mind our ibadah goals. We also want to achieve high goals for our home and family.
Let’s spring clean my home.
Let’s deep-clean my kitchen and living room.
Let’s shampoo my carpets, dust everything, and declutter my cupboards.
Let’s decorate for Ramadan with banners, balloons, and trinkets because we’ve got to make it extra special for the kiddos.
Let’s use Ramadan charts and calendars and make candy bags and gifts for every day of the month!
Let’s make elaborate meal plans because, unfortunately, food tends to become super important in Ramadan when it should be the opposite.
Let’s host iftaars every weekend to invite all our family and friends.
Let’s go to the masjid for iftar and stay till after tarawih with our small kids, who are tired and have to go to school early the next day.
Let’s join Ramadan workshops and online classes and listen to every podcast we can find for ourselves and our kids.
We want to gain the maximum spiritual benefit—or so we think.
Just saying all this makes me feel overwhelmed, and I think Ramadan is a hectic month when it’s not.
So if that’s how you have been feeling, you need to reflect on why this is so and how you can change it.
Ramadan should be a month we look forward to. It should be a time of relief because we have less on our plates, and we’re able to connect more with our Lord and our families.
Ramadan is a Golden Opportunity
I do not deny that Ramadan is a golden opportunity to gain extra benefits, afterall:
The big shayateen are locked up.
Our rewards are increased.
We are motivated by the collective striving across the globe.
It is a blessed, barakah-filled month unlike any other.
Yet, many people don’t fulfill all the goals they set for themselves. They may not come close to accomplishing even half of them. And this, in reality, is truer for busy mothers.
The Struggle Mothers Feel
As a result, we fall into the trap of feeling disheartened, frustrated, and at a disadvantage. This could be because of our immense duties of having many kids, young kids, or heavy responsibilities in other areas of our lives.
We may watch our husband go to the masjid to pray tarawih in congregation. We see how he’s able to listen in peace to the beautiful recitation of the Qur’an by a renowned Qari in town, and we feel resentful.
We may hear of sisters who don’t have kids or whose kids have grown up sharing their accomplishments. We see them achieving so many ibadah goals, listening to that scholar’s talk, and joining that ustadha’s Ramadan challenge, and we feel resentful.
We remember the days before having kids, when we had so much time to pray into the night, make i’tikaf, and have peace to attain khushoo, and we feel resentful.
Life is so different after children, subhanallah. Everything seems tougher when kids come into the picture.
If you have young kids, there you are trying to pray, but your baby needs a diaper change badly. He or she is screaming while you are aiming to read one surah of the Qur’an. Your child is climbing on you and yanking your pen as you try to journal your duas because you can’t remember them after they go to sleep.
Your time is torn between cleanups and child-rearing, and you just feel defeated!
If you are a mom of older kids, you spend most of your day trying to keep your teens on track because now their sins are their own. By the time you wake them for suhoor, motivate them to do chores and schoolwork; keep up with prayers, read the Qur'an; and stay away from movies and video games, you are left exhausted and haven’t even done your own ibadah yet.
Of course, this happens outside of Ramadan, too. But it feels more pronounced in Ramadan because we know it is a wonderful opportunity that comes once a year, and we don’t know if we’ll see another one.
Everyone around us seems to be increasing their worship by vast degrees, at least from what we can see. And there you are, feeling like a bad Muslim because you’re struggling to fulfill your simple obligations.
What We Forget
However, Allah is the Most Merciful and the Most Gracious.
We as wives and mothers often forget that the time it takes to see to our husbands, raise our children, and clean our homes are forms of sadaqa. These responsibilities increase our spiritual degrees in ways we may never fully comprehend—degrees we may never have attained through other acts of worship alone.
Alhamdulillah, we should covet our roles with all our hearts because we ARE doing acts of ibadah when we are good wives, mothers, and homemakers.
The diaper changes.
The interrupted prayers.
The meals cooked.
The reminders given.
The patience exercised.
The exhaustion endured.
None of it is unseen by Allah SWT.
Perhaps our Ramadan does not look like someone else’s. Perhaps it is quieter, messier, interrupted, and imperfect. But that does not mean it is lacking in value.
Ramadan is not about performance. It is about sincerity. And sincerity can exist in a masjid filled with recitation, and it can exist in a kitchen filled with children.
If Ramadan feels heavy, it is not because you are failing. It may simply be that you are trying to carry expectations that were never yours to begin with.
May Allah SWT increase the parents and spouses of this ummah. May He strengthen us to fulfill the momentous task of raising the next generation. And may He allow us to see the immense reward hidden within the roles He chose for us, ameen.
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Salam, I’m Zakeeya!
I believe that making our homes a safe haven for our families, as well as being a wife and mother, brings us great blessings, contentment, and benefits to society as a whole. Since 2011, I've been dedicated to assisting Muslimas in finding tranquility in their roles, taking better care of themselves, and achieving inner peace. Our journey in this world is not an easy one, but I pray the tools and guidance I offer will help you face life's challenges with more gratitude and mindfulness. Join me as I share wifehood, motherhood, homemaking, and lifestyle solutions that make life more fulfilling for you as a woman! Read more about me here.
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