Tell yourself a better story…..
Tag Archives: love others
Domestic Violence Awareness Month- Day 23
Who’s eyes will you bless?
Domestic Violence Awareness Month- Day 20
Compare yourself ONLY to your best self….
Domestic Violence Awareness Month- Day 12
Who do you think you are?
Domestic Violence Awareness Day 5
Surround yourself with beauty.
Limitations, oh limitations where art thou?
Just the other day on a flight home from Trinidad I watched a movie with Vince Vaughn. It was the movie about Google and his character said, “If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them.”
I immediately began to birth this blog. I have been struggling with some of the language around Gender Violence and I have been struggling with the impatience I feel when people say things like:
It will always be like this.
That’s just the way it is.
How are we going to fix what has always been broken?
In the vernacular of Trinidad, it’s “Whah yuh go do?”
It’s pronounced as one word, “Whahyuhgodo?”
It is usually followed by a shrug and a laugh that means it’s too hard to tackle or a sucking of the teeth. (Which means the speaker is quite done with the conversation.)
I have a HUGE problem with the “whahyuhgodo” attitude!
The line in the movie, “If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them” made me realize why.
When we give up the fight to make things better, we fight for the limits and we put limits on our dreams for humanity.
Please don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that we can fix all the ills of humanity but when is it a good time to give up?
Should we give up when we are…
Rich enough?
Old enough?
Young enough?
Poor enough?
What’s the best time to give up the fight for a better way to treat our fellow humans?
Gender violence does not just hurt the women and girls.
Sons see their mothers being pummeled and broken.
Sons hear their sisters and mothers cowering and crying and feel helpless.
Sons are also attacked and made to feel broken.
Often children who are witnessing the violence are told NOT to help or the mother will be worse off.
Often the mother implores the children to “go back to sleep” even as she is fighting for her life.
Children are not stupid.
They know that their house is a war zone.
They know that neighbors know their house is a war zone and they see NO one trying to help them.
Can we STOP fighting for our limitations?
Can we begin to live each day a little brighter than the last?
Can we begin to HOLD dear the possibility that limitations are a coward’s way through tough times?
I do not want to live the life of a coward.
I want to live brave and strong and hopeful and for that I need to identify my limitations. I need to keep trying to find a better way into a world that is free from Gender Violence.
We owe it to every single child, boys as well as girls.
Let them grow up in houses full of love and hope.
Let them have limitations like which new planet to inhabit, not the limitation of wondering if Mom will be “sick” today and who will help with dinner and homework.
Love and light,
Indrani
Two WRONGS don’t make a RIGHT….
This was a saying that I used to hear while growing up in Trinidad, in The West Indies.
It was usually lobbed at me from a very angry parent, (read rageful) and it was usually because someone hit me and I hit them back.
I never understood why I should not defend myself.
Recently I visited my childhood home and as someone was telling a story about a child making a mistake, the saying “Two wrongs don’t make a right” popped into my head.
The storyteller was relaying that a teenager had taken a dish into their kitchen and showed that the dish was still dirty.
A family member of the teenager then said, “Get the HELL out of the kitchen and put the damn cup down!”
The teller of the story was chuckling, gleefully, because the teenager had been “put in their place.”
In a flash, I was filled with anger and disgust and said, “Was it really necessary to curse and embarrass the teenager?”
The story teller was not at all pleased with the way their story landed on my psyche.
The storyteller did not see that yelling at children and publicly embarrassing them was not the way to teach.
It constantly amazes me that “mature” people still think screaming at children is the way to their hearts and minds.
Children need love, care, feeding and watering.
Parents, if you are still screaming, embarrassing and denigrating your children, please take as long as you need to look at your destructive behaviors.
You are destroying the next generation.
Please sign up for some parenting classes and I do not mean any of the “spare the rod, spoil the child” kind of classes.
I mean the class that shows you, the parent, that children are gifts from a divine source and that they are given to us to cherish and protect.
Love and light,
Indrani
Hanging on to the buoys
When I was 49, I decided to learn to swim and to participate in an Olympic Distance Triathlon.
Yes, you read that right…learn to swim!
Even though I had grown up on an island, what I used to do in the ocean was not swimming. It was simply not drowning.
So on the day of the triathlon, I looked out over the lake at Disney World and I counted the buoys that marked the swim course.
The idea is to swim as close to the buoys as possible and use them as a guide to swim the distance of one mile.
My strategy was VERY different.
Since I had only learned to swim properly six months prior, I could not swim one mile in a single go.
I had practiced “buoy to buoy” so to speak.
I had also heard that swimmers were so eager to finish first that they kicked you in the face, kicked off your goggles and pretty much ignored that you we also trying to finish a race.
I remember the night before I left for Disney World I had a neighbor who had done many triathlons and I asked him for advice.
He said, with a smile, “So when’s the Tri?”
I smiled right back and said, “In two days.”
He shot up from his relaxed seated position and said, “WHAT?”
He seemed to think I had waited too long to ask for help.
So I asked him for just one piece of advice.
He said, “Be careful of the other swimmers. Wear two swim caps and sandwich your goggles between them, you may hold on to them longer. Swim away from the buoys and this will lessen the chance that you’ll get kicked in the face.”
I said, “Ok, see you in a week.”
He looked at me like I had lost my mind.
Well, I took his advice and I wore two caps, I sandwiched my goggles and I swam WAY away from the buoys (even as an amateur I know that this may have doubled my swim distance).
I was NOT kicked in the face.
I added my own bits of advice.
I swam buoy to buoy!
The WHOLE way!
Want to know what else I did?
I imagined that a childhood friend was standing on each of those buoys and they were TAUNTING me like they usually did.
I imagined them saying things like, “Indrani, you’ll never make it to the next buoy!”
I imagined myself cursing them and saying, “Watch me!”
I did this for about seven buoys.
The last two buoys were different.
All of a sudden all of my childhood tormentors were piled together on the last remaining buoys and they were screaming things like,
“You GO!”
“Don’t you DARE give up!”
“We BELIEVE in you!”
I even caught myself laughing out loud as I clung to the final buoy.
At that buoy, a young man in a canoe, came up and asked if I was tired and asked if I needed to hold onto his life float.
I told him I was tired and I was worried that I was swimming in zigzags so I was really using more energy than I needed to use.
He told me that if he saw me zigzagging he would slap the water with his paddle, I would hear it and look up and see how to correct my course.
He then said, “Ma’am, please don’t give up. All of us out here on the lake want you to finish. We are all rooting for you.”
I laughed at him and said, “I am from Trinidad, I turned 50 two days ago, I learned to swim six months ago and I am like the Jamaican Bobsled Team… I will never give up!”
He laughed and said, “Ok, see you on the beach.”
Dear readers, I finished dead LAST! But I finished.
Love and light,
Indrani
The FULL COURT PRESS… You CAN stand up to them!
Do you know what the phrase “full court press” means?
My novice understanding of basketball tells me it’s when the opposing team exports most of its players to guard your players the whole length of the court. Especially the greatest players on your team like the one who scores a lot or the one who is the 3 point expert…the player most like a young Michael Jordan. I think that Michael Jordan was the recipient of many a “full court press”.
When faced with the wrath of the opposing team, one must use all of one’s wiles and wits. One must pull every trick out of the hat…make any move, even if it seems counter intuitive. It’s either make a move (a swift move), find someone to pass the ball to or just go for the shot anyway, before the ref blows the whistle that you’ve held the ball too long.
Ok, big deal, why should you care about the theory of the full court press?
So glad you asked!
Let’s use our eagle eyes to zoom out from the basketball court and soar way above our lives and take some close looks at the predicaments that we have gotten ourselves into.
When you were a kid and another kid hurt you, did you want, even long for, your parents to come to your rescue? If the answer is yes, then you longed for the full court family press to save you because you could not save yourself. You wanted your team to surround you and help you to navigate the challenge at hand.
Did your parents ever go to your school to stand with you against an unfair accusation by a teacher? If so, you were the recipient of the Full Court Press. You see the full court press does not always work the way you want it to. You may not get the teacher to admit that they were wrong BUT you will have seen that your family came to your aid and that may be all that you needed. You were NOT being blamed by your people, only by the opposing team. Your people had your back!
The full court press can work in the exact opposite way.
Take for example, your spouse hits you, so bad that you had to go to the hospital. The doctor BY LAW must report alleged domestic violence. The police begin to question you and you finally break down and all the secrets come tumbling out. The secrets of many years can no longer be held in.
Be aware that the Full Court Family Press is about to be UNLEASHED on you. The press will probably be from the side of the battering spouse, maybe even the battered spouse side may jump in.
You may be pressed and pressured with words like;
He didn’t mean it.
What did you do to upset him?
What kind of mother are you to put your children’s father in jail?
What kind of wife are you to not know how to make your family happy?
What will the rest of the family say?
What will the priest/imam/rabbi/guru/scientologist say?
When you start being barraged by the Full court press, whose only goal is to get you to go back to being abused in silence, you MUST find someone on the outside that you can “send the ball” to.
This will be someone who wants to help you live a life of JOY.
This will be someone who understands your pain.
This will be someone who has your back.
The Full Court Press to repress your rights to a peaceful life may NEVER go away.
They may vow to make your life miserable and spread rumors about you throughout the town/village/Internet.
You cannot control their actions. You can only control your own actions.
So suit up and look around. Identify those on YOUR team and give them a heads up that you may be calling on them.
Gather your team slowly and purposefully. Don’t accept people who make you feel bad even when things are good. These people may not be able to hold your pain and be a part of your full court.
I hope this got you thinking about who is REALLY on your team.
You deserve a wonderful team.
Love and light,
Indrani
Life Imitating Cinema…..
I recently had a long flight and got a chance to watch some movies. The one that intrigued me most was Happiness Therapy.
Short version:
Guy seems to be bipolar, freaks out when he catches his wife having shower sex and has a big fight with the shower sex guy. Wife leaves him. He is released from a Psych hospital to live with his parents and he is hyper-focused on getting his wife back. His father is a bookie and has major OCD issues, expects the son to just sit and hold two remotes while the Eagles play whoever they are playing. Guy meets a girl who is also struggling with her issues and invites him to be her dance partner in a competition, in exchange for giving the ex wife a letter.
As I watched it, I was mesmerized by how simple the lesson was for the world.
Here is my take….
This guy is struggling to deal with his mental stuff and trying to think of ways to get back his wife. The girl gives him a chance to help her fulfill one of her dreams and with that promise, he begins to think of someone other than himself and to think of something other than the ex wife.
He practices the dance moves constantly and he is physically exhausted and seems to be getting more mental clarity.
The girl shows him how to tap into real emotion and how to sit with the feelings, also how to bring the emotions to the dance floor.
Meanwhile his father talks him into going to the stadium, where he gets into another fight and he gets arrested.
His father makes a bookie bet on what score he will get in the dance competition and puts additional pressure on his son.
Lessons for all of us
- Do something significant for someone else.
- The something must be out of our comfort zone, so we can rewire our brains.
- Stay away from people who try to put us back into their dramas, even if those people are family.
- Do our best in the new commitment and with feeling and purpose.
- When people make bets on whether we do well or not, ignore them, they are toxic.
- Give wholeheartedly to the people we are helping.
I know that this blog may seem a little “pie in the sky” but it is really a good formula for permanent change.
Watch this movie, Happiness Therapy…it may help to cement these lessons.
Love and light,
Indrani