Rania Awaad – Do I have to interact with harmful family

			How does one cope with their akhira? with Allah subhanho wa taala? If they forgive the family
members who have wronged them, but do not want to be in their presence, how do you cope with family
members who genuinely feel they have not wronged anyone play the victim and believe all your
hardships are because you set clear boundaries. I have heard that if someone breaks, family ties,
all their obligatory deeds and extra deeds will not be counted. And I want to have a relationship
with Allah because of His mercy, but I'm also scared of His wrath. Yeah, I appreciate this question
very much. And certainly, it's one that I find that comes up quite a bit actually in counseling. And
		

			what happens when you have in you know, in our field, we call them interpersonal relationships with
people who are, you know, loved ones of yours, family, members of yours, blood kin of yours, that
have transgressed or have, you know, stepped over a balance that are not appropriate, and may not
even be able to see that that's the case. And then there's a question of, you know, in Islam,
there's all this focus on salinity, right, kind of these blood relationships that tie us together.
And I'll share with you something that I loved, from hearing from my teachers on this concept of
salinity. And what they're talking about these kind of like these, these ties, limitless slot, what
		

			is a slot? It is a connection or a tie? And I'm answering the last part of the question first, I
believe, but bear with me, this concept of a Scylla, or the connection, when you're saying, to break
the ties, which really is what allows patata commands us not to do, it has to do with think about a
connection right for you to separate his complete and full sever. And when you do that,
purposefully, and you do that,
		

			you know, whether it's right or wrong, but you actually completely and fully sever, this is where we
start getting into some of the issues related to the, you know, Pata ROM or it's basically cutting
the ties. And in this case, if you are somebody who, you know, I tell people that I counsel all the
time, if you have somebody in your family that has been that has done something egregious, that's
really difficult. There is nothing in Assam that prove that tells you that you must be able to be in
their company and spend all this time with them at all. Actually, in fact, what Islam tells you to
do is not to put yourself ever in a place in which you're going to be demeaned.
		

			And so what is that? Where does that leave you? How do you kind of balance the two things? Well,
part of it is if you are not the one to severing the ties, and you know what that means to keep a
connection, literally, literally keep the Sunnah as a connection. And what that literally sometimes
could look like is, you know, Saddam aneko.
		

			Or, you know, Barack, Ramadan, Mubarak, that is keeping a connection at its bare minimum. And in
that way, you haven't separate the types. But you've also protected yourself from the harm of this
person that has been continuously harming Lee, because the law has told you on the other side of it,
right, just as he's told you don't sever ties, he's also told you do not put yourself in harm's way.
		

			And so there is a balance, it's a fine balance, it is one that you have to kind of like weigh, but
you can actually do this. And if somebody else severs the ties that's not on you. As long as you've
tried, you give the sit down, you try you pick up the phone once a year, right, you try. And so in
this is where I would actually beyond what I've just said here, and I would really like to see what
Dr. Shadi will share too. This is where I often say to people look, if what I'm explaining,
		

			like, kind of, theoretically makes sense. But you're like, I don't know how to actually put this
into practice. This might be a moment of really turning to ourselves and saying, you know, to the
earlier verses I was mentioning about seeing the use of and self advocacy. This is where it might be
time to actually essentially advocate for yourself and say, I need some extra help with this. And
there's a reason why there are professionals who are trained in family relations are who are trained
to help people with interpersonal relationships that have been disrupted, people that have
transgressed and have done things that are inappropriate to help not just help you kind of move
		

			forward in your own life but even Islamically integrate, how do you then cope with some of these
things, move forward healthy in a healthy way, and be able to be able to see that person in a family
setting and not completely kind of break down and meltdown when you see them either. So I hope
inshallah that kind of gives us the the impetus to say look, we should get help on we need the help
around these things. You mentioned in your bio, actually, you also help with the marathon marathon
Foundation, right? So a lot of that is just like if people you have the moment and time those who
are asking these questions because a lot of you are asking similarly phrased questions about
		

			forgiveness, family,
		

			mental health issues in the community in yourself, I would definitely reach out to Dr. Rania through
morristown.org. There's also wonderful resources on their website that you can definitely check out.
It's not something that can be easily answered in one session.
		

			In, but it was beautifully phrased after all it is Apollo hidden Dr. Sheldon anything additional to
add a little
		

			nugget that people could always keep in mind is that you're not allowed to break ties but you are
allowed to avoid harm. And you have to find you have to do both. You're you don't break the tie.
That means like Dr. Ahn, you said
		

			A salaam and
		

			some connection every once in a while but you are allowed and Shinya to avoid harm.
		

			If I'm going to be made fun of it, this gathering,
		

			I could leave early, I could not go at all I could just call in sick or something like that. So you
have to find the way to do that. And that's why again, we mentioned earlier that whenever things are
relative, you always want to ask the people of knowledge that you live with in your time in place.
This is where the best because these are going to be judgment call scenarios, not rulings. There's a
difference between judgment call scenarios and rulings. You're not going to find the answer in a
book. That's why in our religion requires human contact.
		

			Right so that you can ask those judgment call questions