All posts by Indrani Goradia

Life is a series of paths…take them

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walking_alone via lifeundermicroscopeIf you take a meditative moment to chart your life you will see that you have arrived where you are by consciously or subconsciously taking a series of paths.

Some of them were clearly marked:

  • Elementary School
  • Middle School
  • High School

Maybe you ended right where those paths were going.

Maybe you changed your mind.

Make no mistake; you took another path, and another and many more.

Maybe you took a path called Marriage and ended up at a destination called Divorce.

Perhaps the College path led to Masters and PhD, maybe it led to Take a Break from College.

 

When you take a moment to reflect on your paths, be sure to congratulate yourself on all the ways you have been trying to find yourself and your Joy.

Only you can make these “turn on a dime” decisions.

If one decision is not working out, make another decision.

Your stash of decisions is limitless.

Your ability to “turn on a dime” is honed.

Your readiness for change is built into your DNA.

Take a new path and see where it leads… then take another.

 

Love and light,

Indrani

Bricks are for building….NOT throwing at people!

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one brick at a time via faithlifewomenI was having a lazy morning the other day and as I flipped through channels I came across one of those Judge shows.
I don’t remember who the judge was BUT I do remember what the case was.

Woman: He threw a brick at my car and broke my windshield.
Man: She made me do it, because she makes me so mad.
Judge: Tell me exactly what happened, Sir.
Man: She is always running around and makes me so jealous and she is always going out at night……
Judge to woman: Tell me Ma’am, do you go out a lot at night?
Woman: Yes your Honor, I am a party planner and I have to stay at the event. I have been doing this for 3 years and I keep telling him that I am not fooling around….

I could not believe what I was hearing…right in front of me was the unraveling of a relationship because of raging jealousy and out of
control anger. This woman was lucky that this man had not already maimed or killed her.

The woman said she had seen this out of control anger but kept trying to reason with him.

She kept telling him how faithful she was and he just never believes her.

SHE GOT LUCKY!
SHE GOT OUT!

All of the signs were there and she did not add them up, UNTIL the shit hit the fan…the BRICK hit THE CAR!

Thankfully the brick did NOT hit her!

Abuse starts and ends the same way:
1. Incident sets the abuser off
2. The act of abuse
3. The honeymoon phase.

Yes, it is that easy… there is always a trigger, the actual violence and the “Oh baby, I am so sorry”…

It is not so easy to leave, and that makes the abuser gain strength.
The longer you stay the more strength the abuser gains.

If someone is throwing, hitting, slapping, raping, dragging, cuffing, etc…try to get out.

Call the National Hotline…1-800-799-SAFE or visit http://www.thehotline.org/

Love and light,
Indrani

She is NOT a mistake…..

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Ma’am, now I know I am not a mistake.

 

She slowly stood up from her seat in the auditorium. She was getting ready to respond to my question.

“What do you know now that you did not know 3 hours ago?”

She shyly stood and said, “Indrani, ma’am, now I know I am not a mistake.”

She had a certain knowing in her eyes and a soft giant-ness in her voice when she delivered those words.

The whole room erupted with applause. My eyes stung with tears and I recognized the face of courage and bravery.

She had been told since the day she was born that she was a mistake because she was not a boy.

She was told that she was worth less than a male child.

She was told that she was a burden, only eating and using up resources.

She would be sold off or married off to the highest bidder as soon as her father could arrange it.

Now, here, in this room, 18 years after her birth, she is ready to believe otherwise.

 

 

Love and light

Indrani

PTSD or PTG?

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African-American-woman-meditating1We all know that PTSD means Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but do you know what PTG means?
PTG is Post Traumatic Growth.
There is much evidence that there can be growth from trauma.
No one would choose to be traumatized.
Trauma is an uninvited visitor and some people turn it into amazing gifts.
These people describe their lives as before the (fill in the blank) and after.
They seem to be able to excavate the experience and come up with the most amazing insights.

I recently attended a Women and Power Conference and met many such women.
There was Loung Ung whose parents were executed by the Kymer Rouge. Loung was forced to be a child soldier and has now written three books and has returned to Cambodia more than 30 times to promote human rights and justice. You can learn about her at www.loungung.com

Then I was mesmerized by Ubaka Hill, who was raped starting at a very young age and has turned to music and drumming to promote healing and community building.
You can journey with her at www.ubakahilldrumsong.com

These women are JUST like you and me. Trauma found them and they found ways to self heal and to heal their respective communities.

I was an abused child and now I devote my life to help victims of Domestic Violence because by helping the mom I can help the child who has been abused or witnessed abuse.

I am no one special. My trauma gave me my super power of compassion and empathy.
My trauma made me special….the trauma that I did not invite.

I know that you too have had trauma that was UNinvited.
Will you talk to a professional about the best way to move through your pain and then will you step into PTG?

The growth is in there…and it wants to come out.
Love and light,

Indrani

Work is a verb…..

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man_hands via salonThe definition of WORK is activity in which one exerts strength or faculties to do or perform something:  the labor, task, or duty that is one’s accustomed means of livelihood.

From my high school physics class, I remember that work is an expenditure of energy and that energy achieves something.

In everyday terms, the sun works with leaves for photosynthesis and the worms work makes soil worthwhile for planting.

I work at my non-profit so that I can help to change the world view on Domestic Violence.

When we decide to work, we have decided to be active.

Being active means being intentional about outcomes and outcomes require certain steps.

If you want to WORK at changing your habits…..say smoking, you have to CHOOSE to NOT smoke and get help in doing so. Help can be a gum, a patch, hypnosis, therapy or some other intervention. Nicotine is addictive so your brain needs help to help itself.

The whole point of deciding to WORK at something in hopes of changing it means to be intentional, active and present.

What “thing” in your life have you decided to change?

What help have you sought?

How active are you being?

Are you finding that it’s really easy to “fall off the wagon?”

OK, so get back ON the wagon.

If it’s worth doing, then it’s worth the time, toil and trouble.

The next time you feel like giving up, give yourself a breather and get RIGHT BACK TO WORK.

Love and light,

Indrani

YOUR WORST MOMENTS DO NOT DEFINE YOU!!!

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perfectionistGive yourself a break and redefine yourself with the best of you!

If you find yourself stuck in a destructive thought pattern and are beating yourself up, you may be picking your own brain looking for evidence about what a screw up you are.

You may even be at the receiving end of someone telling you how screwed up you are and listing the evidence to support the “you are screwed up” theory.

Try to remove yourself from these people or this situation IMMEDIATELY!

Even if you can only get away by going to the toilet, go to the toilet.

Sit in there for as long as you need to break the onslaught of negativity.

If people begin to yell at you to come out, lie and say you have stomach problems and stay longer. The longer you stay in the toilet, the easier it is for them to lose their wrath and maybe calm down a bit.

Always remove yourself from the negative barrage of others.

People who are busy screaming and yelling at you about how bad you are do not have time to look at their own bad behaviors. They are turning their discomfort into anger directed at you so they don’t have to feel their own emotions.

The time to engage with people raging at you is NOT when they are raging.

The ONLY thing to do with a RAGER is to disengage.

So the next time you are being told how bad or stupid you are….disengage as soon as you can and refuse to be defined by others.

If you have made a mistake, forgive yourself and do not be defined by that mistake. Know too, that you are fully human and that you will make many more mistakes in the future. It is with our mistakes that we learn our greatest lessons.

Go forth and make mistakes, learn from them and refuse to be defined by them.

Love and light,

Indrani

 

A night at the movies…

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Woman watching movie with popcorn via travelssentials.comAnswer me oh my love, just what sin have I been guilty of?

Won’t you tell me where I’ve lost your love?

Please answer me sweetheart.

 

This was one of my father’s favorite songs by Nat King Cole. I know all the words.

The other day the song popped into my head and I had a whole new appreciation of the first two lines. If you can hear these words coming out of the mouth of an abused woman you will understand where I am going with this post.

Imagine you are looking at a movie, there is a couple that is wildly in love and after an amazing courtship they have a great marriage. A few years into the marriage, she is being picked apart…at first, just little stuff like the way she combs her hair or the way she laughs out loud. The things that were engaging and cute now become irritating.

She begins to see herself as “not good enough” for him anymore.

Isolation begins to set in. She feels isolated from him, from her friends and family and from herself.

She begins to feel inferior to him and others.

She may begin to self diagnose as “crazy” or “hysterical” and she accepts the pathologies and looks for confirmation that she is sick.

She gets diagnosed by a mental health professional as “depressed” and begins medication. Things at home never change for the better. In fact, things get worse because even though she may be feeling better inside the outside nit picking does not let up.

By now, the situation at home may have escalated to physical abuse and sexual abuse.

Now she feels really bad and even more depressed!

She begins to hate herself and the only way she can dispel the self hatred and pain is to turn on other women and judge and gossip. She begins to look for people worse off than her and she feels relief from the judgment.

As an observer of the movie, it is sad to see her life get so messed up so quickly. As an observer you want to shout to her tell her to get out!

It’s easy to see when others are being sidelined and abused. It is not so easy to see it in ourselves.

If any piece of this scenario applies to you, take a moment to look at the whole movie about how it got to this point and follow your own advice… Get OUT!

 

Love and light,

Indrani

A thunderstorm of shame….

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images via ebonyYou’re not really my friend … so you can’t share our hotel room!

These words were said to me about 24 years ago by two women who I thought were my friends.
Let me set up the scenario.
I was pregnant with my second child and really quite pregnant….about 7 months.
I was a member of a women’s club that was hosting a girl’s weekend and I was attending. One last hurrah before the baby came.
I had brought two women into the club and so I approached them and said, “Let’s share a room!” They said sure!
A few days later, one of them came to me and said, “Katherine and I spoke and we realized that we are not that good of
friends with you….so we don’t want to share a room with you.”

Holy Crap….did she really just say that?
Yep, she did!
I went home and wept!
I wept like a baby.
Listening to Brene Brown’s The Power of Vulnerability has allowed me to rewrite the script of that painful incident and to keep it now in my arsenal for great examples of when self-love could have helped me.

Listening to these CDs is like eating 12 scoops of ice cream too fast and getting brain freeze but you would never think of throwing the ice cream away.

If we can remember the hurtful moments in our lives, we can give ourselves the empathy that others could not show and we can use those hurtful memories to help others in pain.

We can call upon our hurtful past to become an empathetic listener to someone else.

Let us remember without falling prey to the pain.

Let us live BIG and BE vulnerable. It is the only way to whole-hearted living. Thanks Brene.

Love and light,

Indrani

Life Imitating Cinema…..

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this way via streetandstage.comI recently had a long flight and got a chance to watch some movies. The one that intrigued me most was Happiness Therapy.

Short version:

Guy seems to be bipolar, freaks out when he catches his wife having shower sex and has a big fight with the shower sex guy. Wife leaves him. He is released from a Psych hospital to live with his parents and he is hyper-focused on getting his wife back. His father is a bookie and has major OCD issues, expects the son to just sit and hold two remotes while the Eagles play whoever they are playing. Guy meets a girl who is also struggling with her issues and invites him to be her dance partner in a competition, in exchange for giving the ex wife a letter.

As I watched it, I was mesmerized by how simple the lesson was for the world.

Here is my take….

This guy is struggling to deal with his mental stuff and trying to think of ways to get back his wife. The girl gives him a chance to help her fulfill one of her dreams and with that promise, he begins to think of someone other than himself and to think of something other than the ex wife.

He practices the dance moves constantly and he is physically exhausted and seems to be getting more mental clarity.

The girl shows him how to tap into real emotion and how to sit with the feelings, also how to bring the emotions to the dance floor.

Meanwhile his father talks him into going to the stadium, where he gets into another fight and he gets arrested.

His father makes a bookie bet on what score he will get in the dance competition and puts additional pressure on his son.

Lessons for all of us

  1. Do something significant for someone else.
  2. The something must be out of our comfort zone, so we can rewire our brains.
  3. Stay away from people who try to put us back into their dramas, even if those people are family.
  4. Do our best in the new commitment and with feeling and purpose.
  5. When people make bets on whether we do well or not, ignore them, they are toxic.
  6. Give wholeheartedly to the people we are helping.

 

I know that this blog may seem a little “pie in the sky” but it is really a good formula for permanent change.

Watch this movie, Happiness Therapy…it may help to cement these lessons.

Love and light,

Indrani

The Power of the Positive Question…PPQ…

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positive-thinking via runnersami.wordpressThe power of the positive in the field of Psychology is reshaping the way we think about self improvement.

It postulates, in a nut shell, that we can change our brains and our behaviors by asking “What’s right with us and how can we get more of the things we want in life?”

This difference is in direct contrast to the traditional view of Psychology which focuses on “What’s wrong with us and how do I fix me and you and all that is bad in the world?”

To begin to understand the PPQ applied in any situation, do this deceptively simple exercise:

Bring to mind something that is troubling you. Pick something that is mildly troubling for now so you won’t get caught up in too much emotion.

Now ask and answer the following questions on a piece of paper:

1. What can I be proud of with this situation?

2. What can I be grateful for with this situation?

3. What are the positive and important elements within this situation?

4. What’s important to me about this situation?

5. How does this situation inform me about myself, the other and the issue at hand?

6. Using all of my values (take the survey at www.viasurvey.org) how can I positively affect this situation?

I hope you will take the time to do this exercise; it will give you great insight about yourself and give you a different view about whatever issue you are investigating.

Have fun!

 

Love and light,

Indrani