Category: My Life As I’ve Lived It

Where am I Now?

Priya Shukla An Introspective | Part 1, My Life As I've Lived It, The Sense Check , , , , , , ,

I'm still on the journey. The true gift for me is that it hasn't ended and will never end, even when I am no longer in this world. My words will find someone and it will reach them the way it needs to. So the journey never ends. Let's take solace in that.

I am in a place of comfort and struggle - comfort because I am enjoying the fruits of my labour and manifestation. Struggle because every unearthing is painful and rewarding. I use what I've learned again and again. The key is to not hold out for perfection.

Let's take a look at this concept of perfectionism. I loved Brené Brown's definition of this - When perfectionism is driving us, shame is always riding shotgun and fear is the backseat driver. She goes on to further explain, "Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving for excellence and it's not about healthy achievement and growth. Perfectionism is a defensive move. It's the belief that if we do things perfectly and look perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. Perfectionism is not the key to success."

The first time I heard Brené Brown's definition and understanding of this, it shook me. Or as the kids say today, I was shooketh! I didn't immediately understand what she was trying to tell me. But I did understand it was a key element to what I needed to unlock. I had been striving and working towards something I couldn't see, touch, feel or be. And that was my key to understanding this thing I was always trying to do. For me, perfection had been a badge of honour, as I'm sure it was for most of you. However, I always felt as if I didn't quite meet the mark. I always fell short.

Growing up we were taught by society to always consider the world's opinion on what was right and wrong and also how I should live my life. I started with a sense of knowing what I needed to do, but when that conflicted with this societal dictate, I drowned that voice of my intuition to the deep recesses of myself. It was too much to feel what I needed to do and be and then be told time and again that "I was wrong, what I was doing was wrong, didn't I know any better?" This type of conflict is difficult for adults; can you imagine what it does to children who are just learning to walk in this world and develop their identities? It breaks my heart to think of the little girls and boys out there still going through this today.

I may be repeating myself here, but the fact that this journey is never over is a blessing. There's no destination, there's no litmus test for whether we've arrived or not. The guide and the path are simple in their answer but complex in their execution. This complexity makes the journey exciting and frustrating, but with a thread of curiosity throughout. When we stop feeling the curiosity, is when we stop moving. Use that as your guide, as I have learned to for myself. I do have moments of stuckness. It's inevitable.

I have learned that the journey is never smooth. That acceptance makes it feel easier. The constant waiting for things to get better before we make the change or do the next right thing is what keeps us unhappy, uneasy and unfulfilled. Understanding this has been a not-so-happy realisation that I have come to kicking and screaming. When this happens, the thing I've learned to do is to stop and take a pause. We can't push what isn't there. And the amazing thing is that the next step comes to you.

A Smidgeon of Hope

I send a message out there to all children and adult children – there is a way to heal and get through the pain of your childhood experiences. Focus on yourself. I didn't even set out to heal from wounds unrealised, it just happened. This is an important part of the healing journey; follow the feeling but don't try to predetermine the outcome. That's not how this works.

I knew I needed something to change in my life and wasn't sure what that looked like, but I went looking anyway and I found it in spades. Trust yourself and the universe. Trust that you have all the answers locked within you; you just need to create the key to let it all out. And a key element of that unlocking is trust in yourself. Faith that you will get through this. The belief in yourself to be able to do all of the above. No one can instil this in you; yes we hear and see things that motivate us, but the true motivation that we seek comes from our actions. When we take action to make a change, we get to decide the way our motivation presents itself. I say this because I am living this.

Any action allows you to learn how to start trusting and relying on your inner voice and self. A hint on how to start trusting yourself is to just observe your thoughts and feelings as you navigate all situations. Listen to your thoughts and don't feel the necessity to do anything. Allowing yourself the time to get used to listening to your thoughts and paying attention to your feelings is the first step to learning what your actual inner voice is, as opposed to all the voices and narratives you've collected throughout your life. Get ready for the ride of your life!

If you're feeling lost about how and where to start, reach out. We will document your journey in a way that can help you heal from the things you cannot see or feel. I have faith in you as much as I have in me. The universe brought you here for a reason. You get to decide where you go from here. Wherever that is, may you have a blessed, guided and protected journey of love, abundance and peace.

Now what?… Resilience unpacked

Priya Shukla An Introspective | Part 1, My Life As I've Lived It, The Sense Check

What I love about this journey I've been on is that I've done the work so that I can understand so much more about this relationship and myself and then decide how I want to navigate it.

Yes, I get to decide what I want. I am not a child who needs my parent to tell me what to do and how to do it as I forge a path for myself. I am not a child who is lost and confused because I was so used to hearing my parents' voice in my head, mistaking it for my own at times, and making decisions based on their directives. No, I get to do life on my terms. When I began my journey of self, it was with anger, belligerence and resentment; I thought it was for my parents, but it was really towards myself. I was so angry that I didn't know what to do, and that I was stuck.

How do we really begin the journey of being healthy of mind and body and also having healthy and loving relationships with our parents and, especially ourselves?

Thankfully, I remember what I did. I hope it helps others find their way to this space of peace of mind. As an Indian woman growing up in the 20th century and living in the 21st century, I don't want to drag generational trauma and ideals into the future. I may not have children, but my life and actions will influence the lives of the children who have come after me. What I am, do and become matters to me, but it will also matter to others because it gives them a blueprint for relief or escape - whichever is needed.

It started with confusion about what I wanted and the duty I felt towards my parents. I remember it so clearly. I was acutely aware of everything my parents did for me in my late teens. I started saying thank you to my mum and pithaji (dad) every time they did something for me - it could be for a meal I just had, or a scripture reference pithaji would bookmark for me but I would just feel the need to say it, so I did. It made me feel so good saying it, but seeing the joy and surprise on their faces was even more rewarding.

The thing about Indian parents is that they expect respect and high effort, but they don't expect gratitude and acknowledgement in words, but rather in action. At least, this is my observation. But this lack of acknowledgement on both sides creates a toxic breeding ground for dislike, disillusionment and so much confusion about love and obligation.

The unsaid words and misinterpretations will always create the foundation for misunderstanding and misdirection. Again, this is my experience and observation.

The Cultural Abyss

Indians are big on duty and obligation. I didn't have the language for it then, but it felt like our relationships were transactional. It sits wrong with me; always has because it also made my relationship with my God very contentious. I didn't feel right calling something so sacred and beautiful an obligation. And so I struggled with both - God and my parents. When we continuously focus our generational lessons on duty and obligation we create confusion in an ever-evolving world.

What may have worked to keep people in line and sync before, is not a practice that works well today. Love and reality - sounds like two very different things, but this is how I got to where I am now. I love my parents and my family intensely. What I wanted for us all was not the reality that was in front of me. I learnt what was causing me this suffering - my fantasy of the perfect family - and what I ended up doing was learning to accept that what I want is my business and what we all are is enough. It has to be.

I am willing to work on becoming what I want and accepting the reality that, if I am lucky, my loved ones will be happy for me and accept me as I show up too. Our love is not conditional and is not transactional either.

But what about love?

Did I receive this? Did my siblings receive this? My mum often says, "I raised you all the same. So you all had the same experiences and opportunities." And she did not lie. That was her truth. However, two things can exist in the same space. Our situations may have been the same, but our experiences and opportunities were vastly different. Our parents' way of displaying love was through their actions - taking care of us and ensuring they were setting us up for a good life where we became productive members of society. The words "I love you" are only verbalised to us now as adults.

But I don't remember these words for the little girl who never heard it and who also didn't understand what she needed. We would watch American sitcoms and constantly hear parents tell their children how much they love them and were unable to make the connection about the disconnect in our lives. The subconscious mind is a powerful thing. That part of us that is sometimes directing us with the desires unheard, unsaid and not understood.

So it was with this feeling of something missing and not feeling right that I began exploring - what was I thinking, what was I feeling, why was I feeling unfulfilled?

If you have siblings you would also understand that they can push you to spaces you don't want - even if you need to go there, you don't want it! My sister, who is the eldest child was the ultimate "planner" thinker. The questions she would ask me about my plans, my life, and my future, made me so mad! I would snap at her saying, "I don't know! So stop asking me these questions!" Being the elder sibling, of course, she ignored me. And for this, I am eternally grateful. Her pushing me with these questions forced some parts of my brain to pay attention and apply this thought to my action plan. A plan I didn't even know I had. This was the part of me that has always driven me to do more; more than I ever thought I was capable of.

It is through all the work I'd done through therapy and exploring the work done by so many people out there (like Brené Brown, and Byron Katie) that I was able to find my way to speaking and living my truth and also understanding what this meant for my relationship with parents, family and friends. I needed to be happy and fulfilled and set boundaries for myself. I began to even work on having more compassion for myself (using the Mindful Self-compassion Workbook). It has all, collectively, been the thing that has saved my perceptions of myself and my parents. When I began having more compassion for myself, I began having the capacity for compassion for my parents.

I was able to forgive them for all the things they couldn't give me because they didn't know better. As I mentioned before, we may walk through the same situations but we all have different experiences that become our memory or our nightmare. I learnt to listen and understand and also ask questions that gave me the solace I needed. My intention is not to get closure from my parents; it's to get closure for myself and from myself. Nobody was and is coming to save me. I will always be the one saving myself. And that is okay. That is a huge relief. Now I can work to give myself what I need.

A lifelong journey and one I don't need to rush. I've got this far, right? The rest will just be because I am.

When life meets resilience

Priya Shukla An Introspective | Part 1, My Life As I've Lived It, The Sense Check

With several deep breaths, I continue.

If only I knew how deep breathing and mindfulness could transform my life, I would have used it at 17 when all felt like it was a failure before I even started. Through these moments, I just have visions of my parents.

Simple and conservative Indian parents who loved their children and wanted so much for us and just supported us through everything. We may have grown up in Durban, South Africa, but our values have travelled down through generations of men and women who broke their backs on the sugar cane fields from the 1860s in Port Natal and even further back as farmers in Allahabad, India and beyond.

They carried their heritage and their religion like lifelines; taught us their learnings as if injecting them into our bloodstream like a much-needed drug that coursed through our veins, giving us an important part of our drive and yearning to succeed. We were and still remain the hope of our ancestors, realised and never satisfied - good enough was never enough. It's what I remember the most as a child. I must want more for myself than even I think I am capable of. It was probably one of the reasons so many of us find ourselves lost and confused as we get older.

Writing this, I begin to feel so much compassion for my parents and their parents. If this is all they knew, it sounds so exhausting. It sounds like so much of driving, directing and pushing a narrative through each generation; shoving this edict of perfection with the strength of the thousands that came before them. How utterly painful to be part of a generational inheritance that has its basis in never being enough.

This is where I find myself in a quandary about the right way to raise children and instil the importance of having a drive and also raising them with a loving guiding hand. My parents worked their asses off to get us educated and up and away. However, this type of hyper-focus on results and success is what also causes much dissension between parents and children of my generation when those children become adults.

Parents feel they did a great job of raising their children to be productive adults. The truth is they did - they did what they knew from their parents. However, this quote made me realise why I felt the separation and conflict of loving and, at times wondering, if I liked my parents, "What goes unsaid―or what cannot be remembered―can have profound consequences that may be affecting you to this day."

We don't know why we feel some of the things we do and why it makes our relationship with our parents, as adult children, one that is fraught with conflicting emotions of love and duty and, at times, dislike.

First steps into life

Priya Shukla An Introspective | Part 1, My Life As I've Lived It, The Sense Check

"I don't know what I'm doing and it's scary."

Sound familiar? As soon as I left school, I felt like a different person. I existed and worked in the school extracurricular system like a pro. Apparently, I had the chops to do well academically too - I didn't know or believe that. Remember the conversations swirling around us growing up about the cousins and the other children doing so well, so why can't we? Same. Story of our young lives. I could, thankfully, fool myself quite well. I lived in a perpetual fantasy world in my head. It probably saved me from me.

As I approached the end of my school life, I became more afraid and anxious about my future and the unknown. If all I was up to this point was everything but academics, what would my life look like if all I had to focus on was academics? Some might ask, why I had to focus only on academics. In my world in 1995, that was what life was - "playing" around on a field and most extracurricular activities were only for fun and games as a teenager. For an adult, it was not part of the equation.

Walking into life after school, I was also feeling vulnerable because I was experiencing some shifts in my health. My hearing had been diminishing since I was younger and in my final year at school, it suddenly deteriorated much more. I needed a stapedectomy done to my right ear at the end of the year and after that, I had complications that caused nerve damage. Of course, I found out about the nerve damage many years after the procedure. It's unfortunate how medical professionals sometimes fail us.

Back to the beginning; I had somehow got it into my head that I wanted to be a chiropractor. I loved the idea of helping people with physical therapy which had helped me so much. I'd even been accepted into the program as long as I had a good pass at the end of matric. I realise that I walked out of school and into the rest of my life terrified and scarred by an unsuccessful surgery. Trauma walking feels like your senses have been blunted and you're entering spaces with no ability to protect yourself. Eventually, the trauma shell becomes your protection.

My first year of study in Chiropractic was a wonderful and also terrifying experience. I was walking around with the weight of my struggles. My pain, the very precise cauterising from my high school persona to my young adult persona - an extremely busy and deeply fulfilled life to one where I didn't know who I was anymore.

Revisiting this pain is hard. Remember, trauma is not remembering the pain from our past, it's experiencing it again as if it's the first time. I need to breathe through it before I come back for more...