Love & Happiness by Yasmin Mogahed

Things fall apart. And they break sometimes. Like many of you, my journey hasn't always been easy. Pain is very real. And so is loss. Sometimes it's hard not to let the weight of what we carry—or the memory of what we've lost—take over. Many of us know the reality of struggle, and so many people suffer in silence. It's hard. It's hard not to give up when we face the repeated disappointments of life. Like some of you, I've known loneliness. I've known defeat. I've fallen many times chasing mirages, and broken many bones making castles in life's fading sands. Sometimes, all it took was one solid wave to destroy what I had spent years building. So I decided to give it a voice. All of it: the tears, the pain. And the lessons. The things I saw and learned and gained along my life path needed a voice. I wanted to give back, in hopes of helping myself and others survive. But then it wasn't just about surviving. I didn't just want people to survive inside their storms. I wanted people to thrive inside their storms.And so I wrote, as I walked through my own. The words found in this book became my voice and my letter to the world. They became my deepest attempt to, not just pick myself up, but others along the way. I wrote because, just as we will fall in life, so will we rise. That's the thing about this world. It never gives us only one kind of path. There is pain. Yes. And loss. And even darkness. But there is also light. There is hope. There is beauty. And there is also love and happiness.

Speaker Bio - Ustada Yasmin Mogahed

Yasmin Mogahed has just launched her brand new book, Love and Happiness, which is available at today's event, along with her best selling book, Reclaim Your Heart, which has received international acclaim. Yasmin is currently an instructor for AlMaghrib Institute, a writer for the Huffington Post, an international speaker, and an invited lecturer at Oxford, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and many other universities around the world. She received her B.S. Degree in Psychology and her Masters in Journalism and Mass Communications from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After completing her graduate work, she taught Islamic Studies and got heavily involved in community youth work. She later served as a writing instructor at Cardinal Stritch University and a staff columnist for the Islam section of InFocus News. Follow Yasmin online for more of her writings and lectures.