The Middle Ground

Emotional Abuse is real and it's debilitating effects can go unnoticed for several decades. Emotional invalidation and manipulation by parents and primary care-givers are of the worst kind for they are often worded as if they are meant for your benefit and well-being. You'll know one day and this knowing will be painful and require time - you'll know by the kind of partners you attract in romantic contexts, your own poor health choices, the weariness caused by a perpetual rebellion, when you are constantly exhausted by all the mental work you take on behalf of people who should care but don't, when during major events of illness or change you reguarly find yourself managing alone, if you are in a state of discomfort when your parents are around alternating between over-doing and exhaustion, you'll know you haven't been loved the way you should have. Emotional abuse by parents can particularly be very confusing for children because of the inherent nature of th...

If you are me, you are not a morning person. As soon as you open your eyes in the morning, into your head come rushing the events of the previous night in most spectacular detail, then the events of the past week, followed by those of last 5 years, and finally your whole life — all crunched into a script that you are not interested in reading, delivered so abruptly and so unforgivingly as if there was no other way to orient you and set context. As you calm down and make yourself a cup of tea, all you want to do is dodge but fail, then block and say, “ I know this already, just let me be”. You gradually warm yourself up with light exercise and tune into Guided Meditation with Deepak hoping you’ll glide into the day smoothly, knowing all the while that you are not prepared for the harsh sunlight of the post- breakfast till lunch time period. Each day as the sun sets, he returns your superpowers that he takes without your permission every morning — as the moon rises, the muse returns coax...

“Come, Come whoever you are.  Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving, come.  Ours is not a caravan of despair, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times, come. Come, yet again, come, come” - Jalal-ud-din Rumi “I did my own thing” - Sita, of the 21st century A.D Acknowledgement I would like to express my sincerest thanks to Sage Valmiki - after all these years he seems as mythological as the epic he wrote. I am grateful to him for writing the epic, a story that remains as deeply etched in my mind today as it was when I first heard it.  The events that take place in this epic have been repeated so many times over centuries that they've shaped the belief systems of large parts of the human population. The effigies of iconic villain Ravan have been burnt year after year, Diwali, the festival of lights has been celebrated as the triumph of the righteous over evil, making this mythological story more alive than many real events that have taken place in...