Review: Gathering Petals

Gathering Petals is billed as ‘The Spiritual Journal for the Creative Muslim Woman’. Put together by Nabila Ikram, this journal consists of 145 actual journal pages, a foreword and introduction and one simple rule – that there are none.

This journal is directed at women who are creative and enjoy being able to write or draw but don’t have the ability to commit to indulging that side of themselves for an extended period of time or perhaps while having the time, simply favour being able to use these little prompts and exercises as ways to exercise their creative muscles in yet another form.

I haven’t completed any of these prompts on paper at the time of writing this – I’ve flipped through the pages and looked at them all and found my brain starting to come up with something and I’ll likely indulge myself sooner rather than later.

What I like about this journal is that it’s incredibly free. The prompts are open-ended and you’re able to use the space however you’d like. There’s just enough direction to spark something and then you’re left on your own to do your thing.

There are prompts that include finding verses in the Quran and writing/drawing down what comes to mind after reading them which I found to be a nice touch – including Islam in any way always gets a thumbs up from me.

I probably won’t use every page in this journal. I prefer to give myself a freer reign when I’m writing to de-stress and so I’d only use it if I found myself in need of some kind of prompting or sparking of creativity.

That said, I do think it’s a well put together journal and I’m sure it will benefit many Muslimahs who enjoy the structure of a physical journal that they can use as an outlet whenever they have a free moment to let out that creativity.

At present, there’s a LaunchGood campaign for the journal that you can check out here if you’re interested. There are several different tiered contributions, all netting you different items.

Final rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars.