Ladybug's field notes

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Are We Even More Precious as Broken and Mended?

Are we? Am I? Are you? Are we even more precious because of the wounds, the cracks, the riffs we have in our hearts that we have worked on for years, much alike the ceramic pieces which have gone through Kintsugi ? Are we even more beautiful because we are broken and we did not divert ourselves away from those cracks through the most celebrated addiction of our times, "busy-ness"? Or for that matter dissociated to the extent that parts of us became unreachable along with those cracks? Can we claim higher value than a human who was never broken or for that matter never looked at their broken parts and worked on them? But even before we go there, do we, ourselves consider us exquisite pieces of higher value or are we constantly shaming ourselves about our brokenness and our healing journeys much like the pieces recreated through Kintsugi? It is popularly believed that Kintsugi or Kinsukuroi came into existence around the 15th Century when a Shogun (hereditary military leaders...

Claiming the Calm!

I t is almost time to wrap the year! Although Instagram is offering a photo collage, have photos ever known the story as well as the words? For some may be yes! For me it's definitely a no! In 2022, the bright idea of making life a little more calm struck me and struck me hard! For years a dear friend had been suggesting me to create a physical distance from the people who clearly did not contribute to my mental peace, but I hesitated. It was too comfortable staying in the place I called mine. I stayed there for years. The familiarity was comforting even if not peaceful. In 2019, I almost thought of shifting to another locality after Gogol left for college, but decided against it as it was not really ticking the requirement of being physically far that way, and soon there was covid... In a nutshell, finally in 2022, I started claim ing my calm. Well! Ahem! In instalments. .. I claimed and reclaimed my physical and mental boundary this year ....

When Grief Arrives, You Give In!

Although I so want to write about it, I really do not know what is a good starting point. Is it a good starting point to mention what I said to my therapist about my experience of 2020? I said how it still scares me. I told a few days ago that I do not have the feeling of "Been there, done that". I do not have the feeling of "Bring it on! I have seen the worst and I am back!" No! I do not feel victorious. I do not feel like a phoenix. When you have an encounter with a wild animal and you are torn into pieces but you some how come out alive and take months/years to finally get back to living the rest of your life, do you think you now have seen it all and think, "Who cares if another tiger leaps at me from the next bush! I have seen it all!! I can get out of it alive again!!"? I doubt that. You probably are too thankful to be alive! You would do anything to avoid another incident like that. Let me reiterate. Till now I never think, "I have come back ...

The Price of Not Playing by the Societal Norms!

As I was reading about leaving a toxic relationship with one's mother and it brought back so many dreaded memories of the time that I was trying to get out of non-functional at best and abusive at worst marriage. As I read through the article by a psychologist talking about a client and came to these lines: "She: I will lose all my relatives one by one. Nobody understands I am victim of a toxic mother. They will believe my mother and that I left her when I became independent ." ... it brought back the memory of my ex-mother in law shouting at me over phone! "You are such an ungrateful wretch! You are selfish beyond any imagination. I must say that you can't think of anyone else but yourself. Just because you now earn more than him now, you want to leave him!" I stood holding the phone in shock! I always thought of her as a well educated woman who clearly saw I had much more empathy than her own son as she clearly prefered me over him to take care of her wh...

Leaving norms behind!

"Arre didi! It indeed happened like that. Neelam was asked to bring her 3 year old kid-brother to the adolescents' meeting. Her family gave her permission to come only on the condition that the brother will accompany. The boy fell in a drain on the way, Neelam had to go back home, get him cleaned and then come to the meeting again!" And everyone present had a hearty laugh remembering the incident! This can actually be material for stand-up comedians but in Rambakhs Kheda, near Lucknow, girls can only go out if their brothers accompany them. And these brothers can be as young as 3! All the assembled had a hearty laugh at the ridiculousness of the proposition that a yound child of 5 or so would protect the much older sister but so far it helped them get out of the homes, they were ready to bring the kid-brother along. "How was the lockdown time?" Meena jumped to say how badly they fared with all family members in the same room for all the 24 hours and said, ...

Normalising Parental Abuse!

"You are a slut! Given a chance you will sleep with every man in the whole neighbourhood!" "When will you die? Can you tell me when will you die? I can then be at peace for some time?" "You are so ugly..it is so difficult for me to take you anywhere!" "You will keep losing your jobs! You don't know how to talk to your own, no wonder you would not know how to talk to the world!" "You will never become anything in life! I at times wonder if you are our own!" These are just some of the things that children from so called "normal" families have heard and that they vividly remember as adults. Not only that they remember but some of these are repeated when they clash with the larger world and face a challenge. Their families repeat these with a "I told you so..." put in for better effect. If you think of these sentences in isolation, without knowing who said these to whom, you would have asked the receiver of these...