Bullet Holes In My Self Esteem
Why does heartbreak decimate self esteem? Where does shame sit in this pain? Can we heal from it instead of escaping its lessons?
Evolution
Processing abuse, trauma and other experiences and finding meaning, hope & inspiration to move on.
The One Who Brought Me Beauty
A gratitude note to someone from my past: The strongest of us may need someone to remind us that we also need beauty, love & harmony to make survival a life.
2AM Lessons In Safety: The Insomnia Teacher
I woke up two nights ago, not knowing why I was awake. No sound had disturbed me, it wasn’t time to wake up.
2023: Comfort Is Served
We are all angry. Seething and out for blood. Where do we go from here? The pandemic has been the arsenic cherry on the difficult lessons of a decade.
A Beautiful Day In A Soft Neighborhood
There is an interesting thing about memory foam. It yields to your touch & pressure. Not fast, not reacting. More like an indulgence, a consideration. Later it pauses with the impression you’ve left on it, as if ruminating. Just as meditatively it returns to its original self.
Finding Myself In My Body: Reclaiming Pain
A house that is a warzone. A courtroom for custody battles. Dumping ground for other people’s pain. My body.
A Truce With Gender
If I were fifteen years younger, I’d identify as nonbinary. Or maybe not, I don’t know if the beaten gender path has beat me down too often mercilessly.
Two Cities I’ve Loved – Bangalore & Mumbai
Feeling the tug between two places – one that feels like home and one that is dutifully home.
Second COVID Stupid – Smooth Egg Brain
The second dark COVID of my soul is here except it doesn’t feel quite as dark. I feel stupid and it is peaceful.
Focaccia & Fortitude – Healing From Scratch
The world still doesn’t know how & why death shows up. How can there be any answer to why people turn out the way they do?
BOOK | Fearlessly Flying With Erica Jong
Giving sex an easy place in my mind, required moving around the furniture inside my head – old traumas, inherited shame, cultural taboos. This book taught me flying.
Evaporation – The Marie Kondo of COVID
I used to think fearlessness was a solid feeling. COVID made me think it is a void.
Wayfarer On An Open Road
Post COVID, life is uncertain but it’s an open road. Everything is a lesson, every meeting is a gift.
Urban Domestica – Peace in Pieces
Finding peace in the domestic, finding poetry in the mundane
I Will Listen
I’ve been in so many conversations. I’ve come back overflowing with so much. Wisps of other people clinging to me. They turn into dreams, into nightmares, into fantasies, into nagging nameless worries. Then someone says hello and they pass. I started to worry about losing myself in you, in them,…
Nature’s Love, Loss & Lessons
One adult lizard lives outside my window peaceably. I have a veritable garden in my window that I lavish with love & care. And when the lizard first showed up, I was apprehensive as I am around anyone new. But we seemed to understand each other. That lizard is rarely…
The Long, Dark COVID Of The Soul
I had COVID earlier this month. Finally, the axe I’ve been dreading since March 2020, fell. It was the second chop, the first being my parents catching it earlier this year. I am grateful that these have been mild variants & we didn’t suffer like a lot of other people…
Culture | Evolution | Examining Gender | Home & Identity | People & Relationships | Politics & Feminism
The “Do They Treat You Well?” Play
I was watching an episode of ‘Kim’s Convenience’ where a concerned (possibly over protective) family is talking to their daughter about her love life. One of them asks, “Does he treat you well?” And I realised no one had ever asked me that. Not family members, not friends, not classmates,…
Being My Age Is A Feminist Act
I’m often told I ‘don’t look’ my age. It’s served up as a compliment. It’s not. What’s complimentary about telling someone they don’t fit the box into which you’re trying to put them? I already know that by being open about my age (43 a week ago, when this photo…
A Year Of Lonely Love & Communal Grief
For JD It’s coming on an year since our last conversation. A week when we were negotiating our definitions of intimacy, proximity, boundaries & identity. Sadly, I don’t even have the records of that any more. My phone crashed abruptly, last month. This is the same phone that you helped…