Find your shore

We don't betray our parents if we love ourselves more

If not helped by them from childhood to love ourselves we grow within sore

Supporting them without enabling ourselves then feels like a chore

There's nothing wrong if we want to be heard more

That the vacuum of not loving ourselves is not some folklore

And their stories and struggles to raise us was beyond a point a bore

Suppressing your thoughts and hearing them out is not going to make them feel secure

In fact releasing them out from your chest through talking , writing and discovering your voice will make you feel good enough more and more

You are not betraying your parents trust by choosing self acceptance and self care

But will come back to them with enough life and strength to understand that your case is not rare

That there are many voices that are like deep waters but come to life when they find their shore.

Acceptance from within

 I grew up thinking that I wasn't separate from my mother and that my wellbeing was when she took control of my life, and boy, she did a hell of a job taking control!

I got so stuck on this idea that since she swallowed so much of self pity for doing the birthing under difficult and tragic circumstances by herself without my father by her side and utilizing her frustrations and emotional insecurities to secure emotional support for herself, I really believed that this would be enough for me to grow under - I too believed that in order to get stuff done, you need to sell yourself short so that others sympathy and their humanity could come in handy to make it possible for you. This minimized version of myself had to fit into my mother's stories that she told me over and over while I  told myself this story that I need  to adapt to limitations, and by that I mean adapting to myself with all my minimized, repressed sense of self. So, that's a story within a story.

It became a habit to look outside of myself for validation and since I never got that fully, I just learnt to survive in a big dysfunctional joint family just dodging people, their intimidating presence, ego centric cold wars, men shouting down their wives and so on and kept myself 'safe' by feeling like the other and that is to completely numb and repress my processing about the people in my family and live depending on my mother's decisions and her obsessions with 'fixing' my health taking me to doctors as soon as I complain of even pains that could be managed at home. My pain resistance and resilience was wrought with anxiety and deep seated mistrust on my willpower and self worth. That was the most prolonged pain that I didn't know I nurtured and just hosted that in my body, my thoughts, consciousness, and made me feel like an outsider to my life.

The real healing, if any, is to feel the pain, release it, let it go fully that I couldn't have gotten everything alright even if I had everything in my control, but the fact that I am giving myself enough rope and less of criticism is a shift in the right direction.

Acceptance of what was and being alive to what is is the best undoing that can happen for me and which when applied day after day is the best way to live growing to your potential and not living in the head in the overall process of discovering the joys of simple living. And simple living means to simply cope up when life isn't fair and be grateful when life is fair, and each of us truly gets what we each deserve whether we really like it or not.

So, all the fuss is only about non acceptance when no amount of coping up makes anything go away but just the fact that acceptance turns the tables around to help face all the blocks that have been brought on due to unrealistic expectations, and the narratives that were spun within your unconscious mind either due to dominating influences which you believed to be true as you just added layers of interpretations through your own thoughts and over time they hardened as your own beliefs. Your own beliefs which may not be good for you when believing in them longer than warranted from the said situations but when practiced like a habit they just spillover festering your consciousness and bringing them into their fold.

Forgetting is hard, forgiving, harder!

 I don't know how do I begin to forgive my mother?

The woman who I assumed is an all time mother that I could hang my dependencies on as a primary caregiver way back in my childhood was washing her dirty linen off living off my absorbing and observant nature, and my quiet while reliving her past and feeling that life is unfair, if things and specially her daughter doesn't live up to her expectations. And so I learnt to survive.

 Survive through her crack and pop criticisms that just was oozing self pity a minute and passive anger in another and confusing me as to who am I supposed to understand more. Oh yeah, I was supposed to understand way more than any child within 10 years could understand - the grief of losing her husband, i.e. my father to a sudden cardiac arrest while she was pregnant with me, and the grief of having to turn her life around and choosing to take my father's job but from the clerical level that was offered by the Government then, and wanting me to be the receiving end of her huge favor like feeling that she superimposed over me whenever possible, and wanted me to consider how lucky I am to have her as my mother. An exaggerated sense of entitlement would be an understatement. 

She lived under an acquired shell so to speak but since it had her choices written all over it, she survived quite well under the disguise of self pity, emotional bereavement whenever I went through headaches and nausea which was unfortunately similar to my father's health patterns while he was alive. She grieved how alone she was and how frustrating it was for her to take me to the doctors who she felt was the first resort to just fix me so that she can go back to her office going while I came home to her brothers and their wives and their children, my cousins, yes, and to this huge joint family that I just had to find a space to fit into. 

It became harder to do so since my emotional and physical belonging was with my mother and so I thought was the safe space as long as she takes control of my volatile health (nothing terminal but was very overwhelming for my sensitive nerves and naïve mind as I lacked health managing skills and discipline as a kid) and just made me feel guilty for being a pain to her every week or so that I complained of the repetitive migraines that was just an outlet from my body for being in pain for want of unconditional love and acceptance from her. Nothing could get her attention faster than my sickness in any small shape or form and she loved getting all the attention she got from her extended family of brothers with whom she and I lived. 

We two were supposed to be a family to one another as I was her only child but she refused to grow up emotionally as my physical issues too didn't seem to outgrow my age and I started to feel outside of my body, disconnected with myself while she continued with her criticisms and comparisons with my father, while making herself the center of my universe over and over and defining my world to revolve around her emotional insecurities that I took upon myself as my responsibility. And I was supposed to in a way as I had been provided with all material needs, and my way of repaying her better be with unquestionable loyalty and blind adherence to her breaking down on my boundaries which she was happily oblivious to. She was living all inclusive through me as if she could get to live longer by doing this or maybe make my longevity more when compared to my father. Either ways, it was just numbing and killing me from inside. 

Self sabotaging is a very insidious pattern of flawed beliefs that seem to ring true to an open trusting child and is often an unconscious receiving of fragile, narcissistic, and self absorbed seed energy from the parent or parents if both of them are alive. But this pattern of thinking like an all inclusive person and struggling to separate oneself from the other (Your parent here) even as you age (I am 42 now), your parent's thoughts, their choices made from convenience to define you, control you, mold you is just widening of this huge gap from within you. It's like losing a sense of clarity of where one's reality starts and where another's begins. And when this applies in your day to day living, it disempowers you as you cannot get comfortable in your shoes and walk your own path, be it in relating to your life, your relationships, your decision making to move away from this familiar pattern of enmeshment which is a sticky and stuck feeling. 

The gap of losing oneself to this pattern and not aware how deep and how far is it taking you away from your growing and learning about yourself as your emotions don't feel real for you owing to feeling used up to making your mother feel good about herself is rather invisible but painful when you start seeing it for what it is. 

To make peace with oneself  by starting all over again to discover the real joy of being alive for oneself and do so with true self love without any guilt, and relearn to take control of one's life, trust in one's physiology, one's mind and heart that it cannot work as per others expectations but has a life and rhythm of its own, and if the parent cannot let the child be for what's worth, then it's their loss. Their loss for not knowing the son or daughter for who they really are and not for who they are supposed to be. 

I am not a made to adjust to convenient choices package that can be praised for being like her mother in certain situations or like her father in some other, and wanting her validation for the real me, repressions, tears, helplessness, fear, overwhelm and all was just a waste of my time because they didn't mean anything to her.

I am not supposed to be in conflict for being in my skin and yet long term dissociation and numbing one's personal identity even if career, ambitions to an extent have helped me get a fix, but what is truly broken is the daughter's trust here for trusting her mother the most and to realize that mothers are not perfect after all is both a relief and also a bitter pill to acknowledge.

Not having a kid and being childless for over 15 years of my marriage with my best friend and my better half has nothing to do with my physical health but it just has 'rejection' written all within me as if I have mothered my emotional wounds so much that there is no space for a new creation, our creation to come to being. 

I have grieved for this earlier thinking it's all my fault and that I am not good enough to be a parent as much as I was not good enough to be the perfect child, perfect daughter despite all the material goodies being provided to me. To live in a survival mode is one thing but to live with shame and guilt is something that even all the ruminating, repressing is not going to make them go away.

I realize now that this emotional block is coming in my way to discovering my many life experiences ahead and that to let it go, I really need to let go being so enmeshed with my mother, in my thoughts and in my consciousness. And I got to honor myself by letting this enmeshment go before my mother's passing, and which will come when it comes, but I do wish to grieve for my being so unconscious to myself and my life and to feel love for my self which is happening through baby steps but without looking back for validation from her and thinking it's her love for me. Because love is love - it's simple, uncomplicated, and learning to forgive oneself from time to time. It's only then that I can forgive my mother.

True Wealth Starts from You

Confining myself to a preconceived set of notions and conditionings define me to playing a repressed person's role which is not really true to her life. It's like all the repressed emotions like anger, sadness, and so many unspoken emotions coupled with feelings of not being good enough for receiving love, acceptance, and trust has made me seek refuge in these bundled knots which have come to my awareness and have loosened their grip gradually over me. It's only that I am afraid to let them go completely as self love is something that I have just begun to grow into and getting impatient, criticizing myself, and expecting some superhuman results from me is something that comes in the way to rising above and meeting me half way through genuine love for myself. The miseries of the repressed emotions and feelings of inadequacy that kept me fake company and feeling stuck have been too much comfort to grow out of.

Setting oneself free seems so hard and yet gravitating to one's miseries so easy as if there is going to be a never ending supply of time for me. We are all bound by only so much time and yet spend a big part of our lives wishing life were different in our past and maybe we could be in a better space today. 

Feeling like we are in a good space is just momentary and it only is a matter of time before we quickly disguise into our old selves and try to be present for today. Either the mind is out of sync or the body. and it's only through some regular day to day jobs, whether they pay us money or otherwise, that we get a feel of being connected both body and mind in the routines that we play out, almost on autopilot. Again the question arises that do we perform our everyday jobs/duties in a numb frame of mind or are we even aware of what we are doing and how well?

When numbing ourselves becomes foremost conditioning of our minds as if the various situations that life throws at us is just to make ourselves adaptable to numbness and through it feel nothing, and which ironically is the result that we set ourselves up for but want to be alive and aware and joyous when feeling and being part of the result manifestation, no matter how small or big the work. How we feel about ourselves and how that translates into the way we perform our jobs determines our attitude for life. 

There is no set pattern to life although our biological ageing seems to give a feeling that there needs to be one - emotional maturing and growth in material gains. How far do we come becoming a success or already a success is governed by what exactly we do and not who we are from within (sadly).

How do we get to a state of mind where we feel we have earned the blessings that we still have in our lives and can we explain logically how much lucky we are when compared to many others? It's hard to actually explain our life's blessings but how far we come materially is the singled out coin that shines in the heap of our blessings - it can be quantified - the more the shine, the more credit points it seems to add to life! But who we are from inside out is the quality that adds to what you earn, your blessings, opportunities, jobs, material gains and all, or all the shine would just be superficially coated and fade quickly.

Recognizing that we are the true wealth and respecting who we are, our uniqueness, abilities, flaws, scars, tears and a lot more is the real self appraisal that we grow to earn as we age through our fluctuating times begins by acknowledging that what we want starts from who we are. And doing what we like, if we are lucky, is just growing to our fullest potential. We don't always get to do the jobs we like but that does not give us the license to like ourselves any lesser. 

The pattern then becomes who you are, who you are becoming and that automatically reflects on what you do. The more that you stay connected to who you are in essence, the more you enjoy the work that you can grow to learn and perform and gain the self confidence to cocreate your life's choices and what best works for you and which ones deplete your energy and time.

 

 

Raise a toast to your humble tea!

 Sometimes just having a cup of cardamom infused tea is all that is needed to let the stress off steam. (There's many other tea spices and masalas that enhance tea's flavour but cardamom is a subtle and lovely mood lifter for me:) ) Tea with few biscuits is like self acceptance on a plate - it's in those moments of smelling the tea and sipping the warmth that envelops you for just a few moments to stay in your zone that is actually the comfort that we seek to rest into. So, tea and that too the non watery ones and the ones with the right amount of milk and thickness and water to bring to boil the tea leaves/powder which is all there is to tea making, to give us a cupful of fresh perspective from a relaxed sense of taking our minds off what is consuming us and to just be there for ourselves just as we are, in whichever situation we are, is the highpoint of the humble tea.

Tea consumes our stress for those few moments you can say and not the other way round!! To just give in to these small moments of times from our mind numbing everyday schedule is one's own quality (tea) time and what better way to be with oneself than by having a cupful of aromatic tea to just blend with our senses and make sense of it in our own mindful ways.

Ta drinking for the sake of tea drinking is one thing and tea with oily, fried snacks is another. Tea undoubtedly adds taste to the samosas, pakoras, bajjis and more, but as a standalone treat when consumed just for tea's sake! 

We need our times of solitude to take our attention away from our problems which again keeps brewing in our minds similar to a bitter tea that has lost all taste and life, and it's my takeaway that don't keep thinking through problems - talk to your friends, parents, or anyone trustworthy (let out your steam) and get yourself off your ruminations(it's like stirring through broken milk that won't hold anything under heat) and don't make them a blending habit with your everyday life and plans. It's the aftertaste of bitterness on one's tongue or in one's life that makes it so not worth it.

Here's raising a toast to the universal tea that ties people together through tiredness and refreshment, through solitude and tea parties with friends, through worries and deadlines, and project victories, tea stays with you to make sense of all the highs and lows of your life. 

To F.R.I.E.N.D.S with love😊

 Phoebe Buffay from F.R.I.E.N.D.S is such a wonderful human who is weird and honest and so beautiful to look at and has some of the best costumes and hairstyles that are so becoming of her - just free spirited and true to her whole personality. I can't imagine Lisa Kudrow to be any less than the Phoebe she plays on FRIENDS. 

I have always wanted to be like Phoebe or have a friend who is like her, but in reality in my life there's no such character.

FRIENDS, to me, back in the late '90s and early 2000's was like a rite of passage to help me transition from teenage into early adulthood and growing up in a closed minded environment did not make it any easier to want to understand my sexuality without just the female biology that stood staring back at me in the mirror. 

My cousin and I managed to sneak into a storage room that had an old portable TV and switched on star world channel promptly at 8 PM and laughed our heads out. She(Meena) and I had healthy discussions over why she thinks Rachel goes way over line and Joey is just a plain naïve guy who just got lured by her charms, and that Joey was just too vulnerable without Chandler by his side. We agreed to disagree but came to some kind of concurrence that this was just a serial while eating our dinner, and just went about our college stuff and again came back to blacklisting Rachel for another of her drama queen sagas the next day☺

FRIENDS became so much a part of our consciousness and our patterns of thinking that if we inadvertently do something dumb and funny we would call ourselves "Duh.. I am being a Joey!," or shoot sarcastic wise cracks at others at home slyly and feel like a Chandler all the way!

They became a part of us and especially for Meena and me as we were the same age almost and giggled a lot when we got together at the stupid jokes we played on each other and spoke in hushed tones while joking about others at home. I had the assurance that if not finding a Phoebe in the outside world, I have a "Chandler like" Meena at home😊

I guess it's over 2 decades since Meena and I sat down together to watch FRIENDS and relive our silly giggly moments, but I am glad that I still have her as one of my close sisters and friends. Binge watching FRIENDS on Netflix is not the same without Meena but I am glad that despite the awkwardness, hardships, ups and downs that my growing up was full of but FRIENDS just let me be and made my problems feel smaller.

There are many other fun, heartwarming stories, serials that we have all grown up with and each has a place of their own in our hearts, in our lives. The joy of growing up as I may dare say now is that FRIENDS continues to feel the same and that I have not lost my humor no matter how unexpected the blows in my life. Here's to more such fun reliving down memory lane💗

To God, with Love

Realizing your inner divinity is an expression of gratitude for the life creator as a whole. Subtle and pulsing with energy, the quiet stillness and the deepening of breaths to such a meditative state that you become just an instrument that breathes while fully coming to life the realization that it's something or someone who is beyond you and within you who creates this magic of life flow to happen across the spectrum of creations as if by a pre determined choice. The human will comes into light as we grasp the invincible with a spirit of surrender and yet staying empowered in our willingness to live and grow through the uncertainties being laid out in our life path ahead. The acceptance here makes all the difference, no matter what the consequences of the directions taken in our life path. 

Coming into power through one's realizations is a beautiful and unique process of becoming one with yourself and also acknowledging the beauty behind God's ways of communicating with you and His love for being you. It's a mutual sense of love give and take actually, and loving God unconditionally no matter what expectations get met or how many successes you experience is the open hearted response and an expression of love from you to God.