To be honest, I wasn’t expecting the deep, specific, personal, wide-ranging guidance that you’ve been sharing, in response to my query about what helps you get through hard times.

Four days were packed with some of the most serious somber issues I’ve ever faced—and some of the most joyous simple moments I can remember. Isn’t that life. The beautiful and the cruel, the light and the weighty, the happy and the sad all wrapped inextricably together.

It’s been a difficult few weeks. As the focus of my writing is sharing our personal stories, I wanted to let you know about what I’ve been facing.

Who knew that one day I would become a storyseeker and “only connect” would become my mantra.

Abderrahim caught sight of the Arabic tattooed on Zayd’s biceps; I whispered to him to cover it up …

Loss cannot be expressed with a concise, terse number, no matter the number of digits it contains. Each person lost is a life story.

It’s hard to write a ‘humanKIND’ newsletter when we are witnessing daily acts of inhumanity. Perhaps what I can offer is a place of refuge—a place to gather to dare to hope, as we continue to agitate for peace.

It was a challenging summer, mainly with health issues—my father-in-law’s, my mom’s, my own. But it was an unexpected trip at the end of the summer that helped me put things in perspective.

My father-in-law was always a man of few words. But even without words, his presence was felt in any situation, through his dignity, solemnity, and elegant demeanor.

Elyas and Latifa had been wanting to have us over for an Afghan lunch for months, as a gesture of gratitude to KindWorks for setting up their apartment when they first arrived in the U.S

It is so meaningful for me to receive your messages on how a particular story I shared moved you. Some of you even share your own personal stories in response

Dr. Yusef Salaam is one of the most graceful and inspiring people I’ve ever met. Given what he’s gone through—in 1989, when he was just 15, he was tried and convicted in the “Central Park Jogger” …

I’ve followed Amena Khan, a UK based social media content creator and presenter, on Instagram for years and I appreciate her openness in talking about some of the hard issues that our community doesn’t open up about sufficiently.

“One particular thing that Dad taught me and that I think about often is both his example and advice to view people as three dimensional and to always look for the good in them.”

“My father taught me from a very young age to question everything, to be both curious and skeptical, to take nothing on blind faith, and to relish every challenge and objection,” said journalist Mehdi Hasan.

I remember Ramadans as a teenager in our Tenafly home, you’d try and wake me up for sehri (pre-dawn meal); some mornings I’d make it downstairs, but typically I’d fall back asleep and you’d come up with a bowl of cereal and banana so I could eat something before it was too late.

I’m not sure how the conversation with the Pakistani High Commissioner in London started with my telling him the story of how Arif and I first met and he poured the whole bottle of chilli pepper into the curry he was cooking—not the usual way to start a formal meeting with a high-level diplomat you’re meeting for the first time!

My dad bought this figurine from his family’s auction house in Kolkata when he was maybe 18 or 19. Why did this piece catch his eye?

Be present, take your time, enjoy the process, let life simmer, take a deep breath and cool it down, savor the results — and slurp as needed!

Whenever you came into the room to check on Arif, you stood by his bedside and placed your hand on his arm or held his hand in yours; that physical touch was so reassuring, even I felt it.