Feeling a little vulnerable today as I hit 36 tomorrow!
Birthdays are the best times to celebrate not just the day you were born but also your life and the person you have become. The last few years were particularly tough and made me grow in many ways.
2019 was the year of transformation for me; I can pinpoint precisely the week I realized that I am not in control of my life, but life is controlling me, and that one THOUGHT changed me.
Sometimes transformation happens; naturally, you go on a path that you thought you would never take, and there you are discovering things, books, experiences, and people who will change you and your life entirely for a better YOU.
But, sometimes, the experience of losing a thing/experience you wanted the most pushes you over the edge, and there is no way but UP!
This picture is of the day when we thought we would finally be parents soon, but as luck would have it, the happiness was short-lived. I miscarried at six weeks after doing four rounds of IVF, countless injections pumping hormones in me, 10s of shady doctors without any “Seva Bhav,” and nine years of agony.
This event broke me; I was hurt and did not know what to do next!
The feeling of being incomplete, failure, guilt, and remorse brought on deep sadness, leading me into Depression, which I was in and out of for the last ten years. For days I stared at my bedroom’s ceiling crying, and thinking, is this it!?! The IVF took such a toll on my body that thinking about another round was impossible, and I still don’t feel I can go for it again.
Well-meaning people around me tried to console me to the best of their abilities. They told me to be brave and forget it, accept and make myself busy and time will heal. But how do you forget something that has become you??? How do you get up and distract yourself? My mind was running like a hamster on a wheel which has gained such momentum that a crash was inevitable.
In the depths of despair, I kept clutching straws with all my might to keep my nose just above the water. One thing led to another, and I found myself in a Therapy session. It was the best decision of my life. Talking to someone not attached to you in any way gave me a perspective that changed everything. And guess what? I did all the talking; I had all the answers I needed to listen to myself. The agony of what was lost was obscuring what I had!
It took two sessions to shake me up from my daze and focus on who I really am and what I still have to offer. It made me recount the countless ways I can nurture myself and value the person I am.
Thanks to the Audible App, which gave me access to fantastic self-help books and Sadguru’s Isha kriya meditation helped me in regulating my thoughts. I took the time every day and introspected to understand my feelings and wants. I discovered I had everything I needed to be happy and live a purposeful life. I have so much to give and so much to learn. The resistance/thought pattern dictating my life into an abyss has been spotted!!! And I am working to eliminate it every day.
Another important thing I did was lower my expectations of myself and allow myself to breathe and feel all the good I have in me. Jen Sicario”s book “You are a badass” kick-started the process of me understanding how we work as humans and what I was doing so wrong for so long.
I never knew that the foundation of the life we lead is based on our belief system, which our environment forms unconsciously from the time we are born. Our thoughts dictate our emotions and how we feel all day and all our lives.
I started paying attention to how I talked to myself and noticed I was not kind at all. I started paying attention to my thoughts and actively corrected them all day long as if my life depended on them, and that’s it!
That was it to make myself better! I just needed to be loving, caring, kind, and nurturing to myself first!
When we talk about self-care, it is not just pampering yourself with some shopping or a trip to your favorite place, it’s about paying attention to what you feel in a moment, and if you feel any emotion other than joy/peace, then there is something wrong.
Self-care is also being selfish, kind, and attentive to your needs. We as a society tell others that you must give before you take, and it is particularly true for the Ladies. In every culture, little girls are conditioned to take care of everyone around them and put themselves last—more on that on some other day.
Finally, you cannot control the outside world and things happening around you, but you can manage your responses and perspective. What you think you will become.
This simple insight helped me realize my power!
I work on it daily to be more focused and keep things in perspective. I still have my sad days, but now those days are reducing in number, and I strive to be happy in every moment than to be anything else!
One thing that you can take out of this post is to LOVE YOURSELF!
Navjyoti
P.S: If you are feeling low, sad, unhappy, and want to talk to someone without judgment, you can get in touch with me on Instagram through DM (@spicysweetlife_). I will be happy to hear you out and maybe, just maybe, help you to put you on a path of self-discovery.