Tag Archives: gender based violence

The ART of saying a Powerful NO!

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Photo Credit: horiavarlan/Flickr

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.

Standing up for what we believe is right is not something that we are taught.

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.

I said NO to unfair treatment of a child. I said YES to kindness and I showed my son that day what it means to step up and right a wrong.

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

What we do here at ILF….

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10272679_10152456770534048_8792785988925842137_oHere at Indranis Light Foundation we want to END Gender Based Violence, Domestic Violence and Intimate Partner violence … #endGBV, #endIPV.

We don’t just want to end GBV (Gender Based Violence), we want to see your HOME be your place of safety and solitude.

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

What good is WORRY?

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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 fuse is a lousy excuse for bad behavior…Take immediate action to lengthen the fuse!

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short fuseA 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

BANNED for LIFE…

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Image-1BANNED 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

Dancing Queen only 17…

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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

Let’s be as strong as TRUE vegetarians when it comes to not accepting violence….

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gallery_big_saying_no_to_junk_foodI 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

Counteracting the internal predator…being supportive to self.

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70620889.Y2hPFqyeWe all have internal voices that regale us with how many things we do wrong.

This voice seems to take great pleasure in rendering us helpless in the face of challenge.

It happily reminds us about all the things we failed to finish. It shifts and disrupts the ground from under our feet with all the things we can’t do.

If we believe these internal onslaughts, we remain tightly wrapped and bound by our failures instead of being able to open up those failures and glean the lessons in each.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes in Women Who Run with Wolves tells us we can “dismantle the assaults of the natural predator by taking to heart and working with what is truthful in what the predator says and discarding the rest.”

If my internal predator says “you are so wasteful, you have so much fabric and never finish any quilts”…I can calmly tell myself that I have made and finished more that 12 quilts and each child has at least two quilts handmade completely by me.

This example is quite tame. It can happen, however that my internal predator can tell me something like:

“Oh, so you think you are so special and want to end Gender Violence? Well missy….YOU have been yelling at people all your life. You even yelled at someone last week! Who are you to think you can do this?”

I will then have to have the presence of mind to remind myself that I am human and while I still do yell, I am trying to stay calm in situations and to treat others as I want to treat myself.

If I can do these exercises with my OWN internal predator, then I have a fighting chance to speak MY truth in the face of an external predator.  The person who wants to abuse me physically, emotionally or verbally is an example of an external predator, whereas, an internal predator is the negative voice that tries to bring me down.

The external predators can do serious damage to my psyche and if I do not develop the internal muscles against my internal predators then I have very little chance of standing up to external predators.

Estes tells us that we can “dismantle our predator by maintaining our intuitions and instincts and by resisting the predator’s seductions.”

How do you hone your instincts when the world is ready to tell you that what you feel is false and that your instincts are stupid?

The only answer is that YOU must believe in YOU!

You have to be courageous enough to know that you have deep understandings about life.

You can sit in prayer or mediation and recall times in your life when you did listen to your instincts and were happy because you did.

Like any skill, listening to your instincts is a muscle you must build up.

You must have patience, and practice on little things.

For example, if someone asks you to do something, instead of answering from your head, take a few minutes to notice the way your body is reacting to the request.

Do you feel happy and joyful, or heavy and dark when you think of the request?

Only you will be able to read the signs that your body give you.

Then, you have to be courageous enough to follow your natural instincts.

This may mean that you have to say NO to things you used to say YES to.

I know someone who recently told her boyfriend that she would no longer take part in orgy sex. She was very scared to do it and felt he would leave her if she refused. Whenever she had done it in the past, she felt dirty and less worthy but he always told her that she was the prettiest one in the room. She so badly wanted to hold on to him, she continued with behaviors that left her feeling empty and nauseous.

When she finally decided to stop the orgy sex, she delivered her decision and he promptly left her. He found someone who would do exactly what he told her to do.

It took her a while to recover but now she is happy that she found the courage to end that part of her life.

She had to get used to a new normal. A life without big lavish parties…but now she has her life and her body and self worth.

When you decide to counteract the internal predator it will mean that you must get used to a new normal.

Give yourself time to craft the new way.

Give yourself a pat on the back every time you kick the internal predator to the curb.
Love and light,
Indrani

Transactional or relational…what kind of relationship do you want?

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downloadA while ago, while listening to Barack Obama, I heard him describe a relationship (not with Michelle) as one that was solidly transactional and polite.

He knew and understood exactly what kind of relationship that was. The way I understood it was that when things were discussed he did not say things like ” that FEELS great, or that MAKES me HAPPY.”

Emotions were OUT of this equation and both parties understood that.

To put the transactional relationship out into the light, think Pretty Women. It started out as a transaction and then she wants a relationship. It took him a while but eventually the arrangement changed.

I have read that successful pimps prey on young women and start off with the lure of a relationship, then when the young girls think they have a real boyfriend…..the pimps beat them, rape them and turn the arrangement into the transaction it was always meant to be.

I have been thinking about marriage and have been wondering if perhaps the high rates of divorce might be due to the fact that we do not know the difference between transaction and relation based relationships.

A wife who complains that her husband is always at work, travels too much and is never available is complaining that the relationship is suffering. The man may be very confused as he is providing a house and cars and lifestyle and does not understand what she wants from him. He is seeing the transactional side of the arrangement.

How can people on two different sides move towards the center?

I think a good place to start is with shared filling in the blanks of “What’s missing here?”

If the wife says her piece and says that time with husband is missing and intimacy and friendship it is a start.

If the husband says nothing is missing and he is happy at work and just wants to be the provider, there is an insight into the size of the divide.

I knew of a couple who went on vacation once, and while he played golf everyday she drank and sat by the pool.

She did NOT want to spend more time with him and HE was happy with that arrangement. They saw each other the same amount of time while on vacation as they did at home.

The only difference is that they slept in a hotel room.

This transactional vacation worked for them, he bought the vacation package and she used it.

We don’t get to complain about the type of arrangement we have if we are not courageous enough to open it up and ask questions.
If you are in a relationship that feels like it needs to be changed, ask “What’s missing for me here?”

Journal about this question as many times as you need to. Look at your answers.

Make a list of the things that are missing.

Then begin to see what YOU can provide for yourself.

This may not be the answer you want, but when you can provide the elements of life you want for yourself than you can begin to fill in the other elements with your partner.

Love and light,
Indrani

Pepper Corns or Allspice? You just gotta smell them!

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2011-10-20-07Recently, a friend came over to my house for dinner and grabbed my pepper mill to find it empty.

She did me the favor of filling it for me.

She had opened the pantry, found a container of pepper corns and she filled it up.

Just then, I came into the room and saw that an empty container was on the counter and the mill was full. I looked at the empty container that was labeled “Allspice” and said, “Is there a reason you put allspice in the pepper mill?”

“What??” she said.

I took the mill, ground the corns that were in there and had her take a sniff.

“YUCK!” she said, “I do not want allspice on my steak.”

We laughed, opened the mill and removed the all spice.

There is a GREAT lesson here.

It is both powerful and simple and it can be captured in words from Sesame Street.

One of these things looks like the other, one of these things doesn’t belong.

Here, with the pepper corn and the allspice, they did look alike BUT they tasted and smelled VERY differently.

Let us use ALL of our senses when deciphering a problem. Let us ask for help and advice even if we are SURE that what we are doing is correct.

Let us open up to the possibility that some things look alike but are very different.

There is NO shame or embarrassment when we ask for help, and we can often save ourselves a lot of extra work.

In this case, the work was simple and we had a good laugh, but often when we misjudge we have quite a lot of unraveling to do.

Save some time, ask for clarification, then, take the first step.

It is a good life strategy.

 

Love and light,

Indrani