Tag Archives: choices

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

She was stealing food…

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Image terimakasih0 via PixabayI spoke to a social worker when I was in Trinidad in October, and I heard about a child who was brought to her office by her guardian with a bag of clothing. The guardian is the legal guardian and a very close family member. The social worker was told that the child was stealing food. The child was a very young teenager and was emaciated and clearly hungry.  There was no place for the child to go so the child was sent back to the house with the guardian.

A few weeks later, the whole scene repeated itself.  The social worker again sent the child back.

This story really left me feeling helpless.

Often times I am talking about past abuses and guiding the teller of the abuse story through the pain, and into a deeper understanding of their present power instead of a powerless past.

This was so very different.

This is clear and present danger and pain that was being experienced by a young person that I could meet. I could make a significant difference here. Yet, I choose to keep working at the global level and to use my time and energy to try to make changes at a different level.

I will reach out to that social worker to see how I can contribute to the care and feeding of that child, but I must do this from a safe distance. If I get too personally involved I stand the chance of derailing my whole path because I will get way too deep in the problem, and can potentially make the situation very much worse. This is very hard to accept.

Unless I am willing to step in to legally adopt this young teenager in a different country and devote my life to her future, I can only help in different ways.

When we face situations like this in life, we can only really do what we can do. If we need to work from a safe distance, that is the decision we must make.

If we can do something deeper and significantly contribute to the situation we can choose that path. The option is NEVER to beat yourself up about what we “could” have done or “should” have done.  To be this centered in difficult decisions like this we must practice this centeredness in other less difficult aspects of life.

Luckily for us, life gives us many opportunities to practice centeredness …. from ordering from a menu, to choosing an internet provider, to dealing with the technical advisor of said internet provider who has such a thick accent, we just want to bang our heads with the device we are trying to trouble shoot.  You get the picture.

Look around you and attempt to deal with the next small irritant with a deeper level of groundedness and presence.

Maybe it requires you to use your ears more than your mouth. Maybe you get to use your mouth but in the complete opposite way, like whispering instead of yelling, or smiling in the face of the instigator instead of scowling, pouting. Maybe you decide to use your feet and leave a hostile situation instead of staying and begging the others to please, please, please see it your way.

Only you can decide what to do.

Expect to make mistakes and expect pushback. Pushback is really good because it tells you that you are making waves in the status quo.  If you want to quick start this practice, look at the status quo of your life and see what you would like to change then start there.

In my case, the status quo of my life was that of a “stay at home mom,” very little travel and a very confined, albeit very comfortable, world.  These days, my status quo is a far cry from yesteryear.

Take a breath.

Make a small change.

 

Love and light,

Indrani

The 3 Silent Killers of Domestic Violence

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This is part five of the TEDx Talk blog series, as we countdown to the public release of Indrani’s TEDxPortofSpain Talk.

“When we speak up against violence to women and children we are faced with the undertow of the status quo. A status quo that CLAIMS the RIGHT to beat our women and children.

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We hear comments like:

This is MY woman and I can do whatever I want
This is MY child and I can do whatever I want
This is MY house and I control everybody here.

A recent survey of 800 households was done here in Trinidad and the majority of children interviewed held the belief that their parents had the RIGHT to beat them and that they expected to be beaten.

When one of us DARES to speak up about child abuse, we are faced with swimming against the tides of IGNORANCE AND THE STATUS QUO of raising children.

When we continue to speak up and against child abuse we are faced with ferocious undertows called

Culture
Tradition
Normal

These THREE silent killers are at work every minute of every day across the globe.”

CALL TO ACTION

We need your support! We invite you to click on the social media buttons that appear when you hover over the image above and share this post with your friends, family, and community.  Then ask them to share this blog.  Remember, there is someone out there that you may know who needs to see this TEDx Talk because they are suffering.  Thank you for considering this call to action.

 

With deepest gratitude,

 

 

Team ILF

 

Female Avatars – Helping teach about gender equality? – A follow up post

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(You can read the first part of this post here: http://indranislight.org/female-avatars-helping-teach-about-gender-equality/)

Almost a year has passed since I wrote the original “Female Avatar” post, and I have been waiting, and waiting, to write a victorious follow up. A post where I could tell you that using a female character in that video game, and the conversations that followed, made a difference in how my son views gender.

The problem being, there were no earth shattering changes for me to report from that original conversation.

Sure, there were little signs of change. My son would get excited and cheer on the female contestants in America Ninja Warrior competitions, but he would also comment that “the girls never make it as far as the boys” (which is true, but still made me wonder if his view was changing).

We read, Wings of Fire, a series of books with some female main characters. However, these characters were also dragons, and my son LOVES everything dragon. So, I wasn’t sure if he was accepting the female characters completely, or if he was accepting them because of their dragon status.

My son has also become more accepting of the colour purple, which may seem unimportant, but for years purple has fallen into the category of “princess colour” and “boys don’t like princesses”. Unfortunately, pink, is still a colour that forms a grimace on his now 8-year-old face, and a disgusted comment of “pink is for girls.”

Now, to give the poor little guy a break, he is only 8 years old, so I am not expecting him to approach me and ask to have an in-depth discussion about gender norms and how he can work towards behaving in a manner that supports equality (to be honest, if that DID happen I would be a bit wigged out). But, I have been hoping that something “8-year-old big” would happen, showing that he was starting to see that boys and girls are equals.

That 8-year-old-big event happened last week.

We were in Kids Books, an amazing bookstore in Vancouver BC, shopping with Fionn’s cousins for some books for his birthday the following day. I was looking through some 7 to 10-year-old book series when I felt a poke. Looking down I saw Fionn, three books precariously clutched in his arms, looking up at me.

“Daddy, how about these books, they sound awesome”

“You’ve read the backs?” I asked, taking the books from his hands.

“Yes, they sound really cool.”

“For you to read, or for me to read to you?”

“I think I can read them, but I want you to read them to me.”

I looked down at the first book and the 8-year-old-big moment happened when I saw the cover:

sun catcher amazon

Let’s break this down from the view of a Dad, trying to teach his son about gender equality, and see that boys are not better than girls:

  • The picture on the front of the book is clearly a girl, and he still chose to pick up the book and read more.
  • The subtitle of the book has the word “witch” (a “girl” word) in it.

Most importantly, and amazing for me:

  • The subtitle has the word “princess” in it. A word that my son, and all of his friends usually have an allergic reaction to, with much frowning and spitting, followed by “princesses are dumb.”

All right, as earth shattering as this book selection already was for me, it might not be convincing for you. Totally understandable.

I smiled down at Fionn as I turned the book over to read the back, which read:
“Silk tells stories. It sings of secrets long forgotten. It sings of fire. Maia dreams of being a Story Teller, or a Weaver, like her father, Tareth. But when the Watcher names her Sun Catcher, she must face a destiny that Tareth has kept hidden from her. For Maia is more powerful than she knows, and she is about to discover that though the sun’s fire may be dangerous…so is she.”

The back of the book makes it clear that the protagonist is female, and, from the sounds of it, a female that will be kicking some serious butt. Looking at the backs of the other two books, each book is clearly about girls leading the way and being the focus of the story. Not just a side character in the book, but a female protagonist.

For me, after just a year ago when my son refused to even think about reading Tamora Pierce’s “Song of the Lioness Quartet” because the main character was a girl, this is a big sign that our conversation around gender equality has shifted.

Whether it was switching my video game avatar to a female character, or the follow up conversations we have had, or the changes I have made in my own behaviors that has brought about this shift I cannot say.

To be honest I don’t care what has made the difference, but I cannot explain how much pride I felt in this simple moment in the bookstore when my son chose Sheila Rance’s trilogy of books to be our next “Dad and Son” reading project.

I looked up from the backs of the books and smiled, “you bet buddy. Let’s get them all, they sound awesome.”

Fionn smiled, turned, and ran off down one of the aisles to look for more books.

 

 

Welcome to the real world…

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kid-165256_640said John Mayer in his song.

And at one of my speaking gigs, a man who wanted me to accept that we should beat our children said “join the real world.”

What is the real world?

It’s the world where you feel comfortable EVEN if it is full of violence.

I should know.

I was abused by one of my parents and when I was 21 or 22 I accused the non-abusive  parent of NOT caring enough to ABUSE me.

Yes, abuse made me comfortable. It was familiar territory.

The man at the lunch was comfortable within the familiarity of his way of parenting.

He could not imagine parenting without beating his children. He was very vocal about HIS real world.

I have no desire to live in his real world.

Just like I do not want to live in the real world of ISIS, or in the real world of the Taliban or ANY world where women are the considered the PROPERTY of men.

MY real world is full of love and acceptance.

MY real world is a world that commits to ending violence to women and children.

MY real world is a world where adults can look in the mirror and see where they can become better parents, leaders, husbands, wives etc.

It is NOT a world where adults say, “I refuse to change my old ways.”

So…

 
What world do YOU live in?

Love and light,

Indrani

Staying in YOUR OWN business will reduce SELF ABUSE….

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office-336368_640Some of you will have read the title of this blog and have no earthly idea where I will be going.

Others of you will say, “But of course, everyone knows this!”

Still others may just be amused that the title may seem trite.

Let me tell you a story to make this topic come alive. A few years ago, at a business conference I heard a CEO of a large company recall an instance of how this manifested in the C suite.

He was sitting and engaged in his work when he was interrupted by his personal secretary to say that someone from Marketing had a very serious issue.

Being a benevolent CEO, he stopped his work and took the unscheduled meeting.

The Marketing employee came to to tell the CEO that EVERYONE in the Marketing department hated the manager. She listed (painfully) a long string of names of those who had been wronged and how they were wronged and just how affronted she was at the whole state of affairs in the Marketing dept.

The CEO, leaned back in his chair (sure fire behavior that she had lost his attention) and asked her ONE question.

This was it…”Were you appointed by the WHOLE department to bring these atrocities to my attention?”

The answer was a halting and faltering “no.”

He continued, “No one asked you to come to me with this litany of complaints.”

She said, “no.”

He said, leaning forward, “What is YOUR specific problem with your job?”

She blurted out that someone who did less work than she did was making more money than she was.

The CEO, then simply told us these words, “If she had come in with ONLY her problem, we would have looked at it and made a correction. The fact that she was in everyone’s business was so unprofessional that she threw herself under a bus.”

I heard that story many years ago.

I really had not assimilated it to other life incidents as efficiently as I did a few days ago while I was mediating between a home owner and a domestic helper.

I started with the domestic helper first and I asked what her concernS were and she began a litany of past ills NOT against herself but against others she had heard about.

She told me about “Mary” who was underpaid and about “Janice” who was put upon and “had” to ignore her own family and on and on.

I could NOT find a way into this woman’s issues and her individual problems.

Every time I tried to speak she blocked me with another litany.

I then asked her to STOP.

I said I am going to tell you a story. I told her the story from the CEO, the story above. She was enthralled.

I asked her, at the end of the story, to tell me what the CEO was disappointed about and why.

She was able to identify that the employee was in everyone’s business but her own!

Then, I said “Are you in other people’s business with all the stories you were telling me and not able to identify your own issues?”

She agreed that she was indeed NOT in her business.

I had been observing her facial expressions and body language as she retold the stories that were not hers to tell. She was agitated and closed in and contracted.

When she began to be in her business she was open and her face was not contorted. She was actually able to smile and laugh at some of the humor that I was pointing out.

The moral of this story is:

When we stay in our business we practice self care at its finest.

Byron Katie has a great worksheet for understanding whose business you are in.

Please visit www.byronkatie.com/judgethyneighbor

You will be amazed at what you discover.

 

Love & light,

Indrani

The Dashboards of our Lives…

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mini-one-862815_640My first car was a Toyota Corolla.

It was a faded gray and it had roll up windows, an AM radio and no AC. The heat worked sometimes.

The dash board had a gas gage and a speedometer.

A manual steering wheel was the driving mechanism.

I loved that car!

It took me on my first long trip from Ohio to New Jersey after Graduate school. There was enough space to stuff my meager belongings and drive off.

These days I still drive an import, just not a Japanese import.

My car has power windows, power steering, power adjusted seats that can be heated or cooled, a lumbar support that I cannot live without as well as a head support.

Air bags in the steering and the doors.

The dash board….

Well this is a thing of beauty.

I have a speedometer AND I can see a numerical display of my speed on the windshield.

The rest of the dash looks like I am in the cockpit of an aircraft.

I know when tire pressure is low. I know when there is a snail walking behind my car because of the rear camera. The car tells me when I am too close to objects in front and in back.

There are bells and whistles… Real bells and whistles that I have NO idea what they mean. I have to remember the sound and look up the sound in the 2000 page owners manual that came with the car.

I will NEVER understand this car! I won’t even try.

This car was the play thing of very inspired engineers and when the first one rolled off the line they all applauded and pretended that all the future buyers would give a damn about all the fancy schmansy stuff.

We buy the fancy cars and very few of us really give a damn about all the bells and whistles BUT we would never go back to the old car, like that first Corolla.

Yet, in our private lives, we keep using tools that are as outdated as that Corolla.

The tools we learned as a child to manipulate our parents, we try to use on lovers and partners.

The tools we learned in High School when we were first dating are the tools we insist on using in relationships that are way beyond the immaturity of High School.

We scream and pout as if we were teenagers and expect that people will just give up their positions to keep us quiet and happy.

We expect those tools to still manipulate like they did in the past.

We refuse to better equip ourselves to fully step into adult relationships.

What do I mean?

The tools I am talking about  are readily available in e-books, book stores and libraries. It’s the billion dollar industry of the Self Help Movement; while most of us have purchased self help books, how many PRACTICE the tools inside?

It’s the practice of new tools and skills that will get us away from the “outdated dashboard” we keep going back to so that we can install a newer updated version.

Let me give you an example of what I am talking about.

I was never taught how to say No.

I was taught to be “nice” and say Yes to all that was asked of me and furthermore to be sure to do it with a smile on my face.

I did this for many years.

Almost killed myself doing this.

The few times I said NO to things, I did it with such anger and animosity that the people around me looked at me like a had two heads.

Like Medusa, if someone tried to get me to be reasonable, I felt like they were chopping off one of my heads and so two would grow in its place. The multiple headed monster was what I would become.

I stumbled upon the book The Power of a Positive No by William Ury quite a few years ago.

I read it, re-read it and read it again.

The simple tools for saying NO were right there.

But, would they actually work in real life?

How would I know unless  I practiced them?

I was at a small conference once where I told one of the participants about this book and how it changed my life and she said, “make it into a workshop. People, women need these tools and many won’t read the book. Give them a taste and then tell them to get the book and feast on it.”

Ok.

I called the workshop, “Not Your Mothers Assertiveness Training.”

I did the workshop.

A few paid to attend and the rest of the seats I gave away.

It was a hit.

People loved the work.

I encouraged them to buy the book and to inhale the wisdom inside.

I heard from them from time to time that they were indeed using the principles.

A few times when they called to complain that they were being forced to do one thing or another, I simply asked, “What’s your YES!” (read the book to understand this question)
They got it and did the required work to make the decisions that would work for them.

This book is a part of the Live A Brighter Life series of classes and I encourage you to get the recordings, listen and then get all the books and really do a deep dive into the tools. www.liveabrighterlife.org

We cannot keep going back to the outdated tools, the outdated dash board and expect that our modern lives be best served.

We must find the courage to learn new tools, practice them daily and install them on the dashboard of our beautiful new lives.

 

Love and light,

Indrani

Give yourself a break….

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girl-517555_1280 via pixabayIt was not so very long ago that I never would give myself a break if I made a mistake.

My inner dialogue  would be so mean and hateful towards myself that nothing anyone else could say would even come close to the sting I could give to me.

I have been working on this, slowly and deliberately. It has been a journey.

One never really knows how one will do on a test until the test is over.

I had one such test a few weeks ago while pulling out of a tight parking spot from a Bed and Breakfast.

I had a rental car that was very low to the ground and I was trying to get out of a tight parking space.

I scratched the rental car and I did not beat up myself.

I heard the S. C. R. A. T. C. H.

And thought, “Oh no … that’s not a good sound!”

I did NOT think, “There you go you idiot, can’t drive to save your life!”

I pulled the car to a safe place and got out to take a look.

Yep, I did a good job.

It would be a claim for sure.

I filled the car with gas before I returned it, and I called the insurance company to start the claim process.

I kept a clear head, got all the details and was able to procure all the paperwork needed from the car rental company.

I got on my flight and took a nap.

Yep… I was able to take a nap!

I was so calm and so peaceful with myself that I was able to PUT OUT of my mind all that the morning brought.

This skill, of staying present, has been hard fought.

I used to really beat myself up if I made a mistake.

I was so hard on myself that I made myself sick.

I encourage you to listen to your self talk as you go through life and begin to clean it up and give yourself a break.

Love and light,

Indrani

Thank you to Dr. Brene Brown and the Daring Way Survey….

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relax-569318_1280I am very fortunate to belong to a community of practitioners called the Daring Way™.

I got here the hard way, by doing the classes from Dr. Brene Brown and taking tests and following their rules and guidelines.

It was a lot of work and I loved every step of the way.

I was very happy to participate in a research survey that the community sent out a while ago and decided that I should do my part to further along the research that is the foundation of her amazing books and teachings.

So I logged in a began.

It was long, I was getting a little tired of it and considered not finishing but then something about the answers that I was giving really hit me hard.

A lot of the questions were about my feelings of worth and whether I felt my life was going anywhere and also, did I frequently compare myself to others?

Half way through the survey it occurred to me that my answers to statements like “I do not like myself” or like “when I think of my accomplishments I feel I have done less than others” ( I did not pull these from the survey, they simply reflect the sentiments from the survey), I found myself answering almost never.

What did this mean?

Simply put, it means this:

  1. I liked myself.
  2. I feel accomplished by any ones standards.

This occurred to me about half way through the survey THEN I was pumped to complete it.

I even told myself to BE HONEST, that Brene wanted honesty so I reread the stuff I had answered and carefully answered the rest…

And what do you know?!

I actually like myself and I actually feel good about what I am doing and feel good about being able to laugh at my mistakes and do not allow others to determine what I think of myself.

This is NOT at all reflective of how I felt just 10 years ago.

As recently as 2005, I was still comparing myself to others, beating myself up for not being up to par or not as good as almost everyone else in the my world. I was not a good enough coach, or writer, or business person, or mother or, or or. The list went one forever.

Also I was always catastrophizing. If one thing went wrong, it meant everything else was going to go wrong. If someone disappointed me, it meant I would be doomed to a lifetime of disappointments.

It was quite exhausting to live this way. I knew no way out.

I put on a great show of being outwardly confident but I was always on the look out for evidence that I was not good enough.

The evidence always came.

It came in the form of people’s words about my life choices (I was a bad mom because I was pursuing a new dream) or in the form of a societal or cultural message
(You are traveling too much. Who takes care of your home? One family member even asked who cooked food for my husband.)

The evidence was ALL around me.

I had to really close my ears and eyes to all the messages I was hearing. All the nay saying that was trying to get into my psyche.

I even had to listen to close friends and family tell me how silly and unrealistic my dream of doing something about ending violence in the world was.

After all, I did not have a degree in psychology, or any experience in the real world. I never worked at a not-for-profit nor had I had a job in the last 25 years!

Yes, they were lined up to tell me the way I was living was not acceptable to them, not at all.

I had to be deaf and blind to those voices all around me and to try to tune into the voices within my own heart.

The inner KNOWINGS that I wanted to do more, be more than a housewife (I had done that for 20 years) and I wanted to create change in my world.

I saw that survey as a way to go back into my past and to tell the younger me that she would be fine!

I gave her examples of the questions that would have brought her to tears just a few years before, those same questions that now brought a huge smile to her face, warmth to her heart and ONE single sweet tear to her eye.

The tear of clarity.

The tear that acted like a magnifying glass through which she saw herself in all of the accomplishments and all the experiences and all the loving people surrounding her.

I sent my younger self blessings and thanks for not ever giving up and always finding ways to burn off the fog of unworthiness and shame.

Thank you Dr. Brene Brown. You may still be collecting your data, but you have already shown me my results.

Daring greatly, rising strong and thanking you,

Indrani
A grateful student.