This last year, I’ve changed so much that I hardly recognise myself from twelve short months ago. Outwardly, perhaps not very much, but the operational system has had an overhaul. I am writing this hoping it helps me see the enormity of it all.
I am filled with breath-clogging gratitude for the one thing I had wished for — normalcy. There were and would be years when that won’t be true, and those would need to be endured. I am grateful that this past year, I have mostly had to deal with the pain of letting go of familiar and threadbare patterns and replace them with fresh tapestry.
Leaving home: A week into the year, I temporarily moved out of home so it could be renovated. The original timeline was two months, so I stowed my belongings at various places and hit the road for a winter retreat to Kalimpong, followed by a drop by to Sikkim. Inwardly, I was grappling with “what-ifs”… what if I didn’t get to go back to the same place, what if the work landscape got worse. I carried them into the mountains and back. Everything played a part to help: Looking at the majesty of the mountains, meditation, many conversations, the cold, crisp air, telling myself daily to get a grip. Eventually, I arrived at the starting point of recognising that my anxious lifestyle, which was doing me no favours, needed to be jettisoned.
The timeline to returning home extended (These things are common in the house renovation world). In that time, I went through a life script workshop and learnt just how much not-ok-ness I operate with. With the goal to reconcile with that state, I packed bags on short notice and headed to Georgia. I picked that place because it was one of the safest places for women to travel to, solo.
I was beginning to see what a non-anxious approach could do to work. I was on holiday, and in parallel, building relationships afresh with three clients. I was helping two existing clients with some urgent work. All this, working 60-90 minutes a day. The rest of the day was for going out to play tourist.
The thing about mountains for me, is that they remind me of the mountains within. Between gazing at Khanchendzonga and Kazbeg, I have had the powerful realisation that uprooting (home and familiar workplaces) does not HAVE to impact my agency. It has since been a choice to not feel anxious. To catch the anxiousness as it begins to spool up and to choose to stay calm in situations that would have earlier activated my famous furrowed brow. After months of catching and stopping this slow leak of power, I am constantly feeling a significant surplus of tangible power.
The Bangalore summer brought with it work, cosy goodbyes to the familiar and the cycle of building up again. This time, I got stuff done in half the time, with a quarter of the effort. I let go of the inessential with boundless ease. Reduced worry and a corresponding increase in power also created empty spaces for new ideas to make home.
Sharp boundaries as contributors to less stress & more calm: When I saw crepuscular rays — in the east and the west coasts, the Sahyadris in monsoon or from the end of my lane — I noticed the potency of the binary. “Is there an operational boundary” has a yes / no answer. It allowed for focus and transformation. I started reinforcing boundaries in real time. The emergent communication kept my kind and gentle style, added a tinge of firm and resolute asks / commitments, coated in warmth and honesty. That process was more fun than it was challenging. The magic was hiding in the interstices of honest, warm and clear.
As a consequence, my stealth mode is now neither default nor a hiding place. I hide in plain sight only when needed. Otherwise, I am on stealth mode because it feeds my need for quiet, being a private person, needing long recharges before meeting someone, taking years to open up, and taking the slow lane in all relationships. I neither apologise for it anymore, nor shift my pace to suit others.
Returning home: In the second half of the year, I began to flow serenely amid the nourishing plenty. This is the same natural order that allows the Teesta, Kaveri, Zuari and Aragvi to prevail. When guilt, shame or fear arrive, I observe, and redirect them them to quietly evaporate like morning mist. I have begun to dream, spotlight my needs and protect my energy. My identity is no longer she who serves or she who protects, nourishes. It is she who lives for herself first. A whole new me has arrived, in consequence.
This right to put myself first has developed while giving care in possibly the most demanding medical situation I’ve had to deal with in the couple of decades of parental caregiving. We started the year on an increased medical vigilance and ended with a hospital stay for dad with a broken femur. Holding his hand through an ambulance ride through busy Bangalore roads as he worked through pain, I had clarity on what I / others needed to do. Multiple roles emerge in a situation like this: managing the hospital tasks; managing everyone’s nerves; managing the dynamic of a 21 year old attender who spent over a month living with the parents. Doing all this while keeping my end of the bargain at work, juggling calendars, and holding on to my own energy and health with calm and a marked lack of ongoing concern that usually shows up as inflammation — that could not have happened this well, had I not worked on the anxiousness and boundaries all year long.
To find myself changed: The genuine calm inside is new but very very welcome. Old me would have seemed calm externally, while tamping down anxiousness. Old me didn’t have vocabulary or safety to voice my stresses. That has changed so much that I now have a significantly more accurate read on “What’s in my control”.
I am intensely proud of myself for maintaining dignity through this process. Of course, I wouldn’t have been half as effective without my small tribe that props me up and always has my back.
Caregiving has been a large part of my personality. This year, outside of the parental unit, my caregiving has grown sublime. The boundaries helped me be a more appropriate caregiver. The realisation that I don’t need to be a caregiver to be loved, but that I ought to give care when I love. And that is not everyone, not everyday.
The pathway to nourishing the brain and spirit flow through a nourished body. With consistency care and a little help from my wise strength & conditioning experts, I’ve built back a strength training routine from scratch. In recent times, there hasn’t been a more simultaneously humbling and emboldening experience. Between the strength training and getting my bicycle out a few times, even managing a few short runs, this has been the most physically strong year I have had in my 40s. There is such gratitude for my body for bearing all that it has and yet giving so much.
To be fallow (Thanks, The Ken) is a necessary luxury. I’ve spent time to wallow in solitude and allow fresh thoughts and ideas to germinate.
From writing this down and reading it back for myself, I see this: In clearing the decks of the old stories about fear, shame and guilt, space has been created for calm, power and the courage to speak my mind candidly but kindly. This has rewired me to ask more often in 365 days than I possibly have in all the days in the 46 years prior, “Is this what I want?” “Is this good for me?” When the answer is no, I do not allow an energy hijack — be it someone else’s needs or an organisation’s requirements or a close one’s wishes.
My wish for myself this year: To commandeer time with kindness and pride for myself, to take up space in the vastness of my own being. To flow river-like, to rise mountain-like, to grow tree-like, to go road-like, both to and from places.
In closing: Because I am often asked, I am listing the outstanding learnings of the year: DailyOm‘s writing courses, Meghna Singhee’s writing prompts, Aruna Gopakumar’s life script, Myth and Memoir and Hero’s journey workshops, Michelle Faye Pereira’s winter retreat and end of year sessions, the various teachers and lessons, like Kavita Arvind’s hidden life of trees, my double teaming Dr. Mary Claire Haver with Sharon Blackie for a fuller mid-life eval).
Monica Pillai 