Children of Khalsa

On average, couples date for three to five years before marriage. For me, getting to know my husband began after we were married. Three months after our first meeting in 1993, I married the man I believed was the love of my life. At the time, this was not unusual in the Sikh Punjabi community. Long courtships were rare, and marriage itself was often the place where love was expected to grow. Everything appeared aligned; faith, family, careers, values. What felt like a bold leap of faith, however, began to tilt toward uncertainty soon after the wedding. I stayed through the first five years because I believed in what we had begun. There were moments of connection, hope, and genuine affection. I wanted to believe that with time, understanding would deepen and challenges would soften. Living in a joint family initially felt like support, but over time I realized it also masked what was breaking between us. The presence of others filled the space where intimacy should have been, camoufl...

In Sikh thought, a child’s emotional well-being is closely connected to their sense of safety, love, and belonging. When a home environment becomes emotionally unsettled or confusing, children may struggle internally in ways that are not always visible. Over time, this can affect their confidence, relationships, and ability to cope with life’s challenges. Within our community, conversations about mental health are often difficult, especially when they intersect with marriage, family, and faith. I once believed that acceptance of Hukum meant tolerating circumstances that caused deep emotional strain. Through lived experience and reflection on Gurbani ; particularly the Laavaan ; I came to see that Sikh teachings guide us toward safety, dignity, and healing, not silent endurance of harm. Our daughter struggled to form healthy relationships, and this one in particular severely affected her mental health. I had navigated a similar experience in 2021 and had been able to help her acce...

By the time the new year arrived, the emotional landscape of our home had hardened into something dense and unmoving. The children kept their distance; not out of defiance, but out of instinctive self-preservation. And my husband and I existed in a parallel rhythm that bore little resemblance to a marriage of nearly three decades. We shared space, not intimacy. Silence replaced conversation. Coexistence stood in for partnership. Each morning began with a familiar ache; a longing for the family we once were, and a growing fear that whatever had been broken might now be beyond repair. My body began to register what my heart had been carrying. Sleep became fractured. I woke in the dark with my heart racing. My appetite shifted. My shoulders stayed braced, even in stillness. I cried often; sometimes quietly in the shower, sometimes alone in my car, parked just outside the house I no longer felt safe inside. My therapist reminded me that grief does not only follow death. Sometimes it a...

After mid 2021, our family slowly unraveled. What had begun as stress fractures during the pandemic widened into lasting separations, silences, and wounds that refused to heal. Our younger daughter, who had moved to New York in October 2020, returned home every few months. During one visit, she noticed the physical toll it took on me to drive daily to Los Angeles just to spend time with her. Out of concern, she asked her Vaddi Masi if she could stay with her instead. My sister lived barely ten miles away, yet even that short distance came to symbolize how divided our family had become. After months of pleading, my husband finally agreed to couples therapy. I entered it with hope; I left each session feeling more alone. It never felt like shared work. Instead, it felt as though I had been invited into his therapist’s space, expected to absorb accusations rather than participate in healing. Very quickly, it became clear that while I was there to repair a marriage, he was there to defe...

By the end of 2020, as the pandemic tightened its grip on daily life, I was forced to face a reality I had been resisting: our family was breaking. Our youngest child had already distanced herself from her father , worn down by anger that had become impossible to reason with. Grieving that loss while continuing to parent the children still living around him felt unbearable, yet there was no pause button. I poured my energy into protecting them and into salvaging what I still hoped might be repaired in my marriage. On New Year’s Eve, confined to our home and searching for meaning, my husband and I participated in an online Kirtan program. We stepped into 2021 with quiet promises and fragile hope; the kind you cling to when you’re not ready to admit how much damage has already been done. That hope did not last long. Just days into the new year, a seemingly ordinary moment turned volatile. I entered the bedroom simply to say goodnight and was met with sudden rage. I was told I had no...

Grief-stricken, I sought help beyond the walls of our home and began seeing a therapist. Fall 2020, August through October, our season of birthdays, we celebrated each milestone twice: once with our younger daughter, without her father, and once with my husband, without her. What should have been joyful gatherings became quiet negotiations, divided loyalties, and an unspoken acknowledgment that our family was no longer whole. In therapy, I could no longer avoid the truth I had been naming around for years. I had lived in an abusive relationship since the earliest days of my marriage. I had softened it, called it “his anger issues,” learned to work around it, learned to endure it. I told myself I stayed because I did not want to be divorced twice. Because I did not believe I could raise three children on my own. Because I feared my family would not stand behind my decision. So I waited - for the storm to vanish. I waited for the children to finish high school, to leave for college, t...

July 2020 brought no relief. The weight of the pandemic, financial pressures, and the constant tension within our home had created a level of stress we could no longer outrun. Every day felt like we were bracing for the next emotional blow. Our younger daughter needed both of us to serve as guarantors for her new apartment in New York. I gave her my income information and encouraged her to get the same directly from her father. What should have been a simple, routine conversation quickly spiraled into another confrontation, another moment where she felt fear instead of support. All this stemmed from of his need to secrecy . By the end of it, she reduced her communication with him to polite greetings, a shield she created to protect herself from further emotional harm. Her work start date was pushed to October, adding another layer of uncertainty to an already fragile situation. I tried to handle the practical pieces, to protect the children from stress, to hold our family toget...

By May 2020, our younger daughter graduated online, a milestone we had hoped to celebrate together despite the pandemic. We surprised her with a banner on the garage door, danced out of sheer happiness, and tried to create a moment of shared joy. But the celebration was clouded by a belittling comment my husband made about our son, diminishing the joy of his Bhangra performances, an therapeutic outlet he had relied on to manage the emotional strain of our home environment. It wasn’t just a thoughtless remark; it was a reminder of a recurring pattern; belittling the children instead of nurturing their efforts. Our older daughter’s mental health was already fragile in quarantine. She felt unheard, unsafe, and misunderstood, especially after repeated confrontations over trivial things and my husband’s insistence on rigid authority. The children were beginning to withdraw from him; emotionally, physically, and in their trust. Communication at home felt like walking through a minefield...

By April 2020, the world outside had slowed, but inside our home, tensions only accelerated. The pandemic forced everyone to stay indoors, yet the emotional distances in our family stretched farther than ever. Every day, I tried to hold the emotional temperature of the house steady. I answered questions about the virus, reassured our younger daughter that New York’s nightmares weren’t following her here, monitored the smallest shifts in our older daughter’s mental health, and reminded our son to give himself grace for losing the structure he once depended on. All the while, I hoped my husband would notice the depth of my efforts to keep everyone afloat. But his attention was elsewhere. After he pushed our son away in March 2020 by yelling at him over a routine insurance decision and treating his honesty as defiance; he left our first-born elder daughter without the support she needed. The house was full, yet I had never felt so alone. Caregiver fatigue is invisible until it breaks ...

By March 2020, the pandemic had pushed us into close quarters, all of us adjusting to the chaos of a full house. Our son had moved back home. He wasn’t asking for anything - just a place to sleep while he worked hard to build his future. He was paying his share of bills, including his portion of the family plan and his auto insurance. That was the month his car insurance was up for renewal. He had always been on our family plan—it was cheaper, predictable, and made sense for his income. But for months, his father had been insisting that he separate his insurance from ours. He said it was “time,” though his urgency seemed to come from something deeper than finances. Our son tried to do what his father asked. He got quotes. He researched options. He tried to be responsible. When he showed the numbers to me, the truth was obvious: a separate policy was far too expensive for someone earning what he was. I made a simple, practical decision. I told him to stay on the family plan ...

In the summer of 2016, when our son graduated from university and our younger daughter finished high school, my father-in-law came from India to stay with us. What began as a happy time quickly shifted. When our son quietly told us he no longer wished to keep his unshorn beard,he wanted to trim. I approached it with compassion. His father, however, reacted with confusion and frustration, asking, “Then why keep the hair at all?” Though he asked our son to wait until his grandfather returned to India, the deeper message was clear - he was more concerned about appearances than our son’s spiritual journey. Instead of guiding him with love, he withdrew, leaving me to support our son alone. During those months, I cared for my father-in-law daily, making his meals and ensuring he took his medication. My son made fresh phulke for his granfather when I was at work. When he once preferred cold milk, I gave it to him - something the children also drank. My husband saw this and publicly accused...

In early 2020, before the pandemic changed everything, our problems had already begun quietly tightening around us. Our Parent PLUS loans had reached their peak after our youngest started her final semester at a university in New York that January. Two-thirds of my take home pay was going straight toward loan payments. Every month felt like walking a tightrope. And then, somehow, our son’s compassion became twisted into a reason for conflict. One evening, I sat down with our son and explained the truth. Our finances were stretched so thin that even basic expenses felt uncertain. He listened quietly, thinking. Then, with a kindness far beyond his years, he offered something I never expected. “Mamma, I can help. I’ll stop paying my student loans and cover the Parent PLUS payments until you don’t need me anymore.” He was already paying his own loans, yet he still stepped forward, willing to support the family. It was one of those rare moments when a child’s character reveals itself w...

April 2020 His way of coping was so different from me. While the house filled with tension and uncertainty, he slipped into his own world. He left home to serve food at the Gurdwara Sahib with the United Sikhs team; noble, meaningful work, but work he chose to do alone. He attended AKJ Zoom programs by himself, even though sangat had always been something we shared. What hurt me wasn’t the seva or his spirituality. I admired his willingness to show up for the community during a time of crisis. What hurt was the solitude he wrapped around them. The choice to go without me. To not even ask if I wanted to join. I needed sangat too but I was left outside the circle. To assume I wouldn’t be interested, or that I didn’t need the same spiritual grounding in a moment when everything around us felt unstable. I needed the stability of community, especially while carrying the emotional load of a household under stress. Our marriage began to feel like two people walking in circles, each orb...

March 2020 Content warning: family conflict, emotional stress, pandemic trauma Privacy Disclaimer: Some identifying details have been intentionally altered or generalized to protect the privacy of those involved. In March 2020, when the world shut down because of COVID-19, our house went from quiet to crowded almost overnight. For the first time in years, all of our children were back under the same roof. What should have felt comforting instead felt suffocating. One daughter was already home, our son returned abruptly after offices closed, and our youngest came home from New York City, carrying the trauma of three and a half years of life in a city under siege. She quarantined herself, withdrawn and fragile, and even simple acts of closeness, like a hug, were impossible. The very real fear and stress of the pandemic created an invisible wall between us. With five adults in one house, we divided the rooms like territories, each person carving out their own space to work, sle...