Soulful Journeys Within

I’m sharing this story in series of posts for mental health awareness and for caregivers who are walking a path they never expected. #2 The first hospitalization changed everything. Until that moment, I still believed quietly;that if we did the right things, if we adjusted enough variables, we could return to the life we knew. Hospitalization shattered that belief. It marked the point where mental illness could no longer be managed privately, spiritually, or quietly within the family. When She Stopped Speaking What followed was something I had no language for at the time. She stopped eating. She stopped speaking. She barely moved. For ten days, she existed in a state that was deeply unsettling to witness. I later learned the word for it: catatonia . At the time, it felt like watching my child retreat somewhere I could not reach. I bathed her. I sat beside her. I tried to talk to her, even when there was no response. I did paath quietly, sitting near her bed, holding onto faith...

I’m sharing this story in series of posts for mental health awareness and for caregivers who are walking a path they never expected. #1 Mental illness rarely announces itself loudly at the beginning. For us, it arrived quietly; disguised as anxiety, depression, fleeting psychosis that felt like a vivid nightmare, and heightened sensitivity. Like many families, we believed we were dealing with something temporary like school stress, puberty or a phase. She was bright, thoughtful, and deeply sensitive. Early Signs We Didn’t Understand She was born with separation anxiety and had scarlet fever at age eleven, something that may have triggered underlying vulnerabilities, though nothing became obvious at the time. Faith, Fear, and Missed Language The real shift came years later, when I took a job 400 miles away and she was left to manage her daily life on her own at sixteen. I couldn’t hear what wasn’t being said. She couldn’t make sense of the conflicting thoughts she was having; th...

Note to the readers: I wrote this in 2009 and kept it tucked away. Coming back to it reminded me why I wrote it in the first place, and I’m glad to finally share it. November 25th is the international Day for the elimination of violence against women. This day was recognized by the General Assembly of United Nations in 1999 with a view too raising public awareness of violations of the rights of the women, why was this step deemed necessary? In many cultures women are viewed and treated as inferior or as second class citizens. Prejudices against them are deep rooted. Gender based violence is an on going problem even in the so-called developed world. According to former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan “Violence against women is global in reach, and takes place in all societies and cultures,” he said in a statement marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. “It affects women no matter what their race, ethnicity, social origin, birth or other status may...

Email from a friend: All of you are really busy and it is COVID-19 times as well. Many of you in California have been receiving the Pfizer vaccine that just arrived here last week as you are on the front lines of taking care of those in hospitals. Second semester just ended and I have been following the Protests by Farmers who have been camping in the cold on Delhi's Borders. The songs, the poetry, the stories that are unfolding including the unpacking of the Disputed Laws that have stirred this uprising have absorbed me. We are far away, yet due to technology we are connected in ways never possible before-not even during the 1980’s. I have been reading up on the research articles, listening to news reports from various channels and opposing views, you tube interviews of farmers from Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and even Gujarat (today), viewpoints from Bengal and trying to get to the facts. I must say that I have enjoyed listening to a newly created song on the protest in H...

Post by Sikh Float - Rose Parade Pasadena CA .

http://www.sikhnet.com/news/jaap-sahib-sound-vibration-kundalini-and-translation Jaap Sahib, sound vibration, kundalini and translation July 1, 2010 by Brijdeep Singh Bhasin Source: www.sikhsailor.com Jaap Sahib morning prayer of Sikhs by Guru Gobind Singh, is an Ode to Ek Ongkar, One Divine light. These are my experiences and thoughts on the bani and recitation together with an attempt at translation and transliteration of it. As Khalsa Sikhs we are advised to do certain prayers on a daily basis, some in the morning and some in the evening and night. For the longest time, bringing myself to wake up earlier than usual and reading the banis seemed like a major task and I would get lazy. More so, I considered it almost a chore, a ritual to be performed because it was “required”. However, a part of me always said that there was a lot more to bani or composition than is immediately apparent and it will take some sincere effort to figure it out. So, a little while back I started waking up e...

http://www.indiajournal.com/pages/event.php?id=8244 CAMP SEALY, CA - The one week 71st IIGS camp held at Camp Sealy August 16-22 in the San Bernardino Mountains in Southern California, left participants yearning for more, promising to come back next year and saying teary good byes to new and old friends. Over 150 new and old participants came from different states in the US. India, Japan and Canada. In the morning and evening Dewans, campers experienced Nam Simran, enjoyed Kirtan and participated in various aspects of the service. Sardarni Gurpreet Kaur’s singing and Sardar Ranjit Singh’s tabla accompaniment regaled the campers with melodious and inspiring Kirtan. During the day, a plethora of elective classes made it possible for attendees to explore areas of specific interest to them: Meanings and recitation of Nitnem baanies, Shabad Kirtan, Tabla, Punjabi, Sikh history, Sikh Art and Gatka. Mind- Body Fitness classes were also offered along with recreational swimming. An entire aft...

http://indiapost.com/article/lifestyle/3802/ Letters from a Sikh kid Sikh parents living in the Diaspora have for a long time felt the need of a book that would explain the message of Sikhi in simple terms to the friends and teachers of their school going children. Recently I picked up a lovely book, Dear Takuya, Letters of a Sikh boy at the local Gurdwara. The protagonist of the book Simar is a nine-year-old California kid who during his summer break shares his story as a Sikh boy with Takuya, a pen friend in Japan. In sixteen, simple and tenderly voiced letters, Simar sums up his own struggle for acceptance as well as the principles of tolerance, forgiveness and love for everyone that he learns at a Sikh youth camp. Reading Simar's letters is like reading the journal of your own child. Jessi Kaur has shown a keen understanding of how young boys think. September 11th has changed United States in many ways. It has particularly impacted the Sikhs who live here. Numerous Sikhs have b...

Back to school or Back to schedule? It is almost mid of September, schools have started and our families are settling in to this year's schedule. Two of our older children entered High and Junior High school. Even if our children are in the same school as last year, the timetable is always slightly different. Maybe classes start earlier this year, or later. Or maybe it's the before and after activities that are different. For the 7th and 9th grader, the night before registration, I spent a chaotic evening filling out two cards each and several other forms, all asking for exactly the same information. It was just like last year, and all the years before, even down to the part where my fingers begin to hurt and I begin to talk to myself, "Don’t they have good programmers like me at this school district who print the auto filled forms for parents from the school system and have them make the changes if necessary?" On the day of the registration, first I took my daughter ...

........so I took the plunge exactly 11 months ago. I remember those days like it was yesterday. I quit my career of 15 years and accepted the world's most splendid full-time job. While beginning his farewell speech, CIO said "A person should only do what he/she likes the most and here we have Ms. Kaur who made her choice". I was not so sure if I made a choice or I ran out of options to continue to juggle through two full-time jobs. I said good-bye to all with tears, broad smiles, hugs and promises to stay in touch. It was beginning of June 2007, children were getting out of school for summer and here I was ready to welcome them home. The beginning of my new job (Stay-at-home mom) was just like my first real job; enthusiastic, smashed with happiness and daily accomplishments. Just as in my then job, I often worked in my dreams through out night to figure out a new logic for my project and in the morning ran to work to put it in and feel my heart swell with pride when it w...

Sahib-e-Kamaal Sri Guru Gobind Singh ji adorned The Khalsa with 5 K's. These were the gifts that most of us value and protect with our life, though they mean different to different people. Here is the article from a 'Daughter of the Khalsa' that I found very inspiring. Please read on to relate to her sentiments on 5 K's. ******** The date of this year's Vaisakhi, April 13, makes it even more of a meaningful gurparab for me. Not only can I participate in commemorating the Birth of the Khalsa - that incomparable moment when Guru Gobind Singh founded the Sikh nation - but I can also celebrate the first anniversary of my rebirth in the House of the Guru, when, exactly one year ago, I formally embraced Sikhi through the immense blessing of taking Amrit. Becoming a daughter of the Khalsa was an essential way for me to make a solemn public commitment to living according to the tenets of the Rehat Maryada and trying my best to revere, understand, and incorporate into my dai...

Most of the stuff we think of when we think of Halloween – the candy, the outlandish costumes, the scariness – has a long history.About 2,000 years ago, the Celts lived in what is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France. They celebrated their New Year's on Nov. 1, a day they saw as a demarcation line between summer and winter. The last day of the year, (their version of New Year's Eve), was marked with the festival of Samhain (Sah-ween), their biggest and most significant holiday. The thinking was that during that night, the souls of everybody who died during the previous year traveled into the otherworld.These souls, in the form of ghosts, fairies and spirits, could be mischievous and play tricks on the living. Their presence, the Celts believed, made it easier for their priests, or druids, to make predictions about the coming year. Here's how some of their traditions became ours: RELIGION Halloween, Celt-style, was adapted more than 1,000 years ago by the Cath...

Patricia Klindienst is a master gardener and an award-winning scholar and teacher. She lives in Guilford, Connecticut, and teaches creative writing each summer at Yale University. Excerpted from The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic America, by Patricia Klindienst. Copyright © 2006 by Patricia Klindienst. ----------------------------------------------------------- A California gardener used the farming wisdom of her native India to create a suburban paradise that restored her soil--and sustains her soul. “I told my father, ‘I will be poorer in America, but my conscience will be free.’” I write the words on a paper napkin and turn it to face her. “Is this right? Is this what you just said?” “Yes. I did not come to America to trade my cultural heritage for money.” I take the napkin back and write the second sentence as well. Her words are so striking that I do not want to rely on memory alone to record them. Ruhan Kainth is telling me why sh...