Let it Go! Let it Go! - The Self Guilt - Let it Go!

Thanks to the ever-charming host ‘King’ Khan, Latha started watching a popular TV show - “TED Talks India”. On a relaxed Sunday, she saw a recorded episode, focusing on women empowerment. Two speakers talked about girl child education (Safeena Hussain – Educate Girls) and standing up for sexually abused children and women (Trisha Shetty – SheSays). Both these speakers and their causes hit too close to home – one because she believed that educating the girls is really a single stop solution to most problems that we see in our society and the other jolted her from her pacified state of mind that all is fine, to acknowledge that some wounds are so deep that the scars remain for life!

Halfway through the narrative of Trisha, Latha was stunned to feel raging emotions in her mind and tears started rolling down her cheeks uncontrollably. Just then her husband entered the living room, got a glimpse of the TV screen and immediately rushed to give her a comforting hug. This instant feeling of love and security gave her the shoulder she wanted and she eventually calmed down – as Trisha completed her speech and the sound of claps reverberated from the TV screen. 

Like Trisha and millions of women across the world, Latha had also experienced such abuses. In her early teens, Latha was visiting her relatives’ home during her summer vacation for a short homestay. Taking advantage of the situation that she was staying alone with his family that night, without her parents, one of her cousins had touched her inappropriately when she was sound asleep.  She had just hit puberty and was already dealing with physical and emotional changes and was baffled by experiencing such a lewd behaviour at such an unexpected moment. Though she had the presence of mind to quickly react & run to safety before it could have gotten any worse, she felt immense shame to not be able to share it with any of the adults around. In the morning, to her astonishment, her abuser coxed her to remain silent and made her feel guilty by implying that she probably enjoyed the encounter as well! His remarks were convincing enough for her to carry the guilt, though she strongly refuted his lewd statements. She missed her mother and could not wait to get back to her home.

Once in the safety of her home, she still could not bring herself to speak to her Mom. Every emotion that Trisha was talking about, including looking at herself in the mirror and asking “Why did it happen to her?” “Why did she let it happen?” “How did she let it happen?” kind of questions in a never-ending loop drove her crazy and eventually she decided that she had to let it all out. Still, she wasn’t comfortable talking about it to anyone, not even her Mother who unlike the other mothers of that generation, was very friendly and open to talk anything. Almost a month had passed and she feared that her Mother might also judge her. So, she decided to pen it down in a diary and kept it well hidden in her shelf. She kept moving the dairy every day, but as fate would have it, her Mother did find it and also read it and confronted her.

Though Latha felt cornered, her Mother comforted her and said she will not be judged and that she need not blame herself (as Latha had written in the diary), as it was not her fault. Hearing this, Latha started bawling, lying down in her Mom’s lap. Her mother told her not to hold herself responsible, and that most women go through this, including herself! This shocked Latha to another silence but made her realise how the double standard of this society places an enormous burden on the woman for character building and associates the same with her sexual chastity. The absurdity of this was something she wanted to change and this prompted her to choose her career path in Behavioural Sciences. Mother asked Latha to “let go” of her guilt and promised to stay by her for any emotional support that she needed. A few months of erratic emotions and a few Mom-Daughter talks (Mom playing the role of a counsellor) later, Latha was able to come out of victim mentality and guilt, but the incident itself left a deep scar in the mind of a teen that she hasn’t been able to forget.

She never went back to that relatives’ home after this, though she did not shy away from speaking with that family if she happened to meet them on other occassions. Her abuser never bothered her again - guess he saw the change in the demeanour of Latha and felt that he might end up in trouble if he pursued her further. There were other such encounters where aged men tried to take advantage of a teenager alone at home or those leechers who felt no shame to grope her on a crowded bus, that she took for her school.

Such incidents only strengthened the resolve that Latha had made to pursue a career in Psychology, primarily to be the kind of support that her Mother was for her, to many more than just her future children. Her Mother always quoted that “You can only feel guilt when you were responsible for an action”. In all these cases, Latha was only a passive innocent recipient of abusive behaviour, and so she was not responsible for what she had to face. This lesson stuck with her for life.

She knew that not all survivors were lucky like her to have a Mother who listened and supported them in all their decisions and situations. She wanted to set up a support system for sexual abuse victims to cope with the after-effects of such trauma and also to spread the message that a survivor of sexual abuse has no need to wallow in self-guilt. She aspires to create a society where not only girls but boys are also taught about boundaries, educated about appropriate and inappropriate behaviour, taught to acknowledge and deal with emotions and vulnerability and create a gender-neutral mindful parenting strategy, that would enable parents to bring up well-rounded (grounded), responsible adults.

This focus drove Latha to pursue Arts and Science after school, top her Masters in Behavioural Science and become a Psychotherapist who excels in counselling sexual abuse survivors, their families, conduct parental workshops to increase awareness on related topics for both genders, including giving tips on gender-neutral parenting strategies that ensure healthy mental growth and outlook for the children. Hearing Trisha speak of similar vision made her feel that she is not alone and there is hope for a better tomorrow for our future generations.

As Latha woke up the next day, reminding herself to get in touch with SheSays, she walked to her home office to get ready for her first appointment of the day.

Yes – she now helps others also to “let go” of the unwarranted guilt!

My ordeal with Chennai rains as a Non-Resident Chennaite !

It has been raining (pouring, to be apt) for more than a couple of weeks now in Chennai. My parents have had intermittent power supply (notice that I said power supply, not power failures) and live in Velachery - one of the most inundated parts of Chennai.

London November 30, 2015  4 pm, in my routine call to my Mom, she informed that it had stopped raining and that the Sun was out and she even went out to her Abacus class since last couple of days.

December 01, 2015 10:00 a.m. My Mom and she says that the rains have started again and is pouring heavily. There is water stagnated on the streets and there is no power since yesterday night. It is was not uncommon, when monsoons arrive for people in Chennai.

Rewind a couple of decades....I remember my school days when we used to carry our uniforms in plastic covers, wade through hip deep water, which essentially means your school wear completely drenched. So we could not leave our homes wearing the School uniform. We used to walk till our friends' home - which were closer to the main road & was at a higher level than where our home was at that time - and then change into our school uniforms and leave our wet clothes to dry in their house. While we returned from school we could do the reverse process and then return to our homes, again wading through the stagnant waters. This would be for a week or so every monsoon.

Then I remember campaigns started on rain water harvesting and the storm water drain projects which gave us hope that it might get better in future. But nothing changed much. We eventually started accepting the fact that we should be ready to brave hip-deep water, during the peak raining season. Almost every 10 years, there would be heavy floods which would fill the Adyar & Cooum Rivers to its brink, and the slum dwellers living in its banks would always get displaced due to floods and the excess water that is opened out from the neighbouring lakes and reservoirs. I specifically remember 1986 and 2005 monsoon. In 1986 (the year we moved into our own home after the construction completed), the place where we lived (Guindy) was flooded with hip deep waters for adults and they had to carry us (kids) and our great grandmother (lifted by chair) over their shoulders and walk all the way to the main road.

A picture of the Adyar river from
Saidapet Bridge in 2005 floods

In 2005, after celebrating our first Diwali after marriage in my parents' home in Guindy, we had to move to my apartment (near the Vijayanagar bus terminus), as the water levels were rising, as it was better located. But after 2 days of torrential rain and power failures, we had some more guests seeking asylum, and so we had over 8 people crammed up in my apartment. Adding to this, we were scared that the water would enter my apartment soon, as we were on the ground floor. We cleared out the bottom two shelves and decided to leave to "more" higher ground before it was too late and "migrated" to T.Nagar where my uncle lived. But thankfully the rain stopped in a couple of days and we went back to our respective homes, laughing over our experience. I remember the blog we wrote about it in 2005 with a few pictures that we took then, inside ourapartment complex and the view of Adyar river flowing in full spate under the Saidapet Bridge. There have been many in-between...

2005 Floods: Raft parked just at the
entry to my apartment building

Present day in London.... All these memories were going through my mind when my Mom told me about the consistent rain for more than 10 days in Chennai. As we have gone through this difficult situation very often, I assumed my Mom would have managed it well, stocked up enough food and water to last at least for a week if need be and the only major consequences are due to power failures.

December 2, 2015: I wake up on Wednesday morning,  and go on as usual to get my children to school. My husband was travelling to France. I come back home and try calling my Mom to check if she was OK. I could not reach her and thought maybe due to lack of power her phone battery drained out and then log in to Facebook to see a slew of messages and pictures about the bad situation in Chennai with some places under 6 feet of water !!! For a few seconds I lost all senses... I just sat there still. My fingers went cold and then adrenaline rushed in. I tried reaching out all my contacts in Chennai - family, friends, neighbours, maid, worried sick about their safety. I also tried calling their numbers directly through Viber, WhatsApp, land lines.. But none of them were reachable (later read in the media that cell phone towers were down as well)

December 3, 2015, I wake at 5:30 a.m. (half an hour before the alarm went off) and start calling again. Still the same, no land lines or mobiles reachable. Still no news from home. Facebook and Twitter are "flooded" with NRC's (Non-resident Chennaites) like me, posting messages with addresses of their loved ones and asking for some kind of information on them. None of my friends or family still reachable. But I just keep going through the daily chores as my young family is dependent on my sane condition, especially with my Husband away as well. My husband calls me back in his lunch time (after reading my SOS texts and tweets) and I still have not been able to contact my parents. After sharing my plight with him, I went back to calling  every Chennai number on my address book. Finally by end of the day, I was getting frantic. Meanwhile, my sister (currently in Dubai) seemed to have been lucky to have talked to my Mom (for a few seconds), where we came to know that they were safe, but then the call got disconnected before sharing any additional information. While this provided us with some relief, it did not alleviate our fears as TV channels continue to scare with predictions for rains to continue and intensify during the next 48 hours.

December 4, 2015,  After sleeping for just 5 hours, I woke up at 5:30 a.m. again to a message on WhatsApp from my sister that our parents were heading outside Chennai (to Coimbatore) with my Uncle's family. As their mobile phones were charged (seems they checked in to a hotel the previous night, after being rescued on boat), I was finally able to speak with them. By evening time, I was able to reach all my extended family and friends through WhatsApp or otherwise and learn about their safety and their experiences battling the rains.

The feeling of "helplessness" of not being able to do anything but to dial number after number, to be met with a message that kept saying that "This number is either switched off or not reachable", was so frustrating. The only solace at that time was social networking sites that kept updating more current information (than the TV News channels) and Google emergency response link that had grouped all the information and made it easy to search for.

On the positive side, the response of Chennaites across the world was so heartening. In addition to that, the spirit of the local people & volunteers on the ground was phenomenal. I am thankful to everyone, who directly helped (or indirectly involved in helping) my family and friends to stay safe through this ordeal. A special thanks to the NDRF for going beyond their call of duty to assist massive rescue operations across the city.

Proud to hail from such a city  - that is always ready to stretch a helping hand to anyone in need, without any kind of discrimination, facing adversity or criticism with a smile - shows real spirit & character!!

Words fall short to describe the gruelling experience of those 72 hours, till I could reach family and friends.  Reading my Mom's experience - published in Rediff.com News -  made me re-live the entire emotional roller coaster, worrying for their safety and the safe return of my Husband from France (due to the recent high alert situation post the unfortunate events in Paris during mid November).

In the current age, when lives are claimed so easily due to disasters (natural and man-made), Tamil Nadu and France's solidarity demonstrated during crisis should be a lesson to all of us to understand about Humanity and its strength. We should learn from this and strive consciously do our share (however small it is) to contribute to the betterment of the society as a whole (which is easily possible when we consider the whole world as our own family, or following the concepts "Do unto others what you want for yourself", "Be the change that you wish to see").

Do you feel like an "Island" surrounded by Land?

Couple of my friends inspired this post - Few days back during a discussion I happen to tell my friends, what I have been going through in the last couple of months. And BAM ! I got a synchronous response from both of them that despite all those things I have managed to keep my smiling face up and go on as though everything was fine with me. Till then, I never realized that the things I was going through was something of a big deal. But when I heard the response, it made me think that most of us grown-ups actually do this without even thinking twice because it is the grown up way of life.

So now, to what actually happened in the last couple of months... During our vacation to Italy last Christmas we were robbed of our bag at a station, with just 10 minutes left to board our train to our next destination. That bag contained most of our valuables (laptop, mobile phone, cameras..) and our travel documents. I was devastated... Literally crumbled. My husband, though was shaken up, handled it with more finesse and tried to find a police station to lodge a complaint and then proceed from then on. My daughter (7 year old) acted more matured than me and gave me the strength to get out of the feeling of despair. Her statement "Mom, this is your first time losing something... So do not cry. It is not your fault. You are always very careful. We know you cannot be careless." That jolted me out of the feeling and made me speechless for almost half hour. I just hugged her could not let go. In the meantime, my husband came back saying there were no police stations open close by, as it was Christmas. So we went back into the city to file the complaint, got the police report and then took a train in the evening, and continued on our vacation.

On reaching home after our vacation, I was "phone-less", so my husband decided to surprise me with a smartphone (even better than the one that we lost), and got me a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Lite. It worked fine for 2 weeks only to start making "weird" noises every time I made or received a call. When I went to the shop to see if it can be replaced, I was told that I missed the return timeline by 3 days and hence it can only be taken up for repair and that it would take 3 weeks for the same. They usually would replace me with a temporary phone, not so high end model, till my phone got back from repair, but then at that moment, they did not even have one spare piece for me so I was without a phone again.

Then we start with the process of getting our duplicate passports done at Paris, only to find that the  application forms we filled for our passports was incorrect and that my husband had to make another trip to Paris just to do the submission again. The day he was in Paris to submit the forms the second time, was the fateful day of the Charlie Hebdo shooting that took 12 lives. Thank God, he was safe and returned back home in Lyon !

At the City office here in Lyon, while applying for the duplicate French resident cards, we were asked for 2 missing documents for our children, which we were not told about earlier by our agent. One of them needed an appointment with the children's pediatrician. You might be thinking why these are all a big thing... It is, for me because, I am in a country where they do not speak the three languages that I am fluent in, nor do they know the two more that I can manage by. You see when you come from India (a country with 22 official languages), you naturally tend to be bilingual (or multilingual) by default. Some people pick up 2 or more than the default state language and English. But France did not speak any of this and so I needed a translator with me for every task including the basic task of fixing an appointment with the paediatrician.

A midst all this frustrations, I get another news from home a very very bad one... a death of a family member. I was devastated again. I cried myself to the level where I think I fainted, but fortunately that happened after I picked up my children from school and came home, gave them their evening snack and ensured that they were safe enough, before I gave in to my physical weakness. My husband who halfheartedly left to office on a Monday afternoon (due to the worry that I was driving myself crazy with the news of this particular death) after I left to school to pick up the children, because he had a very important meeting that he could not avoid or postpone, came rushing back from office at 7:30 p.m. cancelling his remaining meetings. He was concerned hearing my trembling voice on the phone that he claimed to have made to my mobile, which I still cannot recollect as I was half asleep (or faint).

All the above events happened in less than 2 months !! In addition to this, I have been struggling with my hormones right from the time I delivered my son three years back (maybe they never got to normal after my first delivery 7 years ago). They are still not back to the stage where I would love them to be so that I can stay calm and composed.

Despite all this, looks like I have never failed to put a smiling face in front of me. That is what my friends told me (and they did not even know about my hormones). Emotionally, everyday is a struggle. But when I heard them say that, it struck me that I am not alone in this. 'Coz, a friend of mine has also been struggling with similar hormonal imbalances after child delivery (which I seem to find is pretty common. Just that people back home never touched up on the subject at all as they do once you are outside India). When we were discussing about our ordeal in Italy, a couple of our friends shared their own personal encounters of losing documents, pick pockets and near-brushes with bag snatches and such. And there is news of death everywhere around us, some of which are just because someone did not want to reach outside for help to deal with their problems (emotional, psychological or physical), and thought that if they could not deal with it by themselves then they were not grown up enough or that they might bring shame to themselves and their family and friends if they discussed their problems, or some such stupid reason.

This is what inspired me to pen my emotional turmoil into a post and reach out to all those who are keeping it within themselves thinking it is the grown up thing to do, not to get bogged down by the weight of those emotions and thoughts. I am thankful for the family and the friends network that I have had, who have always been there around when ever and how ever I have needed them. Remember that those who know you well enough will never judge you when you share your problems and ask for help, and those who judge you do not matter 'coz you do not need that kind of judgmental help in your life as it will only add on to your already existing burden. But know that, if you ask, and when you ask for help, there are a lot of people around you who are more than willing to help you out and stand by you in your time of distress. You do not have to suffer alone. Children understand the need for meltdowns more than us grown ups. They are more forgiving towards the meltdowns that you have due to the stress in your life because they know the pain of frustration. Along the way, when we grow up, we forget that it is okay to meltdown once in a while and when someone has a melt down, all they might just need is a listening ear or a simple hug to make them feel better. Instead, most of us start getting judgmental or providing unwarranted advises.

Remember: When ever you feel let down, or lonely, it is not because the world has isolated you. It is because, you have done it to yourself with your thought of "What would the world think about me if ....?"; forget about that. If you need help, support, anything at all, do not hesitate to ask. As long as you don't ask, no one will know what you want or even empathize at the right level. If you think just the family or friends' support will not be enough, do not hesitate to accept that fact first and then convince your family or your loved ones that you need professional help and that  you need them to stand by you when you are going through the treatment or process. Unless you personally are able to accept that there is a problem, you will never be able to convince those around you that you need their help. Overcome the default reaction of denial that we are so programmed to do as part of adulthood. Thanks to technology, help is not far (social, media, counselling...) and informed decisions can be made at the right time, with the right balance.

Wise people say "Truth almost always hurts, but accepting truth can be liberating".  With acceptance comes a road to new solutions and eventually get you to tackle the situation. Let us break the walls around us that make us an "island" surrounded by land. Let us make a positive use of being a part of a community/society and work towards a better one, and put that smiling face on you !