I have been trying to write this post for maybe three weeks.
I keep opening the draft, typing two sentences, then closing it.
Don't know why it feels so hard.
Maybe because a morning routine is such a personal thing. It's like showing someone your bedroom before you clean it.
But okay. Here it goes.
The Right Side Thing
My mother never explained why.
She just always said—right side first. Right foot, right hand, right everything. When I was small, I thought it was some kampung superstition.
Sorry, Mak.
Now I understand it is Sunnah.
Now I do it too, and my daughter Nadia—she is seven—does it without me telling her.
She just copies me.
Children copy everything; this is terrifying and beautiful at the same time.
The funny thing is, it works. Mentally, I mean.
Starting with an intention, even just a small physical intention like which foot touches the floor first, makes the whole morning feel different. It's less like you are just falling into the day, and more like you choose to start it.
I cannot explain this scientifically. Nor am I going to try.
Miswak
I have three miswak sticks in my bathroom. One in the cabinet, one near the sink, and one I don't know where it went.
I use them maybe... sometimes.
The taste is something I am still—look, I am working on it. Fourteen years as a Muslim and I am still working on the miswak taste. Don't judge me.
But the intention behind it, that I understand completely.
Cleanliness is half of iman.
The Prophet (peace be upon him) loved the miswak so much that some scholars say he used it before every salah. Every salah. And I can't even be consistent before Fajr. It is humbling.
What I do now is, even with a normal toothbrush, I make niyyah. I say bismillah. I think: this is Sunnah. And somehow, this small thought changes the quality of those two minutes. It's hard to explain, but it does.
Water Before Coffee (And This Is Hard For Me)
Okay, this one. This one I want to complain about first. I love coffee. Not in a casual way. In a deep, emotional way. A morning without coffee is—it's not a morning. It's a waiting room.
But drinking water first, sitting down, with the right hand, before anything else—this is Sunnah. And I do it. I do it even though the coffee is RIGHT THERE. I sit with my water, and sometimes I stare at the coffee maker and have a small internal conversation with myself.
But honestly, after the water, something shifts. The brain wakes up a little softer. Then the coffee tastes even better because you actually appreciate it. Maybe this is just psychology. Maybe it is barakah. Probably both.
My husband thinks I am strange for sitting alone with water in the dark kitchen at 5:30 am. He said this once, and I said, "Go back to sleep then," and he did.
Athkar—I Will Not Pretend I Do the Full List Every Day
There are apps for morning athkar.
Beautiful apps with Arabic text, translations, and little checkboxes. I have downloaded maybe four of them. I use them unevenly.
Some mornings I do the full morning athkar, all of it, properly, and I feel like I am glowing from the inside. Some mornings my toddler is already screaming by 5:45 am and I do three athkar in my head while making milk.
I feel guilty about this, but also—I did three. Three is not zero.
My favorite one, the one I never skip even on hard days, is "Allahumma bika asbahna wa bika amsayna" (O Allah, by You we enter the morning and by You we enter the evening). I say this at the kitchen window. The same window every morning. There is a tree outside, a big old tree; I don't even know what type. Every morning I say these words and I look at that tree and I think: that tree was here before me and will be here after me, and somehow we are both here right now in this same morning.
I know this sounds dramatic. I am a little dramatic. My family always says this.
A Slow Breakfast (And Why I Had to Wake Up Earlier for This)
For years, I made breakfast like I was being chased. Toast burning, juice spilling, kids eating while wearing shoes, me drinking cold coffee standing at the counter. This is not Sunnah. This is chaos.
The Sunnah of eating—sitting down, bismillah, right hand, eating together, not wasting—none of this can happen when you are running. So I started waking up fifteen minutes earlier. Just fifteen. Not one hour, not a big dramatic change. Fifteen minutes.
Now I fry an egg, and I watch the egg. I don't scroll. I watch the egg cook. The butter bubble.
The white part goes from clear to white. This sounds so boring when I write it, but in real life, it is—I don't know. Meditative? Is that the right word? There is probably a better word in Arabic, but I don't know it.
The food tastes different when you are calm. I said this to my sister, and she said, "No it doesn't, the food is the same food," and she is wrong. She is wrong, and I will not argue because she has never tried it properly.
The Days I Skip Everything
Some days, none of this happens.
The alarm fails, or the baby is sick, or I am sick, or I am just—not okay. And for a long time, I felt shame on these days. Like I failed the morning. Like the whole day was already ruined by 6:00 am.
I don't feel that way anymore. Not fully.
These habits are not a checklist. They are not pass or fail. They are more like—a path. Some mornings I walk on it properly, nice and steady. Some mornings I just stand near it. Some mornings I don't even know where it is. But it is always there. The path is always there.
My grandmother, she never missed her Fajr in her whole life as far as I know.
Never.
She prayed her sunnah prayers in the corner of her bedroom on a prayer mat with blue flowers. A very simple mat, nothing special. But I remember it so clearly. She never said to me, "You must do this, you must wake up early, you must be consistent."
She just did it. Every morning. Same corner. Same mat.
I don't have her mat. I don't have her consistency either, not yet.
But I have the memory of her doing it. And somehow that memory, it pulls me back every time I drift.
This post took me three weeks and forty minutes to write. Both things can be true.
