Relaunch

 

Hi! Welcome, or welcome back - if you're a returning visitor, let me explain what's happened here.

Let's start from the very beginning...

It was 2013. I'd been married for a few months, pregnant, and as of January, a new Muslim. All the big life changes happening in the span of 4-5 months. I had no-one in my circle who would understand my experience, so I turned to online communities, and somehow found this forum full of Poles interested in Islam. And would you believe it, there was someone from my town on there, so I made a couple of new friends who I had something in common with - both married to Muslim men, and one of them a Muslim herself.

One of these ladies had an established food blog at the time, and I casually mentioned that I used to blog in the past - I cringe at the very thought of my 15-year old self though - and I was actually trying to get back into it. With some encouragement, and after finding out that the blogging community in the UK was pretty active, I sort of decided on a niche, and picked a name.

This is how "Halal Mama" first came into existence.

At that point in my life, it was great. The name was reflecting me as a new Muslim exploring the halal food scene - recipes, restaurants, learning about ingredients to avoid and exploring new foods, and also as a soon-to-be mother. 

It worked for me for quite some time - I had a few posts on halal food that gained traction, in the way I wanted them to. My social media followers became this small community linked by joint interests, and I even made a real-life friend out of that. I even got to work with some great brands, trying new products and eventually landing some paid gigs.

But eventually it stopped working for me. When we moved to Manchester in 2018 I became a stay-at-home-mum, and over time I just lost myself. With that I lost the passion I had for the blog too.

Fast forward to 2023, I decided that enough was enough. I wasn't going to get my passion back by clinging on to the old, so I decided to get rid of "Halal Mama". I started with my Instagram, which is where I'm most active - luckily I was able to grab an username I wanted, so the first step was done. I'm yet to figure out a domain change, so you might be seeing the "halal-mama" address for the foreseeable, but it's no longer what the blog will be called. It's time to detach from branding myself just as a mum, and to be ME again.

Oh, I'm also that person who hates when things doesn't go perfectly, and constantly starts things from scratch, I obviously deleted or drafted all the old posts, so I could start all fresh away from the whole "Halal Mama" stuff - most of them were rubbish anyway, and the semi-decent ones will get updated, but there's a whole different range of topics I want to write about now.

So here I am, starting fresh after 10 years. Whether you stumbled across this as a new reader, or have previously connected with me - thanks for reading! More posts coming soon, but in the meantime you can read more about me HERE or use one of the social media buttons to connect (I'm mostly on Instagram)

Photo by Anete Lūsiņa on Unsplash