About the Founder

With Salam: A Story of Healing, Faith, and Becoming

I grew up in a small town in Shropshire, England, in a life far away from the faith I now hold so dearly.

As a survivor of childhood trauma, much of my early life was shaped by anxiety, depression, and a desperate search for meaning — even when I insisted I didn’t believe in anything.

Music became my sanctuary from early on. I studied Music, Entertainment & Arts Management at university, dreaming of managing musicians, chasing a future that — now with hindsight — would have only taken me further from healing.

At my lowest, anxiety kept me housebound for months. And even though I fiercely identified as an atheist, in moments of absolute desperation, I found myself crying out to a God I claimed not to believe in.

Those cries did not go unheard.

At 25, I met a Muslim man. Our connection was immediate, and while he wasn't fully practicing at the time, his quiet reverence for Allah — his refusal to live haram — stirred something in me.

We married quickly, and it was through that marriage, and the books I devoured in dusty library corners, that I first truly met Islam.
Page by page, video by video, I found what my soul had been screaming for all along: the undeniable truth of La ilaha illa Allah.

Two years later, after the sudden loss of my brother-in-law — may Allah have mercy on him — and a Ramadan of deep reflection, I finally took my shahada.
The sisters at the local dawah centre embraced me like a long-lost family. For the first time, I felt I belonged — not because of who I was pretending to be, but because of who I truly was.

But becoming Muslim was not a fairy tale.

My marriage strained under the weight of one spouse awakening while the other stayed sleeping.
Motherhood — with three beautiful girls — became my anchor to the Deen.
Even when loneliness and hardship wrapped tight around me, even through divorce and moving back to my hometown, I held tight to the rope of Allah.

Today, I am a single mother, a daughter who has committed to being there for her parents as they grow older, a home educator to my girls, and — most importantly — a woman standing firm in her Islam when everything around her says to compromise.

Healing has been a lifelong journey for me.

After my third daughter was born, old wounds resurfaced. It was through another survivor — a sister who shattered the silence around childhood abuse — that I found a way forward.

Taking her PTSD recovery programme changed everything. And eventually, together, we created BeyondTrauma Academy — a survivor-led organisation that doesn’t just talk about healing, but builds real pathways for it.

Faith and healing are inseparable for me now.
I know that without knowing my Rabb, I would still be lost in anger, in pain, in despair.
Now, my work, my motherhood, and this platform — With Salam — are all small offerings back to the One who never left me.

With Salam is for the sisters who are tired of pretending.
For the sisters walking heavy, silent paths.
For the ones who feel invisible, but still show up.

It’s a space where reflections, reminders, and real talk meet — a small corner of softness and strength in a world that demands so much from us, yet rarely gives back mercy.

If With Salam helps even one sister feel seen, feel brave enough to dream again, or feel strong enough to hold tighter to her faith, then every word, every struggle, every sujood was worth it.

This is my story — not perfect, but present.
And I pray, Allah allows it to be part of something greater than myself.

🌿 “Indeed, with hardship comes ease.” (Surah Ash-Sharh, 94:6)

With presence, sabr, and salam,
— Jill