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My Father, the Ninja…..

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080410_ninjaWhen I hear the word Ninja, I think of a person who is stealthy, nimble and agile and uses the forces of his opponents to his advantage.

He only fights when necessary, and then too, only to defend himself or his family, or to right a terrible wrong.

My father is a Ninja.

He never let on to any of his three children how difficult it was to put food on the table. He never allowed us to suffer the stigma of “poverty” and always found ways to provide what we needed to succeed as students and young people. He encouraged all of our friends to visit, sleep over (often in drunken hazes when we were teenagers) and never once do I remember him lecturing or making us feel like losers for our immature behaviors.

He always led with love and followed with well placed stories with metaphorical lessons that somehow always made sense.

As my father lays in a sedated coma due to a severe stroke, we his children are left to remember the greatness of the Ninja skills he wielded so magnificently and we are left to wonder IF we managed to become the adults he always believed we could be and if we told him we loved him and showed it as much as we could.

I am so grateful that he never considered that his daughters be married off at young ages so that he would be relieved of our care.

He always stressed as much education as we were capable of and never wavered in his belief in our abilities to become fully functioning members of society.

I read about fathers and mothers who sell children into prostitution as a solution to bring money to the family. I cannot even imagine what my father would say to theses practices.

I read about parents dragging their girls out of school so that they can take care of the house and the younger siblings. I cannot even imagine what my Ninja father would say about that.

I cannot imagine lots of atrocities that I hear about fathers around the world. I am grateful that I had a DAD who would have given his last ounce of blood to keep his children safe and secure.

My father was a Ninja and as he sleeps in his coma, I can only hope that his dreams are of better times with me in Texas, where he loved to be.

He loved to go to the giant grocery stores and to buy what he wanted and came home to cook it for me and my children.

He loved driving my son to elementary school almost 25 miles away from home while I took care of a new baby.

He loved to go to Target and to be able to buy whatever his heart desired and it always desired very little.

If he had two pairs of pants, it was enough.

If he had four, he would say something like, “but I can only wear one pair at a time while I wash the other one.”

He was not a hoarder of material goods. He spent wisely and knew the value of a dollar.

My Ninja father taught me so very much and most of all he taught me the value of the relationship between Father and Daughter.

A bond that should never be taken lightly.

A bond that sets up the girl for a life of happiness or dread.

A bond that cements the way a girl feels about men.

My father, the Ninja, is my everything.

He is and will always be my hero.

Dad,
As you sleep know that I respect what you have taught me and I hope to continue to make you proud.

Love and light,
Indrani
Daughter of Ralph Augustine Nathu.

When religion disrespects women it’s bad for all of humanity.

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10277278_715031178560095_2112063105973454337_nI grew up a Catholic. I was one of the best Catholic girls you could ever want to meet. I was openly critical of ALL other faiths. I remember so clearly at a young age reciting the Lord’s Prayer in church and asking why we did not repeat a line that my Anglican friend used to say and I was told, “THEY don’t know the real prayer.”

Shamefully, I admit that I accepted that response as gospel and I told my friend, MY DEAR friend, that her prayer was wrong.

How hurt must she have been?

I persisted in my dogged dogmatic beliefs well into my twenties until I began to realize that ALL faiths taught the same thing and that I did not have to lambaste people about what they should believe.

The teachings from my childhood have made me a moral individual and for that I am grateful. I no longer practice anything and I consider myself a just and moral individual.

When I went to India in 1984 to get married, one of the first questions I was asked was this:

“Are you having your period?”

I was shocked and upset.

WHY was that anybody’s business?

I was told that the priest would not do the ceremony because I was unclean!!

WHAT?!!!

I remember thinking, “At least the Catholics never called me unclean!”

I refused to answer that question and I refused to play the game of being bound by yet another set of rules that made NO sense to me.

Fast forward to a few years ago, a friend asked me to speak at his Hindu temple during a women’s gathering.

I knew from past experience that this sect of Hindus DID NOT allow their women in the presence of their priests. I told my friend that I would speak but he should expect me to NOT agree with the segregation.

He withdrew his invitation, which was probably a prudent thing to do on both our parts.

The quote that appears in this blog by President Jimmy Carter seems to chronicle ALL the distaste I had seen, felt and understood throughout my life from people steeped in their religious beliefs.

There is definitely a place for religion, otherwise, the system would have died away already.

BUT why do women STILL follow religions that perpetuate a bias against females?

Why do men who love their wives and daughters still follow the dogmas that are prejudiced against women?

Would these same men and women be ok with words like:

“Women can’t be doctors.”

“Women must just be housewives and bear children.”

I have no answers to these questions.

I still have the questions and they get louder in my head.

Do you hear the same questions in your head?

 

 

Love & light,


Indrani

Spreading joy any way we can…..

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When Andrea Lee and I visited an amazing school for the children of sex workers in Delhi in Feb 2014, we were blown over by the level of JOY in the school and the level of commitment that the teachers showed.

We asked them what was on their wish list and the founder said a refrigerator.

We made that happen. Here are some great photos of that fridge and the smiles that it brought.

It made me extremely happy when I saw the blog by Melinda Gates saying that such appliances can significantly change lives.

Here, at ILF, we strive every day to positively change lives and end gender violence.

 

http://www.economist.com/news/international/21603031-how-chilled-food-changing-lives-cool-developments

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What’s the source?

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There is a movement afoot where people want to uncover where their food is sourced.  

Photo Credit: Flickr/chailey

Photo Credit: Flickr/chailey

We have seen an increase in artisan cheese makers, organic farms, grass fed beef and free range chicken. We are balking at farm raised fish and grabbing up the fresh Alaskan Salmon as soon as it drives into your stores.

We fuss about GMO foods and antibiotics injected into our meats and pesticides on our farm produce.

We try as much as we can to ingest the foods that are good for us. We know that messing with the food that nature produces may not be the best thing for our natural bodies.

We run internet campaigns against the large international corporations when they hide what they are doing with our food. We start neighborhood campaigns to help the local farmer, and we are proud when we make even a small dent in the way people think about the food they eat.

We have even seen a fast food chain like McDonalds put apple slices into a kids meal as they hope we forget that the meat in the burger may not be all meat.

I remember when they started advertising their chicken nuggets as 100% all chicken! I wondered what the heck was in the nuggets before.

Yet…we do not take one tenth of this investigative energy to put into the emotions that we take at face value and swallow as if we do not have a choice.

I was recently speaking to a dear friend who is an amazing foodie who prides himself on only cooking and ingesting the very best that he can source. He collects his own seaweed and mushrooms  and can smell the difference in fresh seafood and insists on free range chicken and grass fed beef. He only buys the freshest produce and will go without before he ingests foods not good for his system.

He is the epitome of a healthy man!

Except that he accepts the thoughts he often thinks about being not “good enough “or “being selfish” as gospel truth.

He thinks about past childhood pain and imagines that somehow he had something to do with it. He thinks he may have been ” bad” so that his caretakers had good reason to ignore him, give him the silent treatment or just brow beat him back into the mold they made for him.

He thinks that he could have “made them” love and accept him as he longed to be loved and accepted.

He is wrong.

Children are given to us so that the adults in their lives can show them how to love. They learn how to love themselves by the way they are unconditionally loved by their caretakers.

If the caretakers withhold love and support until some action is extracted then the child gets a skewed view of how to be in the world. The disease of people pleasing begins to take root.

I would love to see the day when we feel an emotion that causes us pain and immediately begin to hunt for the source of the pain. I would love to see more people “sourcing the beginning” of their pain.

If, for instance, I choose to stay home and not attend a family function, and if I am told that I am selfish, instead of accepting that diagnosis I should be able to bring up the thousands of examples where I did what was asked and realize that the  choice to say NO to a few things is MY right.

It does not make me selfish.

It makes me human.

As I take the time to reflect on life from this side of 60, I send so much compassion to my younger self who was ready to browbeat herself about transgressions that were freely lavished on her. I wish she knew that she was a good child, a good young girl, a good young woman and a good wife and mother. She wasted so much precious life energy berating herself for “crimes against the family” that she should not have accepted.

I send compassion to young and old everywhere and hope that they will find the self compassion to begin to question all the emotions that are imposed upon them by blaming voices and people who have no business judging others.

I ask you to hold yourself with loving compassion today. Even if only for a few moments.

Inhale your goodness.

Exhale your divinity.

 

Love & light,

Indrani

What’s really happening on college campuses….

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According to The Sexual Victimization of College Women- National Institute of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics:

  • It is estimated that the percentage of completed or attempted rape victimization among women in higher educational institutions may be between 20% and 25% over the course of a college career.
  • Among college women, 9 in 10 victims of rape and sexual assault knew their offender.
  • Almost 12.8% of completed rapes, 35% of attempted rapes, and 22.9% of threatened rapes happened during a date.
  • It is estimated that for every 1,000 women attending a college or university, there are 35 incidents of rape each academic year.

Please share this take on Sexual Violence by The Daily Show:

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Are you the “I need to find out” or the “I do not want to know” type?

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Photo Credit: Flickr/Shiv

Photo Credit: Flickr/Shiv

Recently, on a learning journey to Trinidad, the Island of my birth, I was in a deep conversation with a dear family member and he said that he was not the “need to know” type.

I was not surprised. I had always known this person and had seen over the years a certain acceptance of many things and a certain trust that things would work themselves out.

I instantly had a flood of memories of all the times I had wished I was not the “I need to know ” type. I wished I could be the “let sleeping dogs lie” type. It seemed to me that type had a life that was stress free. They seemed to be more accepting of things as they were.

I remember this family member just “doing what he was told” without question.

But I also remember that most of those things were not to his benefit. I began to remember that him not asking “why” made his life extremely stressful. He was swindled out of time, energy and money that he did not have.

He was always doing the bidding of others, doing the work for others and taking the blame for others.

He never seemed to be able to connect with the “why me” part of the question.

In other words, this person was NEVER able to say NO!

He was a man without boundaries.

It is very curious to me now, having grown up in this environment, that I dedicate myself to not just having boundaries and being able to say a positive No, but that I teach about boundaries and being able to deliver a perfectly placed NO.

Every time I return to Trinidad, I uncover another little piece of the “raisin d’être ” of Indrani.

I discover another deeper layer of what makes me tick and why I do what I do.

As I love this family member and am flooded with all the memories of all of his sacrifice, pain and torment that he had suffered, I give him thanks. From the time that he was a small boy who was tremendously abused, to being the 10-12 year old who was yanked out of school so that he could go to work washing busses to help feed the whole family to the menial jobs he had to accept because of his lack of education, I give him thanks and praise for NEVER giving up on me. For never giving up on all of his children.

I will forever be in his debt.

He is my FATHER.

With deep love  and respect for my 86 year old father who now has Alzheimer’s, I remain your devoted eldest daughter.

Love and light,

Indrani

I love me, I love me not, I love me….how to know if you love yourself.

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A few weeks ago I got some bad news. Something that I was looking forward to for more than ONE year got cancelled and just sort of fell apart. I did not receive any real reason.

I FELL apart.

I had to “phone a friend” and I gave myself permission to cry my eyes out.

She held space for me and I let it pour. I had not let myself fall apart like that for years.

After the wave of emotion crested and crashed, I felt better… except that ANGER began to swirl.

The previous pain was replaced by INTENSE rage and I wanted to call the offender all sorts of names and hurl insults … then I saved myself by going to sleep. The good news was that I was able to find sleep and peace whereas before I would have stewed all night and woke up even more angry.

But this time, I woke up refreshed and I took to the streets for my daily walk.

I walked almost 6 miles and I felt great.

I also had some really great conversations with myself on the walk.

There were two wolves in my head, one was righteously mean and the other sweetly compassionate.

Every time the mean wolf would speak, it would list the “ways” I SHOULD act. If I did not act in those ways, the wolf told me that I was a wimp and a push over and so on and so forth!

The other wolf would wait for the first wolf to stop speaking and just whisper something like
“you know that this person is not nasty, you know the person is one of the kindest you know…”

Then the mean wolf would jump back in…

And so it went.

I began to get very confused. What to do? Who to believe?

Then I had a thought!

“Indrani,” I said to myself, “what KIND of person are you? What if this was the last decision you will ever make about this person? Who do YOU want to be like, the mean wolf or the compassionate wolf?”

And just like that I knew what to do.

If you know me, dear reader, you KNOW I choose wolf number TWO, the wolf of Compassion. That is the wolf I choose to feed. I fed it with great thoughts about the person, great memories about the person and I said a silent prayer for the person to be well and safe and happy.

When I got home, I decided on the proper course of action for me. I decided to do the activities by myself. I decided that the decisions of another had to do with them, not me. If I wanted to go somewhere or do something, it was my business.

At my ripe age of 60, I really have NO time for waiting for another to fulfill my desires.

I have no time for regret.

So I offer this lesson to you.

When you are disappointed, as you sometimes will be, don’t allow your pain and your self righteous wolf lead down the path of nasty and revenge.

Try to feed the Wolf of Compassion and free your self from the “expectations” of what others should do for you.

Make YOUR decisions for your happiness.

Decide to be compassionate to yourself, as you offer compassion to the other.

Hope this helps…

 

Love and light,

Indrani

Shelter in Place …..be prepared.

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Photo Credit: quintanomedia/Flickr

Photo Credit: quintanomedia/Flickr

I live in Hurricane country. Every year, we are reminded by the weather people on the TV to replenish our batteries in our flashlights, to stock up on supplies, especially water and other staples to last a few days, to keep our gas tanks filled and even to buy generators so that we can save the food in our refrigerators.

We are told to prepare for rain storms, wind storms, hurricanes and other natural disasters. Some parts of the country are prone to tornadoes and they are told to have basements “tornado ready” so that they can keep their family safe.

Sometimes, people are told to leave their homes and seek shelter at schools or other places of safety set up by the local authorities.

Most people listen to these warnings and do their best to shelter their families.

When the danger is deemed too close to the target area, families are instructed to “Shelter in Place.” This is where the extra water and food and battery operated radios come in handy.

A few years ago, we were hit by a very big storm and we were without power for a full week. Luckily the cars were full of gas and we had enough water and supplies of food  to sustain us. The schools were closed and we ” hunkered down” as we say here in Texas.

This concept of “shelter in place” is one that can serve the abused woman very well.

If you are in a dangerous situation AND you choose to stay with the abuser, there are some things you must be willing to do to keep yourself and your family as safe as you can.

I have a friend in India who works with women who have even been burned by fire from their abusers. Most of them stay with their abuser for the sake of the children, or because they feel that there is no other place for them.

They have learned to turn off the stove if the abuser comes into the kitchen and to be prepared to leave the cooking area.

This is a brilliant strategy. Whatever you may feel about them wanting to stay with the people who burned them is your prerogative but you must be able to see the simple brilliance in their strategy.

This is a great example of shelter in place.

I knew another woman whose husband used to hold guns to her head and threaten to kill her. She blew me off when I told her to take the kids and leave.

She even blew me off when I said she should get rid of all the guns.

A few years ago I heard she finally had to leave because he did indeed fire at her and barely missed.

She called to tell me she should have listened.

I was glad she and her children were finally safe.

Turning off the fire and getting rid of guns are two examples of sheltering in place.

When you decide to stay in the midst of the storm, i.e to stay and live actively with the abuser, you have decided to be your own weather person. You have NO one but yourself to determine your danger. You have to begin to capture all the relevant information so that you can decide what ” shelter in place” means to you.

When does abuse usually occur?

Does it occur when the abuser gets some money and consumes alcohol and gets drunk and out of control?

Is there a time of month that this happens?

What can you do to NOT be around when this occurs?

Who can you call to be a buffer to the abuse?

How can you save the children from further trauma?

Please don’t believe that kids are dumb and don’t know what’s going on.

Kids know and are more aware of danger than you are allowing yourself to believe.

Does the abuser get triggered when family visits?

I had a client who was always more abused when the mother in law visited. The elderly woman would complain constantly to her son that his wife was no good, was a bad cook, was a lousy housekeeper, was a bad daughter in law, etc.

She had to get very brave and use her voice to tell her husband about the behaviors she was no longer going to accept.

Was he angry that she dared call him out on his behavior?

YEP, he was.

When his mother visited and he behaved abhorrently, she left the house for a few days and took her son.

The husband kept calling her cell phone to find out where she was.

He HAD to change his behavior for her to return. Now she was met with a cold silent treatment from him and his mother, but at least they were not shouting at her.

Every person must decide what Sheltering in Place means to their unique situation.

I know of women who finally took full time paying jobs just to get away from all the negativity at home.

They worked while the kids were at school and refused to give up their jobs. The abuser had to find new people to dump his anxieties on.

Did they face abuse after work, of course they did, BUT they had a new circle of friendships at work and were better able to withstand the barrage of insults that came at night.

Are you living in the midst of daily or weekly storms?

What creates the storms?

What can you do to shelter your kids and yourself from the worst of the storms?

If you choose to stay, then it is incumbent upon you to create safety for you and your kids.

Please take a look at this danger assessment and decide what dangers you are in and how you can help yourself.

If you won’t leave, you can still get outreach help from your local shelter or police department.

The most important thing is to be HONEST with yourself and your situation and then make plans for sheltering at home.

I was going to write “good luck” but this is NOT about luck … it is about awareness and respecting the anger and the threats from the abuser.

Respect the anger enough to make shelter plans. Protect your kids.

They need YOU to be the sane adult.

 

Love and light and weather forecasting …

Indrani

Lessons from the past 7 years….

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I realized a few days ago that I have been working with pmo-lessons-learnedGender Violence for about 7 years.

It seems so unreal to me that it has been so long. I love this work so much that it always feels new.

There is so much to learn about the psychology of why a woman stays in an abusive home that I always feel like a novice.

I hope that I always will be a novice at heart, if not head.

Here are some of the irrefutable facts that I have personally learned over these many years:

1. We cannot FORCE a woman to leave an abusive situation.

She may leave for a few days or even weeks but IF the decision was not hers, as soon as the abuser calls and makes the slightest caring overture, she will go back. She will convince herself that she made him angry.

She will put the children in harms’ way again.

She will make these decisions because she believes that even THAT man is a better father figure than NO father figure at all!

She feels that she is making the right decisions for her children.

2. We cannot continue to make the victim feel like a failure and place the whole burden of leaving on her head. We MUST try to make it family centric and involve the abuser in the healing process of his family.

If substance abuse is involved we must try to educate the woman about the devastating effects the substances has had in the brain of the abuser and that she cannot really get through because he is not in charge of his thinking … his addictions are in charge.

One of my dear friends Chelsea Berler has just written a book called “The Curious One” and in the book Chelsea’s mother makes a gut wrenching decision to leave the father of her children and love of her life, because of alcohol related issues.

That Mom chose the health of the children and that was brave and honorable.

3. We MUST begin to educate girls and boys about the horrors of domestic violence.

We must ask them to share their stories of personal experience with abuse and teach them how NOT to perpetuate the abuse when they have families.

This is how my journey began. I remember being 12 years old and just having had a “proper beating” and crying softly to myself (because loud crying would be met with another beating.)

I promised myself that if I ever had kids I would NEVER hurt them.

I tried every minute of every day when my kids were in my care to keep that promise. Sometime I failed and I resorted to the yelling and name calling that I experienced.

I tried as quickly as possible to make amends when that happened and I live with the horror of those memories.

There are many more facts I have picked up along the way but none more IMPORTANT than this…

4. Abusers need to be helped to stop abusing.

In the book The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence, author Gary Haugen says that the people of Rwanda “did not need someone to bring them a sermon, or food, or a doctor, or a teacher, or a micro-loan. They needed someone to restrain the hand with the machete—and nothing else would do.”

We need to help the abuser to refocus the anger and outrage and to NOT lash out at the partner or the children.

We need to help the abuser to understand their own emotions.

Women need to be helped to use their voices and have a ZERO tolerance policy for any disrespect.

 

I would like to see ads on TV asking brides if it’s ok for her husband to hit her.

I would like to see the wedding industry invest some money in providing conflict resolution classes in their bridal boutiques.

 

I fear this will never happen… But I can still dream.

So I will dream about a world without gender violence and I will continue the work at Indranis Light Foundation and do what I can.

 

What will you do to end violence in your home?

 

 

Love and light,

Indrani