All posts by Indrani Goradia

Endings are only beginnings

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If you are reading this then 2018 is at an end (or gone) and we are welcoming 2019, either eagerly or in some other way.

Please look for a moment at the photo. It is of the meditation pod at Auroville, outside of Puducherry India.

It is known as the Matrimandir.

Auroville, City of Dawn, is an intentional community. It was first envisioned by a guru called Mirra Alfassa. She was a European woman who devoted her life to spirituality.

The City of Dawn, is built on land that was “approximately 20 square kilometers of barren wasteland.”

The earth was unable to support both plant or animal life.

A small group of believers began (what must have looked like madness to the non–believers) to rehabilitate the land by planting trees. When I visited about 4 weeks ago, the area was a veritable forest. Species of plant life that had died out were flourishing. Animal life was abundant and humans from many countries were permanent residents in the village. Permanent residents are expected to work 8 hours daily in exchange for living there.

It seems to be flourishing by all accounts.

The inauguration ceremony was attended by 124 nations who sent delegates with gifts of their earth to be all placed together in one urn. It was held on Wednesday 28th, 1968.

On that day, I was living in Trinidad and was 15 years old. I was actively filling in to be the caretaker of an 11 year old brother and a 7 year old sister. I was in over my head.

I had no idea that on the other side of the earth, a small group of people were gathering to celebrate a vision of a future and that as a 65 year old in 2018, I would be lucky enough to visit.

That 15-year-old, was also unaware that she would go on to do some amazing things.

Things like finish a triathlon and marathon after she turned 50 or get a handle of clinical depression and make her pain the foundation of a nonprofit, or have a wonderful husband and children, or speak at the UN, or (and most importantly) end generational violence in her lifetime.

I was unaware of all of this and more.

As I write this message to you, I am blissfully unaware of what will happen tomorrow, next week or 10 years from now.

I am not worried about not knowing.

I have learned to trust and believe that if I follow my path to end violence to girls and women, I will be fully living my destiny. I also know that when I do not trust my gut, I get burned.

I did not always believe I had a destiny. I believe it now.

I am asking you to give yourself time to uncover your own destinies and to allow yourself to take small steps in the direction of what you know that destiny to be.

Some of the tools to help you uncover your destiny include physical exercise, yoga, meditation, gratitude journaling, setting and keeping healthy boundaries by saying No to things that do not support what you know your destiny to be.

How we can help:

At www.indranislight.org/caregiver-resources we have classes to give you a head start of some of these tools. You can find a podcast called Caring for the Caregiver where we take deep dives into real questions by real people and give some ideas to handle life stresses.

I wish you a happy and joy-filled 2019. I wish you the clarity of mind to find joy in the midst of inevitable pain and I wish you the courage to love yourself as deeply as you love the most precious person on your life.

Love and light
indrani

The key to healthy relationships

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I stayed at a hotel recently and the key to the room was an electronic gizmo that looked like a key. It inserted into the lock like a key and turned like a key.

I wondered, “why the trouble to make this new technology look like old tech?”

Comfort to the guests. We all know what a key looks like. We are all creatures of habit and want to feel secure, so holding a key in our hand is a familiar feeling.

This key was different. It was embedded with the code to get into a particular room. Room 1167 would not be able to work on the lock for room 1624.

Makes perfect sense.

All the keys, however, were able to access the elevators that took each guest to any floor they wanted to visit. I have been in hotels where your room key only allowed you to access your floor, and if you had a friend on another floor they had to let you in.

This got me thinking about the symbolism and metaphors we have for keys:

The keys to our hearts.

The key to success.

The 5 or 10 or 100 keys to ______

The ONE key to happiness

Happiness is key to ________

Food is the key to a man’s heart

I am sure you can come up with other sayings.

When we allow people to enter into our lives, we give them a symbolic key of trust. We welcome them into our private spaces. We don’t say, “you are only allowed to use the kitchen but not the bathroom.” We ASSUME that they will respect the trust we have given.

However, when the people we trust take the key we have offered and turn it against us, we feel violated. We may say things like,

“I trusted you to not steal my money when we opened our joint account.”
Or
“I trusted you to not have sex with my best friend when we went out last night.”
Or
“I trusted you to not bash my face in when you are angry and blame all your failures on me.”

Each one of the above sentences represents a situation where we GAVE the key to our hearts and lives to another and they use that key to wreck our lives.

When this happens, we must find the courage to “lock” them out of our hearts. That, often feels quite impossible.

We feel like they know us too well for us to set any real boundaries. Often, they know us better than we feel we know ourselves, but that is not true.

We must find the courage to block the codes they have used to enter our private heart spaces. If we have values of love and bravery and courage, they know our strengths and may say “Well you say you have love as a value, but you can’t find a way to love me as I am. You must be a liar!”

When this happens, we may try to prove them wrong by showing them how much love we have and we may stay in unhealthy situations longer than we should.

What to do?

Turn those values of Love and Bravery and Courage back on yourself and show your own self that you have the only key to emotional freedom. Freedom to choose a healthy relationship over one that causes pain.

Love and light

Indrani

The Sewing Machine Worked Just Fine… Until It Didn’t

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The other day I was preparing some small quilts to take with me to India for a program I planned to visit. The quilt squares had been decorated by children of the mothers who had been burned by fire or acid. I had met these kids years before and never got a chance to finish up the quilts. I was going to India in a few days so I was inspired to finish them. This work reflected all my hearts passions: meeting the survivors, speaking to the kids, remembering to bring them fabric swatches, saving the swatches for the right time to finish it and of course sitting at my beautiful machine and finishing the project.

All of a sudden, the machine would not work. The needle would not stay threaded.The bottom thread would not catch. I rethreaded it about 6 times and then I yelled, to no one really, “what the F is wrong with this machine?”

I began to hyper focus on the threading mechanism and tried to use a pen to poke the thread into one of the moving parts and of course it could not work. I had never threaded the machine with a damn pen before. Why was I trying to do that now? I have been sewing for 50 years. I used to make my own Catholic School uniform skirts. I KNOW how to thread a sewing machine.

Then a heard a voice in my head say “Indrani zoom out, close your eyes, and use muscle memory to do this. Nothing is wrong with you or the machine.”

So.

I closed my eyes. I allowed my hands to float up to the machine and I held the thread a loft. I mimicked threading motions and saw that my left hand floated behind the presser foot to check if it was in the down position.

I opened my eyes.

I smiled.

The presser foot was NOT in the proper position.
I put the foot down and threaded the machine and finished the quilts.

Then, it dawned on me that this episode mimics what women do to themselves. We KNOW how to be in the world. We know how to be brave and courageous and yet, when we forget a simple thing (like lowering the presser foot) we begin to judge ourselves and we accept the judgment of others. I love that it was the “putting down of the foot” that brought me out of my trance of feeling inadequate and stupid for not successfully completing a task I have done 1000’s of times for 50 years. How can you use this in your life?

The next time you KNOW deep in your heart how to do something, or WHO you are at your core, put your foot down on the knowledge and do not allow any one (even your judgmental self) to convince you otherwise. If others in your life say unkind things, let if go in one ear and out the next. Put your foot down and don’t let others define you with their words. Maybe use a simple phrase like “I am not sure whom you are describing, but that’s not me.”

Believe the words. You know you!

Now, go be the full YOU. The world needs all of you.

Love and Light from Indrani

When the system freezes and you accept blame… think again!

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blame imageMy I phone was working well one minute and the next minute it was not working well.
Being the kind of self-blaming person that I am, I immediately assumed that I was doing something wrong. The phone was still making and receiving calls and I could still text and email and I could do an Internet search but when I clicked on a link, the phone would freeze. I recognized the “freezing,” but could not fathom what was going on. I assumed that I was at fault and all of a sudden I had forgotten how to use hyperlinks.

Why would I blame myself so quickly about something so “out of my control?”

The answer to this question is easy. I am used to being blamed for things that do not go well.

In my family of origin, it was always my fault if one of my younger siblings did something wrong. I was the oldest and it was MY responsibility to keep my siblings in line. No one had ever asked me if I wanted the job, I was simply given the responsibility without the power. In my own home I was also blamed if things did not turn out as they should have. I cooked the wrong food if the kids did not eat, or my cooking was not good enough. If a family member became upset with me and I defended myself, then I was somehow to blame for the rift in the family.

People would tell me, “That’s just how the family is.” But no one ever told me, “Well, we know how YOU are, and the thing that happened was NOT right.” Finally I got sick and tired of being blamed for things that were not my fault, and I began to set some boundaries. I have become really good at setting boundaries with others, but not so good with setting boundaries with myself.

Hence, I still succumb to self-blame.

This was the trap I fell into when my phone began to freeze at unexplained moments. I finally took the phone to the Apple Store and sheepishly asked if they knew what was happening. I never expected them to have any answers. I was wrong. The Apple helper immediately recognized the issue and said he could fix it. It would take five minutes. It was a software glitch that was causing the freezing behavior.

I was shocked. I was sad. I was sad because I had so easily accepted the blame of the phone issue. This issue that had absolutely NOTHING to do with me. I hope I remember this lesson the next time I accept blame for something that is not my fault. I encourage you to look at the blame that is freely given to you, and the blame you readily accept. You may even grab blame from others because it’s more comforting to put yourself down than build yourself up.

I hope you give yourself permission to investigate the relationship you have with blame.

 

Love and light,

Indrani

 

 

 

Playing Coy is SO Outdated

Blog, Domestic Violence, energy, Uncategorized, women, , ,

UndecidedRecently, I was attending a meeting with some pretty influential folks.  I was only a guest and I was so happy to be included.

During the course of the meeting as the participants went around the table offering solutions to the issues at hand, I noticed there was one woman who absolutely refused to answer questions directly.  She giggled and acted coy (dipping her chin and batting her eyes), and would not give a straight answer to some very simple questions.

The questions were as simple as, “Do you want lunch?” She would dip her head and make a surprise face as if to say, “Who me, want lunch?…. giggle, giggle!” And, still would not say “Yes” or “No.” The person asking the questions was getting quite frustrated with the way it was going.

This behavior really bothered me and I had to think long and hard about why I was so bothered.

Everyone has their own way of decision-making. Some people need lots of thinking time while others can jump right in. This was not a meeting that required thinking time. It really was a quick get together of many partners to decide how an event would go.  It really was a series of yes and no questions that needed to be asked and answered so that people could know what to expect and how to prepare.

I decided I was frustrated because the woman who was being indecisive was holding up all the rest of us. Everyone was staring at her for ONE simple answer.

The more people stared, the more coy she became.

She did not stand in her power. She acted like she had no power, or even like she never heard of the word power. She had no agency. She wanted others to read her mind, or infer from her behaviors what her response would be.

It was really frustrating.

The next time you are involved with a group trying to decide something, ask yourself if you are standing in your power.

Are you bringing all the parts of yourself to the meeting?

Are you there to make it easy for your other team members or to complicate things? Are you holding back information that is crucial to the team for one reason or another?
This meeting is still fresh in my mind and I can still feel the frustration. It was just ONE person acting like this who was holding up the whole show.

Don’t be “that” person.

Be the person who wants to be part of an effective team. Life is so much better with people who show up to make things easier and smoother. We have enough obstacles in our lives that we cannot control, so let us control the way we behave, and show up to participate in helpful ways.

 

Love and light,

Indrani

Can you hear me NOW?

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UntitledWe are all so familiar with this line, are we not?
Some brilliant marketer created these FIVE words that mean what they say.

Can YOU hear me now?

I am sitting down today, it is a bright sunny day where I am, and my heart is heavy.
My heart is heavy because of the reason I am writing this post to you.

I NEED your help.

I need your help so we can give the Privilege of saying these FIVE words to someone in need.  There are women who need to be able to say these words and many more words like:

“HELP, he is going to KILL me! Send the Police.” 

OR

“This is Johnny’s Momma, do not let his father take him out of school, he is threatening to kill him.”

OR

“Hi Mom, just wanted you to know that we got out, we are all safe.”

Untitled

Here is where I need your help ….

I need your OLD and UNUSED cell phones.  Indrani’s Light Foundation is teaming up with Verizon HopeLine to put cell phones into the hands of abused women so they have a lifeline to emergency services.

Will you take a few moments to:

  1. Look around your home and gather old phones for us?
  2. Send this email to your friends so that they can do the same?
  3. Send the phones to:  http://vz.to/1pumJWm

Please help us to help many others.  Can you hear HEAR me now? We want to hear her…… We want to see her….. We want to BE there for her.

Love and light,

 

Indrani

 

When it’s NOT your fault…Do not accept the blame.

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stop-565609_640I know how to use a pump at the gas station. I have been doing it for 33 years.  So when I pull up at a pump, exit my car, open my gas tank and insert my credit card, I KNOW what to expect.

This is what happens

Is this credit or debit?
Push the button next to the choice.

Enter Zip code on the keypad below
I punch in the Zip code that I have had for 20 years!

I know what happens next ….
The screen tells me to fill up with the fuel of my choice…
Except when it does NOT and kicks me back to the “Insert Card Here” screen.

Oh, I think to myself I must have made a mistake, my brain says, you did not make a mistake… But the screen tells me to start again, so I start again.

Credit or debit?
Enter Zip code.
Screen again kicks me back to “Insert Card here.”

Dear Reader, now I am perplexed, so I try again 3 more times and on the third time I slow down my process at a  s n a i l’s pace.  And I am intentional about each choice and I read the screen out loud, so I look like a crazy person but I am already feeling quite crazy!

I begin to enter the Zip code
Let’s say it’s 12345
I enter
1
The screen says
1
I enter 2
The screen says 12
I enter 3
The screen says
12
YES you read that right
I enter 3 again
The screen says 12
I enter 3 4
The screen says 124 but it should say 1234
Oh, I see, the fault is in the screen and the system NOT with me.
I smile.

Jump into the car, go to another pump and now we are good to go.

As soon as I get into the car, I make notes to myself so I can remember to write a blog about what is and is not our fault.

This is what I wrote…
“Gas station keypad bells and whistles work but numbers are wrong. ”

It occurred to me that this is often what happens when there is miscommunication that often leads to violence.

Person A says ONE
Person B hears Won
Person A says TWO
Person B hears TOO

The sounds are the same but whatever person B is hearing makes NO sense at all…

Won Too?

Who won what? Somebody else also won something, somebody else, won too?

Person A continues to speak and says THREE.

Person B is still wondering about who won what and who else was there and what did they win too…

Person A says EIGHT

Person B hears ATE

Who won what, who ate what, what the heck is going on?

We must be able to recognize situations where things LOOK like they  work, or should work, but in reality things are really quite broken on the inside.

We cannot know that the brand new shiny man approaching us is broken on the inside or that he has a tendency to hit and curse at his “loved” ones because they don’t follow his commands.

Why do I use the words “command?”

I use the word Command, because a true question allows the responder to say a full and complete NO without need for explanation or guilt.

When we say NO, and the receiver of that NO becomes enraged and abusive, it is exactly like that electric screen at the gas station… You have input a value, in this case a NO, and the person who is hearing the NO, cannot receive it or process it, and things get crazy.

Something is broken in that person AND and it is NOT your job to fix it.

It may be your job to RUN!

I do hope that this makes sense to you, let me know what you think.

 

Love and light,

Indrani

Hope

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sky-1107952_640According to C. R. Snyder, hope is the trilogy of goals, pathways and agency.

Brene Brown says, “Hope happens when we can set goals, have the tenacity and perseverance to pursue those goals, and believe in our own abilities to act.”  In other words we choose to say something, do something and be something.

Aristotle says, “To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.”

Lots of people who witness abuse choose this trilogy… Do nothing, say nothing, be invisible.

The Buddhist saying, “what we resist, persists” applies here as well. When we resist naming our hurts, when we resist new pathways out of the pain, when we resist claiming our agency… the old pains and stuckness of thought and deed will persist.

Snyder says that “hope is learned.”

If we did not learn hope in our families of origin we must teach it to ourselves as we age and mature. We must, it is not an option.

Brene Brown says, “We have to resist and unlearn old habits and the tendency to give up when things get tough.”

I know I have quoted everyone here, but they say it so much better than I ever could.

I would love to know:

What old habit or hurt do you need to unlearn in your life so you can teach yourself hope?

 

Love and light,
Indrani

What do I do after the beating?

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via Pixabay“What do I do after the beating?” She asked.

She was only 16 or 17 years old.  I had just given a short presentation to a group of students and I asked for questions.

She was brave.

She asked what she could do after she had been beaten, and still had to stay in the house.

My heart hurt for her.  I knew her pain at a cellular level.  I knew her well. I WAS her.  I remember being beaten so badly and having welts all over my body, and having to dry my tears.  I was told to “go wash your face and when you come out I better not see any crying, you asked for that beating.”

Of course, dear reader, I did not ask for any beating. I had made some childish mistake and I was whipped like I had murdered someone.  I remember going to the bathroom, and I was not allowed to shut the door, the abuser needed to “see” that I was not going to have any more “crocodile tears.”  I had to suck up all my pain and come out smiling like a good girl.  This behavior lasted well into my 50’s.

Don’t let them see you cry those crocodile tears. “They don’t care “…was the voice in my head.

To this day, I still have a hard time owning my pure emotion and I have to fight really hard to not push them down, allow them to morph into anger or rage, or blame.  It will probably be a life long lesson.  Some days I win and some days I lose.

I told the young lady to try to find a place of solitude in her home and tell herself that one day, she will be out of the house and the abuse will stop.

She could not tell her parents, her parents would be angrier that she “embarrassed the family,” and she would be beaten even more.  I told her to use school as a respite.  I wish I had someone to tell these things to me.  I did not.  I had no one to tell me that the abuser was wrong, even though they were caregivers, and said they were beating me because they loved me.

They were wrong.  They were telling lies.

We do not hurt what we claim to love.

I deserved love and attention and guidance, not rage and anger and beatings.  I have a clear memory of being about 12 years old and kneeling at the side of my bed, praying.  My abuser came into the room and asked what I was praying for, and I said for strength.  The abuser was pleased.

Yes, I was praying for strength, but strength to live in my hellhole called my childhood.

If I could not get the strength, I prayed that God would take me that night because I could not go on.  I was praying to die, at 12 years old.  I was not taken, so I guess I got the strength …… and that strength has been parlayed into the work I do now.  We are resilient beings. We can stand a lot of pain.  If you are in a hellacious situation, and you are an adult, reach out to your local shelter for confidential help. Even if you don’t leave, there are services you can access. They can help you with a plan.

There are people who care that you are in pain.

If you know a child living in a hellacious home, try to be a point of comfort to that child.  They need to know you will keep their confidences and that you are a safe place to lay some burdens.

Be that safe place for someone.  Someone needs you.

 

Love and light,

Indrani

Have you earned the “look” in your child’s eye?

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child-636022_640The look of love
The look of fear
The look of contempt

Those looks you hate?

It may not be their fault.

It may be because of the choices you made, the choices WE made as parents of these incredible children we have been given.

As a child, sustaining repeated and persistent abuse, I had a significant thought…

Why did you have me?

This took many other word forms such as:

Why did you have a child?
Why did you have another child?

I am not blaming the way children turn out on their caregivers; I am reminding caregivers to make better choices so that we can say that we tried our very best when our children have the “looks” that are “cringeworthy.”

We must try our best every minute of every day.

It is on us. Every ONE of us. All the time.
 

Love and light,

Indrani