Re-Evaluating Friendships from time to time is a healthy habit to create. It should become top priority when we begin questioning friends who do not mirror our happiness or when we begin to see unhealthy patterns that do not resonate to what we hoped for that friendship to be or grow into. And in today’s world, I strongly believe this applies to both physically or virtually because often time we invest equal amount of time in these relationships.

Understanding the fact that as individuals we are constantly growing, learning and most importantly evolving is key. Common grounds, values, thoughts, priorities are often changing within ourselves and in our lives therefore we can not expect to continue meshing with certain individuals the same way we possibly did the day we met them. We must always be ready to make changes when they need to be made.

Here is a clear example that took place within my own circle. I stop socially drinking alcohol cold turkey the day I converted to Islam. For some people that was hard to swallow and for others they respected it but lost interest in hanging out or continuing with our friendship and honestly today I am glad they walked away. I didn’t always feel this way but understood early on that everything was going to change. It was up to me to embrace those changes or try to cling on to them. Soon after that loss I began asking the Almighty to remove toxic, unhealthy people from my live and to replace them with people of jannah (paradise). So you see when someone walks out of my life or simply ends our friendship I partially see it as Allah (God) answering my prayer but most importantly I take it as His (swt) way of protecting me and my family.

I remember during the early stages upon converting a friend in Mexico asked me to have just one drink, a tiny bit. I said no thank you, that was not taken lightly, I was mocked and to some extent isolated. Culturely it is uncomprehensible that one can change so drastically over night. So you see our common ground ended immediately and some of those so call friends stopped engaging with me as well as some family members. Was it a painful, of course it was, losing people we love or folks we consider family is always painful. But it has been those type of painful learning experiences that have helped me to identify who I will allow into my inner circle, middle circle and outer circle, Alhamdulillah.

Last but certainly not least, remember, seasons change and so do we. Embrace the good when you feel it or see it and start letting go of anything else.

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