Love yourself

I have two little girls - two beautiful little girls. My six year old is already in the fragile self esteem phase - checking herself out in the mirror at every opportunity, hating her naturally wavy hair. If her hair will be straight in the morning or not is the biggest stress she has before she goes to bed. And did I say she is six?

All through my childhood I was considered to be pretty. My best friend who is a stunning beauty always said that I had the most beautiful skin she had ever seen. My parents always praised me and it was a given that any color would look good on me given my fair complexion etc. Beauty is indeed in the eyes of the beholder. I used to have my front two teeth overlapping each other. Uptil the point of meeting my in laws and P, everyone I knew raved about how my smile was so natural and sweet. My father always said our quirks made us unique or we would be all the same.

On my in laws side both my husband and sister in law have perfect straight teeth thanks to orthodontic treatments rendered in their childhood. My father in law asked that I get braces done after we got engaged/married. This point was brought up in every conversation that we had. My mother in law told my mother and a close relative that she had asked her son - do you want to marry this girl? Her teeth are not straight, she has some problem with her eyes (I have a slight Shashi Kapoorish squint) and she is adopted and that her son said Yes, I want to marry her. I don't know if this was supposed to be a compliment or a slap or both or one disguised in the other. Over time I have realized that my mother in law is not the best communicator - maybe she doesn't mean some things but they come out wrong.

Newly married I looked at myself through my husband's eyes and had the first huge hit to my self esteem. My teeth bothered him (many years later I got an expensive orthodontic treatment done and now I have a perfectly aligned teeth smile), my weight bothered him and does to this day - his mother and sister are size zeros and below; they both barely eat a roti and me, eating with gusto was a shock to him, my wavy hair bothered him. My self esteem took hit after hit. I was so confused - I thought I was great - my friends and family say so then why don't I have a husband who is dizzy crazy in love with me. He was/is in love with me, don't get me wrong but it wasn't the blind throw yourself in love kind of love. It was measured and always realistic and critical and full of recommendations for how I can improve myself.

Down the years we also had to face many many tough situations and he unfalteringly stood behind me and held my hand and had my back as required. I also realized that this is who he is and this is how he is brought up. His mother is also prone to seeing the bad in situations and people - they are not simple satisfied happy people. There is always something that nags them stresses them. Roses have no smell, something is not sweet enough, grandchildren are not affectionate enough, there is no curry in the meal - the list goes on and on. My father in law on the other hand is always at peace. He has his own world but he keeps himself mentally and physically occupied.

As we try to coach our older daughter who has inherited most of these qualities to always see the good in people and situations, to appreciate and be grateful and to express affection and contentment; it's a revision of all these thoughts for us too.

As women, I feel that we are prone to self doubt, guilt and emotions; I will make sure my babies first and foremost learn to accept and love themselves and believe in themselves and not ever rely on any other person for it. My dearest children, I will always be in your camp cheering you on, saying that you are the smartest, prettiest , awesomest girl ever but I need you to believe it yourself and not ever let anyone bring you down anyday.

Times are a changing..

I was on the road for four weeks - a week at a time. This is the only travel I have to do, once a year for meetings at all the offsite locations that my company has. My first trip was sheer bliss. Boarding the plane by myself, actually getting to read a book quietly without having to worry about earaches in tiny ears when taking off or landing, checking into a very nice hotel, having a king size bed all to myself, eating breakfast at the breakfast buffet without having to cut food into tiny pieces and coaxing it into reluctant mouths - all bliss, sheer bliss. Who would have thought that these small things that we take so much for granted in our pre kids life would suddenly be so precious in the post!

The girls did remarkably well with P. P held the fort down. S was pretty miserable and leaned into the phone during face times and said "Mommy I need you" which broke my heart into a million pieces but my strong supportive husband assured me that she was fine otherwise and not to worry :)

Of course by the end of the last trip, I was pretty miserable too, the girls missed me, the mess in the house got to epic proportions but before things could get any worse, my trips were done and I am back home; slowly putting myself and my home back to routine.

P also travels infrequently nowadays. Being a single parent is of course difficult. The only difference between me traveling and his traveling is that when its his turn, it's basically Bye, Miss you and out of the door. When I travel, I have to make sure that the laundry is done, folded, put away, clothes set aside for the girls for the week to come; food is made and menus are written for the week; soccer pick up and drop offs are arranged and house is in maintainable clean condition. P keeps it rolling from there. I am extremely grateful for his wonderful support and encouragement. I recently received an "Exceeds expectations" on my review and a big part of the credit goes to his support.

We have many many women in my organization in high level positions. Almost all of them have multiple children. I was amazed with wonder as to how do these women seem to manage everything so effortlessly. A little bit of research unearthed a fast rising trend - they all (with only one exception) had stay at home husbands. The exception - my Director has in laws who stay fifteen minutes away and show up on her door step showered and ready to help out whenever she has a nanny or kids are sick kind of emergency.

At one location, two pregnant women were having matter of fact discussions about how their husbands were going to take 1-2 years off once their babies were due etc. This was very new and fascinating to me; this is the first time that I have met so many women all together with the same kind of situation. I have so many questions for all of them - how do their husbands manage the house and the kids, do they micromanage everything, do they get taunts from society, do they feel undue pressure being the sole breadwinner of the family, does their husband feel a loss of confidence for not being in a typical male provider role.....but I keep my mouth shut and push my questions away. Every single one of us is making choices for his/her life, his/her family and no one has the right to judge the other. You can decide what's comfortable for you and decide accordingly.

I do think about how this slow change in roles is going to affect my/our kids. The first thing I can think of is almost complete eradication of gender discrimination. How would you say to a boy child - you don't need to learn now to cook/sew/bake; maybe this might lead to expanded freedom in letting each of us choose whatever we are good at without worrying about whether its a typical male or female stamped role.

But what's next - will we have a world where the equation is completely switched - where an overwhelming majority of guys stay home while their wives go to work. What impact will this have on men versus women thought patterns and inherent nature traits? Many questions and no answers. It is getting to be very late now so will go sleep.

Day two and everything is well

P has also stepped up this time and is constantly engaged. He is making sure his mom and me are both happy. I am beginning to feel more confident that this visit is going to be finally a peaceful and happy one. Big sigh of relief :)

New beginnings

My in laws have arrived - they are visiting us after four years. Their last visit was traumatic on both sides. So we are all cautiously approaching this visit. The sister in law has stepped in and is hosting them for exactly half their stay which helps immensely.

I have decided for every one thing that annoys me about them, I will think of one thing that they did is nice so that the anger is eliminated.

I returned from an out of town trip exhausted and hungry. I had made food for a whole week ahead of time so that they would have home cooked food when they arrived.

Annoying thing: My mother in law praised the only thing which I had not made and bought from outside - the rotis and commented on how nice that Aunty makes them etc. Is it too much to say everything I had made was nice??

Nice things they did: they waited for me to arrive even though they were very sleepy.
They love my husband and children.

Let go let go let God!

Miracles on the path of God

This book that I am currently reading also talks about visualising putting down your worries one by one at the feet of whichever diety/God figure you choose and then saying a prayer of gratitude and closing your eyes to sleep for the night.

I religiously followed some of the principles noted in the book, literally chanting to myself "Let go let go Let God" whenever my mind strayed to thoughts of my Dad, my birth mother, what should I do etc etc; things that have no resolution and out of my hands. I prayed and focused on the task at hand - be it at work or with my kids and gave my full and complete attention to whatever I was doing at the moment. No multi tasking of thoughts.

And then Monday night, at around 12:30 am my cell phone rang. I was so deep in sleep that it rang for a long time and went to voicemail. It started ringing a second time and by the time I realised it, it had once again gone to voicemail. I looked at the number, it was eerily similar to my Dad's. I called him right away, half asleep half scared; a phone call in the middle of the night only evokes fear to me, and he confirmed the number and said it must be his wife calling! And that it was a good thing if she is calling and that she wanted to speak with me.

I called her back. She seems to be a very nice lady. We chatted for a bit. She had been confused with the time difference and hadnt realised it was the middle of the night here. She had many things to say, but mainly she wanted to reiterate that she had no ill wishes for me or any anger. She needed time to adjust; all these years had gone by so smooth and now I was on the scene. She felt her husband had changed since he met me. And it had disturbed the peace and happiness in their family. And so in a way she had blamed me. She said she was ready to accept me into their family. We are going to chat again tomorrow, to continue our discussion. I was numb with shock.

I was half asleep and numb now. I didnt know what to say to her. I apologised for having caused any trouble to her and her kids, she immediately said "Dont say Sorry, you dont have to be". I really have no plans/wishes to be a part of their family - Do I need another mother?? My Grandmother, birth mother, mother and now mother in law are all called Mother by me! Do I really need another one? I dont. I dont need another family. I dont wish to disrupt their life in any way. All I want is to be able to call my Dad whenever I want to, call him up and chat with him as per our convenience, once in a while. That was all I want.

I admire her and am grateful to her for taking this step. It is not easy for an older person to take the first step. I have seen so many stubborn adults who will not budge or take a step out of their comfort zone. But what has amazed me over and above everything is the new path I had started walking down on. The book said try to let go and you will experience miracles. I let go and did experience a miracle.

When I went back to bed, I couldnt sleep. I forced my mind to let go of all the future day dreaming and what ifs and different scenarios and calmed it down - said the Gayatri mantra a few times and went to sleep. And I did sleep. In the past I would have stayed awake and tossed and turned all night or woken up my husband to share the news with him immediately. Instead I looked at my sleeping (snoring) husband and my beautiful children and was overcome with peace and happiness. And brought back to the reality of getting a good night's sleep to be able to face the day ahead. And sleep I did...

I dont know whats coming next...what this will mean for my relationship with Dad, will my birth mother ever find out, but for now, I am going to keep myself in the present, celebrate the happy things, tackle the uncomfortable and enjoy with my family.

Let go, let go, let God

Many things have happened over the past few weeks. My birth mother got diagnosed with oral cancer and had to undergo a horrendous surgery which she is recovering from now. Thankfully by the Grace of God, the cancer hadn’t spread anywhere else in her body and she doesn’t need any chemotherapy or radiation. How did she get oral cancer? We do not know. Chances are slim for a non smoker non gutka eater, but she still got it somehow. Her husband is going through a bad patch – he retired and then cannot handle the sudden void post retirement and is grappling with depression. My mother is in anguish over why her younger sister has to go through so much pain and bad luck and feels guilty over her own “good fortune”.

Now two things here, Yes, my birth mom had a rough start with a divorce and subsequent husband who came with a not so desirable family who have hassled her over the years. Yes, my mom has a wonderful husband, my dad and all her kids have turned out good etc. But there is also the extreme differences in attitude – all my memories of my birth mom have been her being the victim, forever agonized over the treatment of her relatives/colleagues/life while my mother has always been super positive and optimistic, always looking at the good in people and believing in a happy outcome. I am currently reading this book “Joy peace pills” by J.P.Vaswani. He says in that book that if you think good, good will happen. Everyone says that. I know it’s not practical in most situations but what about the other situations, can you at least hope to look at the good side of things? Or can it happen that some person is just constantly riddled by bad luck and oppression?

Can you put your faith in something or someone and believe that next time would be in your favor and trudge on.

My birth dad’s wife has again told him to break off all contact with me, he is super busy at work and he agreed not to check his personal mail when home. Which basically means our only mode of communication is curtailed. By their joint decisions, we will drift apart with very little conversation between us. He does call me sometimes when he travels but between our time differences, work schedules, the fact that I have two young kids to take care of; it’s very difficult to find time to chat. And weekends are off limits as I am only to be restricted to his office times, which again is most of my night here. I felt really bad, cried some, then angry over how unfair this whole situation is, then self pity over how I am not free to be in touch with my own dad, and now acceptance. This is their joint decision. I can do nothing to change it, I can however change the effect it is having on me and instead of being miserable and punishing two beautiful babies and a wonderful husband for the actions of people who clearly do not think of my well being sounds stupid. So I am going to let go let go let God, let go of everything and let God handle it for me (again by JP Vaswani).

I have realized over the past couple of years that I cannot make others happy if I am not happy myself. I do not do the role of a sacrificing Mother India well. I need to take care of my own physical and mental well being first and then only can I be positive and smiling for others. So I am letting go of all the stresses – the guilt and complaints by my birth mother to my mother about how I do not have a mother-daughter relationship with her and how I constantly misunderstand her; my delicate relationship with my in laws, my heartbreak over my birth dad; I am going to let go of all of it, put my faith in God and let him handle it. I will focus on myself – my health and doing things that I enjoy and being happy and at peace and then making sure my husband and my children also walk the same path and are happy and peaceful and smiling and positive as they go through their individual lives and stresses and celebrations.

If you don’t already do it, try it too; take one thing that bothers you and let go let go let God…

2013 Resolutions continued...

Communication is one of my strongest forte or so I would like to think. And another good/bad point of my nature is that I will do anything to salvage a relationship. I am not the person to cut people out of my life, turn my back on someone or walk away from a bad relationship. I hang on, keep hurting myself, lose my self respect maybe in the bargain but I hang on. Sometimes it’s for the best, most times I am just reminded over and over how little I am valued by that individual. But I still do not learn my lesson..

There is a show that I watch online – Uncha mazha zhoka. It is set in the 1800-1900s in Maharashtra when joint family systems were the norm. Many times entire families land up for a visit – most times a stay extending for months – without any advance warning. They are always welcome and absorbed into the daily routine of the local family. I always compare and contrast between that setting and my current one. Most of my friends are in the same boat too. We jump for joy and are thrilled at the prospect of loved ones visiting. But distant acquaintances or folks who have managed to push the wrong buttons in the past, cause instant stress and disturb the peace in the family, from the minute their travel plans are announced.

This is the age of texts and twitter, everythings faster and busier, everyones spread all over the globe, we are so busy in our routine and feel so guilty of having un productive days that we strive to fill every second of our and our family’s days with action items. Every long weekend that comes by, we try to go somewhere or make it special. Do you know of anyone who says “We do absolutely nothing on long weekends, we never take vacations or do anything fun with the kids”; I immediately judge such people in my mind... I digress…what I want to say is as families shrink and we struggle to maintain the daily balance of work, family, chores at home, time with kids without any family support in most cases (atleast here in the US), our willingness to adjust also goes down south. I will move around my entire sleep pattern for my baby in the blink of an eye but tell me to make an alternative meal for my in laws and I will lose it thinking it is so unfair and I am so tired. It’s the same for me in terms of friends – you meet someone whom you are not that crazy about, she irritates you, you don’t have to see her again. One can choose to maintain whichever size and composition of a friend circle they want and also the frequency at which they can meet. You have choices for all the people in your life, it almost seems like, at times. Except for your husband and your children, you can pretty much keep everyone else at bay (most times, most cases)..

For my personal peace of mind, I have to try to change myself. I struggle to become that person who doesn’t give a damn about every Tom, Dick and Harry she meets and the friendly warm person that I think I am, who wants to have happy people all around her. There is one girl at work. Sits in the cube next to me. She hardly talks to anyone and keeps to herself. She is a desi brought up in the US. I introduced myself to her on my first day at work and said Good Morning and Bye everyday. She would never take the initiative to talk to me but I would speak with her everyday. Off late she almost scowls when I say Hello to her. There is just the thinnest of an excuse of a smile and she mostly looks like it would be better if I stop talking to her. And today I was on the verge of asking her if I had done something to annoy her. I simply cannot understand why someone would refuse to smile and be nice to your co workers? I just cannot. Wouldn’t you like to come in to work relaxed and smiling? And I take everything personally. I think “Oh no, is it something I did?” when we have nothing in common except that we sit by each other. So it is time to let go. Every person I meet doesn’t need to be my pal. I just need to accept that and let go.

Last year I had written a few emails to my sister in law, asking her what was wrong, why didn’t she call as much, I felt like we were growing distant blah blah. There was complete silence on her end, she had ignored my emails. I had felt horrible, am I not even worth a tiny bit that you would not even bother to reply to any of my emails? I had cried, my husband and me had fought, he was like – why did you even reach out to her, there is nothing wrong and now you have created a problem for no reason, he finally called her to say why wont you write to her and then I got a short formal reply. I put myself in that position of trying to clear away misunderstandings and be closer. Maybe my intentions were perceived otherwise by her. I need to understand that everyone is different, people have different circumstances and sometimes the timing is not right too. I have given up now. I hate to give up, I had always thought that one day we would all be one big happy family. But I have stopped struggling to achieve that end vision of happiness – according to me. We talk nicely to each other, when she visits, we have fun and that should suffice for now. Maybe sometime in the future, she might think I am a good person and like me. In the meantime I need to stop pestering her and stop festering in my mind about how I can work on this relationship.

It’s the same with my Dad, my in laws, my birth mother; all the relationships which need work and where every word I say is somehow misconstrued, there is mistrust and clouded judgment, no matter how genuine the efforts are to try to get closer. I need to change myself. Let go of that ideal state in my mind, because whats ideal for me might be a pain in the butt for the other. Every person has their own views and definitions and expectations of what a close relationship entails. For some, it can mean a daily phone call and sharing of every happiness and sorrow and for others, it could mean a phone call in six months. I need to let go. So 2013 onwards is all about changing me. I will not go out of my way for people who seem to cause pain to me, who do not take the time to value me; I will not give them undue importance and allow them to control my feelings and thoughts. I will instead redirect all that energy into my current fulfilling relationships and enjoy and be at peace..