Click on the image below to find out if I let my fear stop me from walking this cantilever bridge….
Can you use the challenges in your life to make beautiful noise?
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Photo Credit: Yamiche Alcindor
This may sound like the opening line of a joke, but IT IS NOT.
What happens to society when people who are SUPPOSED to uphold the legal and moral codes turn out to be the disease?!
Where can we go?
Who do we turn to?
When a child’s own mother makes her do porn and then sells it, where does that broken child go?
On May 22nd, 2014 the front page of the USA Today exposed the arrest of 71 supposedly human beings who were sharing child porn.
What happens to their families?
To be the child of the Police Chief who was in the child porn ring…what an awful fate.
I am very concerned about who is counseling the children of the convicted.
What will society do to MAKE SURE they don’t turn out to be the next victims or worse, the distributors?
We MUST help the children.
I shudder to think of what will happen to those kids at school, to the wives, to the mothers of the accused.
Please reach out to the distressed families if you can…if you can recover from the harsh reality that educated and supposedly upstanding and KNOWN community leaders are indeed the UNKNOWN devil.
Love and light,
Indrani
Photo Credit: horiavarlan/Flickr
When a dear friend ASKS you for a favor and you are in a state of exhaustion can you say NO without guilt?
When a family member yells and screams at you about something and you feel attacked can you say “I will not respond to yelling or screaming, so we can talk when you have calmed down” without feeling scared or guilty?
When people disrespect others in your presence, are you able to stand up for what is right?
There is a good chance that you either said a quick NO to the above questions or an “Of course” but if I were to ask you for examples where you were proactive and said NO to bad behaviors, you would have a hard time coming up with examples with close friends and family.
You may be better able to do it with strangers and people for whom you care very little.
We are often taught to not rock the boat and therefore the people behaving badly get away with their nasty behavior.
A long time ago when my son was in 1st grade, about 6 years old, I took him out of school early one day for a “mental health day” and we went to get ice cream.
He ordered his ice cream and we were sitting there talking about his latest Lego creation and he was deciding what he would build next when the following happened.
A group of three boys about 10 or 11 years old came into the store and two of the boys ordered their ice creams while the third boy just stood there.
The two who ordered were making fun of the boy who had no money.
The boys took their ice cream, laughed at the one without and proceeded to go outside.
I then got up and told the ice cream-less boy to order WHATEVER he wanted. He looked at me and said, “Really lady?”
I said “Yep … make it an order bigger than your friends.”
I kind of made him order five scoops. He was grinning so big I thought he would burst. His friends came rushing in to tell ME that it was not fair.
I asked them why it was not fair. They said that they only had 2 scoops. I then asked why it was fair that they did not share their ice cream with their friend who had no money.
They looked shocked that I would bring that up.
The other boy said that he would go home to bring money for me and I asked him to go home and hug his mom and tell her he loved her and for me, he should try to always be kind to others. He left happy, the other two…not so much.
What was my little son doing this whole time?
He was eating his ice cream and looked up and said, “What took you so long mom?”
I smiled and said that I was giving the boys a chance to be kind. He shrugged and asked could he have as many scoops as the other fella got.
That night there were two very happy boys in Kingwood, TX, one in my house and one in another house, telling his Mom about his adventures.
How will you say NO to unfair treatment?
What will you teach your children?
How will you stand up to bullying in and out of the family?
Love and light,
Indrani
Here at Indranis Light Foundation we want to END Gender Based Violence, Domestic Violence and Intimate Partner violence … #endGBV, #endIPV.
We want to provide tools for you and your family members to work through normal conflict and find new pathways to familial peace and security.
We know that being human means having conflict and differences of opinion.
We also know that every point of conflict is a point of connection if you know how to navigate the challenges and not just lash out while you are in pain and needing to hurt others.
We publish two unique blogs each week and we search the Web for stories that are of use to you and serve as examples for what we are trying to teach.
Please take some time to look through the past blogs and see if you can find some answers to your questions.
We love to hear from YOU.
Love and light,
Indrani
Can worrying about something actually help to prevent it?
One of my very favorite books is The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker.
Simply put, it is brilliant and instructive and intuitive.
The book starts with a horrendous story….PLEASE don’t stop reading there. Keep on reading, I promise it will be worth it.
de Becker talks about why real FEAR is good for us and explains that most people mistake worry for fear.
Worry is, in his words, “A way to avoid change, when we worry we feel justified to NOT take action, a way to avoid feeling powerless over something, when we worry we feel like we are doing something, a cloying way to have connection with others, it is a poor substitute for love or taking loving action, a protection against future action.”
He goes on to say that Daniel Goleman in Emotional Intelligence says that “worrying is a sort of magical amulet that some people feel wards off danger. People believe that worrying about something will cause it to not happen.”
Further, de Becker says, “The relationship between fear and worry is analogous to the relationship between pain and suffering. Pain and fear are necessary components of life. Suffering and worry are destructive and unnecessary components of life.”
What do these words mean to you?
Is there a thing or a person that you worry about a lot?
I hear people voicing worry that their child is divorced or not married or with the wrong partner or not having a partner at all.
How does this worry help the child?
Is it not more stressful for the child to have to hear the parents worry?
I urge you to buy the book, The Gift of Fear and give yourself the gift of never choosing worry again.
Choose instead to take a certain action that will help the challenging situation.
Choosing to constantly worry makes your life miserable and dumps all kinds of stress hormones in your blood stream. You are in effect simply poisoning yourself.
If you are being abused, what positive action can you take today instead of worrying when the next time is that the abuser will strike?
My wish for you is that you throw out worry with the garbage and begin to implement a system of positive actions in response to your life challenges.
Don’t worry, take action.
Love and light,
Indrani
A short while back, I was in a very nice taxi going from NJ to NY. The conversation turned as it often does to “So what do you do ma’am?”
Always at the ready to spread the word about stopping Gender Violence, I said what my passion is and then told some stories from the U.S., India and Trinidad.
He began asking lots of questions and then told me a story of a family member who has been abused for 10 years and her 8 year old daughter who has also been suffering under this oppressive regime.
I gave him my card to give to the family member and then said that it is SHE who must want to be guided out of that situation and into a healthier one.
Then, for some unknown reason, I began to talk about men who MUST have things their own way. I told some more true stories, then said:
“And then they come home to find one towel out of place and start screaming at their wives and children.”
He got very silent. Then he said, “Ma’am you could be talking about me.”
“Really?” I replied, “Tell me what you mean.”
I already knew what he meant, but I needed him to speak out loud the bad behavior that he has been exhibiting.
As he spoke it came pouring out of him, almost as though he had just been waiting for someone to confess to.
We went back and forth for a while and then he said this:
“You know ma’am, she is not even my culture. She is better than women in my culture. She learned how to cook all my special food and we have twin 2 year olds and a 2 month old. She is so busy and tired and I don’t know why I shout.”
“I have too much stress and I have a short fuse.”
A short fuse! Such a simple phrase, a phrase that people use to give themselves permission to behave very badly.
I used to have a short fuse. I used to be THAT person who yelled and shouted at a moments notice.
I remember how scared my kids would be when ” the short fuse monster” would come out.
I understand about short fuses.
Guess what?
There is a cure!
Short fuses can grow into VERY long, even ULTRA long fuses.
How?
You MUST be SICK of the way you are acting.
No one can get you to grow your fuse, only you can do this for yourself.
How?
Again, glad you asked.
You must ask for forgiveness from the people over whom you explode. You must be sincere.
You must be able to hear them tell you how much you have hurt them, AND you are NOT allowed to scream at them for their feelings, or blame them for any of your shortcomings.
You MUST then forgive your own self. Forgive the parts of you that are NOT in keeping with the elegant individual you wish to be.
You must continue these two things everyday for the rest of your life: apologize to others and forgive yourself AND you must NOT give yourself permission to scream at another human being.
This is what I told that wonderful young man. “When you feel like screaming say I feel like screaming at you. I do not know why I want to scream. I will go for a walk around the block and I will come back.”
This really can work, but you must elicit the help of the other person in trying this simple behavior change technique.
Go ahead, grow a longer fuse. Do it for your own mental, emotional and physical health and do it for the loved ones in your life.
It is an exercise worth doing.
It is worth the life energy you will invest.
Grow a longer fuse, because a short fuse is a lousy excuse to be a nasty human being.
Love and light,
Indrani
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BANNED for LIFE…..the newbie NBA commissioner tells the racist tenured Team Owner!
Now that’s HUTZPAH!
I was in the middle of the first ever Train-the-Trainer Master Class for the foundation when I saw the headline…
NBA Commissioner speaks for nation in banishing Sterling!
When I turned the page I read:
“Stanley places himself within a culture that rewards a man who publicly owns a team made up of mostly black men but privately wants blacks to stay away from his team’s games.”
I am intrigued.
I am further intrigued that the newbie commissioner of the NBA’s name is SILVER.
In this case Silver and Sterling is not Sterling Silver but Silver VS Sterling!
Who could see that one coming?
For centuries we had the marriage of the words Sterling Silver that meant purest silver available. Now we can use those two words in a new and beautiful way to mean Nasty OUT/ Civility IN!
I am taking a BIG leap here and I would like to see some of the following:
If a male CEO makes a sexist comment about a woman’s place at the board table I want to see the CEO FIRED for sexist remarks.
I want to see headlines like:
CEO of XYZ company was fired on the spot yesterday for banning women from the the Board room. (When he is all too happy to have them slaving away on the shop floor!)
I want to see abusers taken to prison when they abuse someone else’s daughter as they cherish and put their own mothers on pedestals.
I want to see WOMEN STAND UP to abuse and tell the abuser that THEY too are human beings that deserve respect and honor.
I want to see women GIVE themselves the honor they deserve by speaking UP and OUT about the abuse that happens in the privacy of their own torturous prisons.
I want to see women record and video what the abuser is doing and play it for the lawyers and the the judges and I want to see the judges take the threats seriously enough to issue protection BEFORE a woman is killed or maimed.
I want to see society stand up to Gender Violence and Intimate Partner Violence as OPENLY as NBA commissioner Silver stood up to racism. The same racism that had been going on for decades and everyone turned a blind eye and a deaf ear.
Let us OPEN our eyes and CLEAN out our ears and let us speak UP about the abuses that are being played out in our families, in our communities and in our places of business.
Take a lesson from Commissioner Silver:
YOU are BANNED for LIFE!
Please speak up about your abuse. Please do not allow yourself to be lulled into yet another trance of a fake apology.
Please help us to help you.
Love and Light,
Indrani
A few years ago I created a flash mob in my town to the song Dancing Queen by Abba.
I twirled and sang and enjoyed the freedom to dance in public and not be ridiculed.
Until that day, I had forgotten what it was like to be 17 and NOT a dancing queen.
At 17, in Trinidad, I was in charge of my siblings four and eight years younger than I and I had full emotional responsibility for them. My father worked all day and night to keep us fed and clothed and sheltered and we were the light of his life.
My mother had immigrated to the US to work and try to bring us there as well.
At 17, I had already been caring for my siblings for 3 years and it was hard work.
A teenage brother who never listened, nor should he have, was rudderless and a baby sister who clung to me like I was her mom, which I guess I was.
I remember thinking some days that I just wanted to run away and disappear. I was tired of being the caretaker when, the truth was, I needed care myself.
I had ONE thing in my favor. Education!
I went to school every day and studied as hard as I could and was usually at the head of my class.
In those days, I had no dreams. I only knew that school was my refuge and it would have broken my heart if I had not been I allowed to go to school.
A few weeks ago in Delhi, I met a curious 17 year old and OH how she desperately wanted to be allowed to study and not just given in marriage.
Her mother, whom I also met, told me and her, in no uncertain terms that she would have to marry at age 20!
She looked at me and said WHY?
I could not answer. Instead I asked her mother if perhaps she could be the next Indira Gandhi or the next Mother Teresa.
The mother said that she never thought about it.
Looking back at my 17 year old self, taking care of children and struggling to make sense of my own needs and those of my siblings, I would have cratered if I had been told I had to marry at 20!
One of my friends from India tells me how useless it is to make programs for girl’s free education when they are not even allowed to go to school in the first place.
There are no ready answers for the multitudes of questions surrounding girls, education, marriage and children BUT there is ONE clear fact… if a girl gets as much education as she wants, she will be a better functioning member of society, a better mother and a much better wife.
Let her stay in school, give her brain a chance to develop and become mature. Just because her body is capable of producing children does NOT mean she should!
Raise your voices; keep girls in school and learning.
Love and light,
Indrani
I have known quite a few devoted vegetarians. Not the sort who one day decided to not eat red meat but still eat fish or the sort that only eats chicken.
I am talking about the real McCoy’s!
They have NEVER ingested any flesh of any kind in their lives!
It may be for religious reasons, cultural reasons or just because they were brought up that way and now it’s a real choice.
IF you try to entice one of the TRUE vegetarians to “just take a bite” they will look at you as if you have two heads. THEY would never even consider that they should follow your advice.
The WHOLE rest of the world could be consuming meat but they will still honor their beliefs. I have seen true vegetarians settle for just plain rice to avoid the chance of a mishap.
I would like to invite everyone, the whole world, to NOT accept Gender Violence with the same unwavering convictions as the vegetarians exhibit when offered meat.
Let’s speak up and say NO.
Let’s stick to our morals around gender violence and try to convince others about the beauty of a non-violent world.
Let’s not waiver if “maybe it’s right sometimes” or not. Let’s know it is never right. NEVER.
Even if a culture says it’s ok for a father to kill a girl for bringing shame on a family. It is still not right.
Even if a culture agrees that a woman must “obey” and she is found wavering in the obedience department, it is still not right.
It is NEVER right.
NEVER!
Love and light,
Indrani