As of today, she WAS where I always met her when I visited my parents back home in India. Meeting her was a natural extension of my being there, unsaidly expected.
I was a young girl when she came in as a young newlywed. Today I watch my life backward through that lens. I remember her joy when her husband would come back for his monthly visit to her and his family, from his job far away.
She knew my happiness with new dresses and would share her new shopping with me – “Here wear these to college this week, enjoy them. I can wear them all the time later.”
Her son was the baby I came home to play with every day, throughout his growing phases. He calls me Didi and I used to address her as Tai – both refer to a big sister. It is lovely how it didn’t matter what relation we regard each other with – it is the impact we have by being in each other’s life in the most ordinary ways.
I clearly remember our last meeting & conversation 2 years ago and somehow I am very content with it – we had connected through our eyes and shared genuinely, there was Love.
That’s it. That’s all matters. Because we don’t ever know when it is our last meeting, with anyone. I never took pictures with her – I have a snapshot of our life together living in me.
Dear Tai, your courage through life is seen and has made a difference. In unknown ways too. I will miss you. I miss you.
Everything else that could be said, I hold in silence.
Note: I wrote this exactly last year and wished to share it with you all here, as we mark one year of her passing.
Photo: Manish Doshi, Oceanside Labyrinth in Maui, Hawaii “Am I at the Center or am I at the Rim?”
Experiences on a continuum, spirally back at deeper levels alive, raw, intense Much greater trust each time around
We keep doing this continually, push the edges towards authenticity while keeping the peace, protecting our sensitivity, our strength misunderstood. It is often awful yet so so stunning how we keep going.
After digging deep now sitting on the rim of another level of depth, enjoying the breeze, holding the expanse above in my awareness, there is no turning back. Right here right now being on this planet, breathing new life into every sense of Being, Knowing, and Perceiving.
Fear and I play peekaboo, not wanting the encounter when I venture to dig deeper seeking a calm quiet inspiration to be led, through it all. Enjoying the gifts of where I am, which may be over this very moment or may linger on for a bit more.
Today I wish to give a special mention to 2 blogger friends “The Chatter Blog” & “Dreamwalker’s Sanctuary” They are a tremendous positive inspiration and influence on my trajectory of writing and being through life experiences, since the beginning of my blog journey. The above poem is a confluence of my responses to their posts. If you haven’t yet visited their work, please do.
Don’t try to fix What you see as Weakness in me You might be Messing with What is actually Strength in me Authenticity & Vulnerability
I admire you For your boldness Don’t judge me For my softness That’s how I hold you too Just like how I like to be held Kind & Compassionately
The WordPress community has played an enormous role in my ability to express Spirit’s voice and share my honest message in the world. I am continually empowered to show up with authenticity and vulnerability. To be heard and received unconditionally is a luxury imagined and unimagined. I am dedicated to this journey of showing up, to listen to every calling – big and small. Each time we show up we break some known and unknown barriers within. So here’s ‘Me’ humbly showing up to meet you in utmost Gratitude, and a new sense of sovereignty.
Love is felt deep and love is felt light. It is felt in its absence and in presence. It is present whether you are aware or unaware. This is a story & journey of Love, how I discovered its true meaning, some of it through my own living and some from observing others. This is Love broken down to Basics.
This article initially titled “Love Broken Down to Basics” was published on this blog before in 2016, in a longer form. The topic has been very close to my heart, and I am absolutely thrilled to see it take a new form to be published on India Currents, a South Asian digital media magazine with the largest following in the United States.
Some long-term relationships have the security of commitment and complete trust. Those in such relations often feel saturated and locked in the roles they either choose for themselves or get defined to. Eventually, distress comes up …
The above are the opening lines to my article on Relationships & Truthful Commitments recently published in the Perspectives section of the multimedia site AmericanKahani.com. It would be my privilege if you were to take the time to visit this link to read and share your feedback on my perspectives with me: Relationships 101: The Importance of a Truthful Commitment However Difficult it Maybe
Earth, Water, Sunshine And a lazy afternoon Are enough for some flowers to bloom. What needs have I made significant to not be in gloom?
I decided to show up ‘in person’ to share my lazy afternoon thoughts with you 🙂
I am watching myself, my compulsions, my almost obsessive needs that take me away from this abundant life given to me. Nothing a bit of sunshine on a winter afternoon can’t fix, and yet I seem to easily get back to being fixated on that one thing missing, that one kind of love from that one relation – making me feel like an imposter for all the joy of gratitude and greater Love that I keep sharing.
I am watching myself, with the same Love that I keep yearning to give others and be reciprocated with. The trick is, I have learned, to turn it all inward, pour it in oneself, for Love has to be directed inside-out. That is only how it radiates outward, pours out and changes the molecules in the air and the people interacting with you. I just sometimes wish it didn’t have to be that way, it is so painful when I have to love myself in those spaces where I am so adamant I don’t want to love myself, and yet I know how much I do love myself, and just this part of it, I want it exactly as I want it. You know what I mean?
Earth, Water, Sunshine And a lazy afternoon Are enough for some flowers to bloom. What needs have I made significant to not be in gloom?
Happy Greetings for amazing times in the year ahead, my dear respected long time friends and newer heartfelt connections through our words in this space! I am always and ever so humbled and thrilled to be here and have this space to be here.
I did not really want to take a break from blogging during this holiday season – I kept coming here and then feeling very silent, so that’s what I stayed with, silence and all of you in my heart.
Silence did not translate into solitude for me – As much as I took an unintended break from much activity, life was brimming full with homely family time, island vacation, and a sense of blessedness for it all.
Life brings so much beauty through intensity, and also intensity through beauty! I raise one to you all, to drink it in with gratitude for the splendor of it all.
Though I feel fulfilled about honoring the silence regarding being here, I do feel the regret of being absent on reading your works. It is my loss when I don’t get to visit you. I will now take the time to make up as much possible for my misses. To my new visitors – I am greatly honored that you chose to spend time in this space. To my old friends – I apologize for being unresponsive to your comments for so long.
I hope you check it out and enjoy it as much as I did. I like how he relates to poetry the way I do – this surge that comes from experiences of our worldly quests and inner explorations of ourselves. His poetry feels like our story really. He writes beautifully about all things life – success, transitions, emotions, pain, love, etc. For my Delhi readers, this book will also be displayed at New Delhi World Book Fair in Pragati Maidan, Jan 8th – 16th.
Life is a Celebration every moment we notice our blessings and happiness.
Whenever I see a rainbow it seems to be a very personal experience as if the rainbow appeared just for me to see, or perhaps I am wherever I am, just so I would see the rainbow.
There are times I feel so blessed, I wonder whether I am celebrating life itself or celebrating myself in life.
I feel utmost reverence and gratitude for getting to be alive on this planet, surrounded by angels and lessons exactly as needed for my evolution. It is my insistence to discover, understand and carve out my authentic being while embracing the gifts and trials of familial roles and relations. What a privilege to get to pursue the spiritual while getting to traverse the precious worldly.
I look at this lifetime as a series of rebirths into different versions of me. Some rebirths are unexpected painful ones and some are inherently woven to become invisible in the fabric of life.
I don’t feel any number to my age. Parts of my childhood self are still catching up with the growing up. There are moments I feel whole in the present, and there are moments I am being pulled back into my smallness or forward discontentedly into the future.
When I found the language of my offering to the world through becoming a yoga teacher – I pursued it relentlessly, got designated E-RYT 500. In short, that means I have completed 2000 plus some big number hours of teaching and facilitating transformation for others in my humble capacity, and completed the required education for that.
I am thrilled to find myself at yet another tunnel of rebirth. I am claiming this one to be a happy kind of rebirth as I am choosing to become a beginner student again with a 4 year long Yoga Therapist Training with my teacher Chase Bossart and his school Yoga Well Institute. Unlike my other rebirths of emerging into the unknowns, this one feels so exciting for discovering what would become of me at the end of the next 5 years.
Dear WordPress friends, all of you are an exquisite contribution to my being here today in one way or another. I feel deep gratitude for You and this rich space for heartfelt expressions, authentic emergence, and truthful cultivation of our life journeys.
Life is a Celebration every moment we notice our blessings and happiness.
Photo by Manish Doshi ‘Sunrise on Kauai, Hawaii islands’
I am very happy to share that my prose of perspectives on long-term, family relations, is now published on AmericanKahani.com. I would be honored if you choose to read it on the link below and share your thoughts, feedback on it.
You are annoyed with me Because I insist on Love No matter what
No matter what I love you too From the distance We are both Comfortable at
I wondered about these words that clearly chose how I would resume back from my month long blog break. I questioned if this was the best inspiration or wisdom I managed to wring out from all the living I did this past month.
September mostly turned out to be a family oriented month with few milestones and celebrations that I enjoyed with fulfillment. I am also aware of all the growing up that happened for me inwardly while going through life that spilled out into the world.
It is perhaps known to all who commit to their personal and spiritual growth that the immediate signs of our evolution is reflected very clearly in how it affects our relations. The About page of my blog is when I first realized that I am now(then in 2015) able to see myself beyond all the definitions of the relations that I have soulfully invested myself in. Yet, after writings and writings on the skillful ways of relating to myself and others, I am deeply humbled at how repeatedly I face my own patterns of how I live in illusion of what some relations are, instead of what they really are.
I forever lived with the belief that Love sustains all, Love can bring any transformation, Love prevails all, Love heals all …I so badly wanted some of my relations a certain way, full of genuine love and kindness, that I was blinded to the art of healthy boundaries. I had to learn something I thought I was done learning so long ago. I questioned the integrity of my Love. I asked myself – after getting hurt so many times from the demands of transactional relationships, after so many awakenings and poetry, etc. what is it that value you want to show up with for anyone? The answer was still Love. I felt relieved for not losing that one thing that I based all my life on.
My mistake was to not allow the spaciousness that Love is. To not allow space for myself for the Love to bloom in nourishing ways for myself, along with those I insisted on with so much Love. They are literally annoyed and angry with me that I am not annoyed and angry at life exactly the way they are. I had to learn the lesson fresh, crisp and clear that no amount of sacrifice of my love and care for myself, is enough to make the other feel loved and cared for.
Some relations are the stickiest tests of our ability to stay in integrity to our core values of Being. They are an opportunity to me to cultivate the value of Love no matter what. Nobody needs to be held hostage to my definition of Love, just like I do not enjoy being hooked to any drama and games in the name of relations. Love with capital L is unconditional, devoid of any conditions of how it should look like in daily life. It can be as true and pure, even from a distance of time and space, if required.
Loving Note to my dear Blog Friends : Thank you for being here for me as I truly used this break to enjoy free blocks of time along with some joyful busyness. Each time I return to this space, it is with utmost gratitude in my heart. I look forward to making my way to your works that I missed.
Also I wish to humbly share with you this link for a Stress Reduction Virtual Workshop that I co-presented for Brown & Toland’s Physicians Group. The workshop is now added to the library on their wellness page and available for free public access: https://www.brownandtoland.com/wellness I would be honored to know if you were able to take the 45 mins to watch it fully.
Infinite Living 