Why I Went Back to School During Maternity Leave and What I Was Really Building

In 2018, I went on maternity leave. And instead of resting, which is what everyone around me assumed I was doing, I went back to school for my Master of Social Work.

At the time, I explained it to people in practical terms. The timing made sense. I would not have to take additional time away from work. The program was structured in a way that allowed me to manage it alongside being a new mother, at least in theory. It was the logical next step in my professional development.

But looking back now, I understand what I was actually doing. I was building something. I just did not yet have the full picture of what it was going to be.

By 2018, I had already spent over seven years working in community-based settings across Toronto. Seven years of sitting with women through some of the hardest, most tender moments of their lives. Seven years of watching what happened when a woman finally found a space where she could be honest about what she was carrying. And seven years of also watching what happened when that space was not quite right, when a client had to spend left sessions feeling misunderstood or judged and  when the framework being applied simply did not fit the life being lived.

I had watched brilliant, resilient women walk into therapy rooms and spend enormous amounts of emotional energy translating themselves. Their culture. Their faith. The particular dynamics of their family systems. Why they had made the choices they had made. What it meant to be a Black Muslim woman navigating Canadian institutions that were not designed with them in mind. And only after all of that translation and justification and context-setting could anything that resembled real therapeutic work begin.

Every time I witnessed that, something in me tightened. Because the work of translation is exhausting. And it is work that should not have to happen before someone can access support.

I knew there had to be a better way. And I knew, somewhere underneath the busyness of new motherhood and placements and night feeds and the particular sleep-deprived fog of that season of life, that I was going to be part of building it.

When I came out the other side of my MSW, something had crystallized. I knew what I was building and exactly why I was building it. Ebla Therapy exists because the space I wanted to offer my clients did not exist yet, not in the precise form I knew it needed to take. Virtual therapy for Muslim women in Ontario rooted in genuine cultural understanding, trauma-informed care, and the deep knowledge that comes from being a Black Muslim woman in this country myself.

A space where you do not have to translate yourself. Where your faith is not a complication to work around but a central part of who you are and therefore a central part of the work. Where being a Black woman, an immigrant daughter, a Muslim, a mother carrying more than anyone around you fully sees, is already understood before you say a word. Where the fifteen minutes you would otherwise spend explaining your family structure can be spent actually working through what that family structure has cost you.

I built Ebla during one of the most demanding seasons of my own life, and I think that is worth sharing.

At the time, I was navigating new responsibilities, stretching myself in ways I had never been stretched before, and trying to make sense of who I was becoming. Ebla was built alongside all of that. In the early mornings, the late nights, and the small pockets of time I could find between everything else life was asking of me.

Looking back, I realize that most meaningful things are not built when life is calm and perfectly organized. They are built in the middle of real life, while we are still growing, learning, and finding our footing.

I built it because I knew it mattered. Because I could see, so clearly, the women who were waiting for exactly this kind of space, even if they had not yet found the language for what they were looking for.

This practice is for you. It has always been for you. And whenever you are ready, the door is open.