Understanding Self-Love & Deep Work
Cry-Sis
Alienation as a positive form of healing
In June 2020, a few weeks short of my 34th birthday, I was overwhelmed with my many emotions. I carried so much baggage from so many relationships — the relationships with family members, friends, colleagues, and communities around me. I’ve always known that I feel the energies of the world, and I’ve always been extremely sensitive to them. Last year, I began to realize that all of this baggage has made a huge impact on my body, mind, and everlasting spirit. I was dating someone and had been in a relationship with them for two and a half years and in June 2020, we decided to put an end to it — the beginning of a long-awaited transformation.
At the time, I blamed him for my brokenness, heartbroken with rage, 34 years of consistent heartbreak. Consistently drinking a concoction of tequila and wine every night after the breakup. Like a chimney, smoking my lungs away, until I realized the truth. The truth was that I was broken way before 2020, way before my first romantic relationship in 2003, and way before even beginning my journey as a human being.
Over the next few months, I started my spiritual journey toward healing and shedding negative energies that became one with my body and mind for 34 years. I started getting into meditative practices, and pre-ordered Jay Shetty’s book Think Like a Monk. I even started a book club to talk about the concepts and strategies that this book taught. I planned to begin my own podcast on healing and creating safe spaces for South Asians to tell their stories of trauma and healing. I became so busy with being busy that I forgot that I started this journey to heal myself in the first place.
In December of 2020, I started to witness my growth. I had just published my first season of my podcast and although I was supposed to publish my second season, I stopped to take a breather. In this phase, I realized something so profound — my true purpose, my reason for being born, and what I could give back to my community, in community. I felt my inner voice speak to me with kindness, offering myself space and time to heal, disconnecting from my busy way of living, and taking a moment to look at the garden I have built in my conscious world. In this introspective phase, I realized that I built an existence of conscious effort for my exterior world and I failed to do the same for my inner world. It was time that I truly understood how to love myself. Suddenly, everything began to make more sense.
Friendships and relationships that stifled me never seemed more clear. The existence of divine grace oozed through my pores that I could feel the sweat of the deep work I was doing for myself. And although this meant that I had to let some deep bonds go, and heal from them, I knew in every ounce of my being, that I was finally doing what was best for my mental and spiritual health, for the first time in my life. Creating healthy boundaries to help myself heal from all of my traumas — intergenerational, psychological, physiological, and self-inflicted ones.
The real work had begun and my life began to transform. Although I’m super excited to be on this next phase of my journey, it is undoubtedly painful. Doing the deep work still means facing so many fears, feeling the pains of the past, and pushing myself to understand what it means to me. Crying hysterically in the shower because what I just read in an article about trauma hits a nail on my head, or listening to someone speaking about being hurt in the exact same way I was hurt, is no easy feat. But then again, I know that healing from any type of injury is no easy feat. Just like the time I hurt my back doing deadlifts at the gym or that time my chin tore open, gushing with blood when I hurt it jumping, trying to get my voice heard when I was nine. They all required some serious time, and physical effort to fully heal. No medication could ever sedate me from the pain of emotional injury. I know I have to do the deep work in an effort to break cycles of oppression and physiological traumas.
I have learned many-a-thing from all of this. The most important lesson was to give me the time and space to heal from so much pain. I am now realizing that there is no rush to heal, and taking my time is imperative to understanding self-love, my place in relationships and friendships, and my place in this universe. I know that there are better days ahead because I am spending this time for myself, and with myself. I’m rebuilding myself and understanding just who I truly am, to myself and to others.
I really look forward to being on this journey and sharing my stories with all of you.
In community, namaste. 🙏
