I Was the Biological Child: An Islamic Reflection on Hurt, Belonging and Healing

Trauma in the home for a child can arise from so many different situations. Do not misunderstand me; there is immense beauty in opening your home to a child who needs one. Islam honours the care of vulnerable children. The Prophet ﷺ himself knew what it was to be orphaned, and he taught us the extraordinary virtue of caring for an orphan, saying that he and the one who cares for an orphan would be together in Paradise like two fingers held closely together. It is a beautiful teaching.

But there is another Islamic principle that must sit alongside it:

In pursuing one good, we must be careful not to neglect another trust Allah has already placed in our hands.

I know this not only professionally, but personally.

I was the biological child in a family that opened its home to another child.

And I was hurt.

I felt set aside.

I felt like an outsider in my own family.

I felt less loved, less important and less worthy of consideration.

For a long time, those feelings were difficult to reconcile with the goodness associated with caring for another child.

How do you say, “Something that was intended as an act of compassion caused me pain”?

How do you acknowledge your hurt without appearing selfish?

And from an Islamic perspective, how do we honour the virtue of caring for one child while also acknowledging the wounds experienced by another?

Perhaps the answer begins with one of Islam’s most important principles: Justice.

Islam asks us to be just, not simply well-intentioned

Allah commands:

“Indeed, Allah commands justice and excellence…”

(Qur’an 16:90)

Good intentions matter enormously in Islam. But good intentions do not mean that harm cannot occur.

A parent may genuinely intend to provide love and security to a vulnerable child.

That intention can be beautiful.

And yet their biological child can still become emotionally neglected.

Both realities can exist together.

This distinction has become important in my own healing.

I do not have to decide that everything was bad in order to acknowledge that something happened to me that hurt.

Nor do I need to deny another child’s vulnerability in order to recognise my own.

Islam gives us room for both compassion and justice.

The child you already have is also an Amanah

In Islam, children are an Amanah—a trust from Allah.

When another child enters a family, the original trust does not disappear.

The Prophet ﷺ taught:

“Each of you is a shepherd, and each of you is responsible for his flock.”

(Bukhari and Muslim)

For parents, that responsibility extends to the emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing of the children entrusted to them.

The biological child should not simply become “the child who will cope”.

They should not continually hear:

You have parents; they don’t.

You need to understand.

They have been through more than you.

Be patient.

Let them have it.

There may be moments when a child genuinely needs to compromise. Family life requires that from all of us.

But when one child is repeatedly expected to surrender their needs because another child’s history is more painful, something important can happen internally.

The child may begin to believe:

Their pain deserves compassion. Mine does not.

Islam does not teach us that compassion towards one person requires emotional injustice towards another.

Justice between children matters

There is a striking incident in the Sunnah concerning a father who wanted the Prophet ﷺ to witness a gift he had given to one of his children.

When the Prophet ﷺ discovered that the man’s other children had not been given similarly, he refused to witness it and instructed him to fear Allah and treat his children justly.

The principle is profound.

Children notice how love, attention, protection and resources are distributed.

Of course, emotional care cannot be divided mathematically.

A traumatised child may sometimes need considerably more attention.

Justice does not always mean identical treatment.

But it does mean that the needs of the quieter child cannot simply disappear.

Sometimes the child who appears to need less has simply learned not to ask.

When compassion becomes self-erasure

One of the lessons I learned was to understand other people’s needs.

That can sound like a strength—and in many ways it is.

But there is a difference between empathy and learning that your own needs must always come second.

A child may become exceptionally accommodating.

They may stop complaining.

They may monitor the emotional atmosphere.

They may become responsible, mature and independent.

Adults might even praise them:

“You’re so understanding.”

But sometimes we need to ask what that understanding has cost them.

Perhaps the child has learned:

If someone else is struggling, I am not allowed to struggle.

If somebody needs something, I should step aside.

Being good means needing very little.

Love belongs to the person who needs it most.

Those beliefs do not necessarily remain in childhood.

They can follow us into adult friendships, marriages, workplaces and caring professions.

We may become very skilled at making room for everybody except ourselves.

Islam does not require us to deny pain

Sometimes Muslims struggle with acknowledging childhood wounds because we immediately move towards sabr, gratitude and forgiveness.

These are beautiful parts of our faith.

But they can be misunderstood.

Sabr is not emotional suppression.

Patience does not mean pretending something didn’t hurt.

Shukr does not mean that because we had blessings, we are forbidden from grieving what was missing.

And forgiveness does not require us to rewrite our history.

The Qur’an does not present righteous people as emotionally numb.

Ya’qub عليه السلام grieved so intensely for Yusuf that the Qur’an describes his eyes becoming white from sorrow. Yet he turned that grief towards Allah:

“I only complain of my suffering and my grief to Allah.”

(Qur’an 12:86)

There is something deeply healing in this.

Pain acknowledged before Allah is not a failure of faith.

Sometimes acknowledging what happened is part of healing from it.

Islam recognises emotional harm

The Prophetic principle “There should be neither harming nor reciprocating harm” is foundational within Islam.

We often think about harm in obvious forms.

But children can also be wounded through repeated emotional experiences: exclusion, comparison, rejection, being overlooked or feeling that their security within the family has changed.

Not every hurt means somebody intentionally harmed us.

That distinction matters.

People can hurt us while believing they are doing the right thing.

Parents can love their children deeply and still make decisions that leave wounds.

Understanding intention may eventually help us develop compassion.

But understanding intention should not require denying impact.

“They didn’t mean to hurt me” and “I was hurt” can both be true.

What happens when home stops feeling like home?

A child’s home should represent aman—safety.

It should be the place where belonging is assumed rather than earned.

Yet I came to feel like an outsider within my own family.

That experience can create questions a child may never say aloud:

Am I still important?

Would they choose me?

Why does everybody else’s pain receive understanding?

Who protects me?

Do I have to be good to remain loved?

And perhaps the deepest:

Do I still belong here?

A child may not have the language to explain this.

So they adapt.

Some become angry.

Some withdraw.

Some become people-pleasers.

Some become fiercely independent.

Some become the “good child” who causes no trouble at all.

The absence of difficult behaviour does not always mean the absence of distress.

Allah commands kindness to those closest to us too

There can be something paradoxical about compassion.

Sometimes we become so focused on helping someone vulnerable outside our original family unit that we overlook the vulnerability developing inside it.

Islam repeatedly teaches responsibility towards those closest to us.

The Prophet ﷺ taught that spending upon one’s own family, seeking Allah’s reward, is itself an act of charity.

This changes the way we think about goodness.

Goodness is not only the dramatic act of opening our home.

Sometimes goodness is noticing the child quietly sitting at the dinner table.

Sometimes ibadah is protecting one-to-one time with them.

Sometimes justice is asking:

“How has this affected you?”

And then allowing the answer to be uncomfortable.

Healing means challenging what the child came to believe

Perhaps the deepest wound isn’t what happened externally.

It is what the child concluded internally.

I am not important.

Other people’s needs matter more than mine.

I shouldn’t need anything.

If I speak about my hurt, I will become the problem.

I need to earn my place.

Those beliefs can survive long after childhood circumstances have ended.

Part of healing is learning to distinguish between an experience and an identity.

I felt unimportant.

That does not mean I was unimportant.

I felt unloved.

That does not mean I was unworthy of love.

I felt like an outsider.

That does not mean I did not deserve belonging.

Allah saw the child who felt unseen

One of the most healing names of Allah for me to reflect upon is Al-Basir — The All-Seeing.

There is something profound about knowing that what went unnoticed by human beings was never unnoticed by Allah.

Allah saw the moments nobody recognised as significant.

He knew what was happening inside the child who couldn’t explain it.

He knew the loneliness.

He knew the confusion.

He knew the longing to be chosen.

He knew every time I wondered whether I mattered.

And He knew the difference between what people intended and what I experienced.

This does not magically remove the wound.

But it changes something about its meaning.

Being unseen by people never meant I was unseen by Allah.

And Allah is Al-Wadud

Allah is also Al-Wadud — The Most Loving.

When childhood experiences leave us questioning our lovability, healing can involve slowly separating human love from our fundamental worth.

Human beings love imperfectly.

Parents love imperfectly.

We ourselves love imperfectly.

Allah’s love is not limited by the emotional capacities of the people around us.

So perhaps part of Islamic healing is learning:

What happened to me is not evidence of what I am worth.

My worth was never decided by how much attention I received.

My value was never determined by whether someone prioritised me.

My place with Allah was never dependent upon another human being recognising my needs.

Forgiveness should not become another form of abandonment

For some people, healing eventually includes forgiveness.

Islam places tremendous value on forgiveness.

But forgiveness should not become another way of telling the wounded child:

Your feelings don’t matter. Move on.

We can acknowledge wrongdoing without living permanently inside resentment.

We can develop compassion for our parents’ limitations without pretending those limitations did not affect us.

We can forgive without saying something was acceptable.

And sometimes healing requires grieving before forgiveness can become meaningful.

Otherwise, we risk abandoning ourselves in adulthood in exactly the way we experienced being abandoned emotionally as children.

I can hold compassion for everyone now

As an adult, I can hold a much more complicated picture than I could as a child.

I can have compassion for the vulnerable child who entered the family.

I can recognise the intentions of adults.

I can understand circumstances I could not understand then.

But there is someone else who deserves my compassion too.

The biological child I once was.

She should never have needed to compete with somebody else’s suffering before her own pain was considered legitimate.

She needed someone to tell her:

You matter too.

There is enough compassion for you as well.

You don’t have to disappear to prove that you are kind.

You are allowed to need your parents.

You are allowed to feel hurt.

You are allowed to belong.

Perhaps this is what healing looks like

Healing is not rewriting the past.

It is refusing to allow the past to continue defining my worth.

It is learning that empathy does not require self-abandonment.

That boundaries do not make me selfish.

That having needs does not make me difficult.

That someone else’s suffering does not invalidate mine.

And that Islam does not ask me to erase myself in order to be a good Muslim.

Allah commands justice.

And perhaps, after spending years extending understanding towards everyone else, part of that justice is finally extending some towards myself.

I was the biological child.

I was hurt.

I felt set aside.

I felt like an outsider.

I felt unloved and unimportant.

Those feelings deserve to be acknowledged.

But they are not the end of my story.

Because the child who felt unseen was always seen by Allah.

The child who felt she did not matter always mattered to Him.

And the adult she became can now turn towards that younger self with the rahmah she once needed and say:

You did not need to become less so that somebody else could have more.

There was always supposed to be room for you too.

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