Becoming
Give truth to yourself, to gain truth.
There was a phase in my life when everything familiar seemed to come undone—illness, the loss of cherished work, a move across countries, and the unravelling of a marriage. The ground beneath me was shifting, and I no longer knew who I was within.
I shaved my head. It felt as though I was shedding not just hair, but the weight of femininity as it had been handed to me—the expectation to be pleasing, soft, and composed. I felt I couldn’t handle all that my sensitivity as a woman brought into my heart.
Around that time, I encountered a word that liberated me: Crone. The crone—wise, ageing, reclusive—stood in stark contrast to the familiar archetypes of the desirable maiden or the selfless mother. In seeking the crone, I found breathing space. I stepped away from the quiet pressure to perform allure, constantly reinforced by the images and narratives around us. I began to grow inward—detached, reflective, and quietly independent.
For much of my life, I had felt that women are taught to be agreeable—to soften their edges, to not intimidate with clarity or conviction.
But that, too, was not a final destination. I have since moved into motherhood, and often find myself slipping into childlike wonder. This is what I have come to understand: a woman’s life is not linear. It does not have to follow society’s neatly defined decades and roles.
Today, I am a faithful Muslim, a mother, and an agent working to protect child rights—inhabiting my femininity with responsibility, not performance. The woman I became did not arrive—she remained after everything unnecessary fell away. What is really interesting was that what I learnt from the Crone phase which is something people say is “pagan” helped me later to be more and more a woman in peace in the world, seeking truth and validation only from Allah and not seeking gaze or validation from the world.
Febna Raheem ( Social Researcher, Public Servant)
