My gratitude list for February, 2015!

This post was written for Gratitude Circle for the month of February, 2015

Thanks to vidya& corinne for the image

 There are so many things I want to be grateful for this short month, but I want specifically to be thankful for the following:

• I completed 4 years working as a psychological counselor in the University campus and am grateful for all the learning’s and every opportunity this place has offered me in the last few years. I love the ambience and the space that  I have to work; I feel good to give my best as there is so much of acknowledgement, affirmation and encouragement I get from my head and colleagues.

• I had opportunity to visit the government Integrated Counseling Testing Centre’s and the Parent to Child Transmission centre’s for HIV/AIDS as part of my supportive supervision, wherein I interacted with women who came for pre test and post test counseling, and some of their stories brought tears to my eyes. (I will share in my next post a few of the cases that I witnessed) I am grateful for these field experiences that lets me enter the lives of simple women, who suffer innocently and the courage they display is very inspiring.

• I am grateful for the opportunity to co author a Research paper on Prevention of Violence against women at an international seminar scheduled at Madurai in the coming month.  I am grateful for my companion Aparna for initiating this process to reflect back on the pilot programme implemented in our city.  I am thankful for YWCA for encouraging and supporting me to attend the seminar and represent the organization for this programme.

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• Training has always been my strength; and I am grateful to the University for sending me to take a few sessions at SICA (State Institute of Correctional Services) Telengana, on substance abuse and its impact on behavior, which made me do a lot of reading, understanding, and discuss with my team and evolve presentation to suit the target group.

• I am grateful for my good health of body and mind.  My thyroid levels have come back normal and all the symptoms that was interfering me to function normally had disappeared.  I have resumed walking, yoga stretches, counting calories, eating healthy, drinking plenty of water and practicing gratitude every day.

• I am thankful for my daughter who is full of life; and very motivating to explore new places for shopping and also helped me fight fear (I always avoided escalator due to fear and prefer to walk down the railing) this time she encouraged me to try taking the escalator, I succeeded but still have little fear, I am sure it will go, once I make it a habit. On the Valentine’s Day we went out together to Big Bazaar and picked up a few tops on discount, we enjoyed the window shopping.

  

  My daughter Maria Dorothy

• I am also grateful for meeting an 11 year old child in a social gathering, who reminded me of my son Emmanuel; I could not take my eyes of him, for he was so charming and cute, very affectionate, cheerful and innocent.

• I was very happy and felt as though I had visited my son for the second time in my life, on enquiry I found out that his name was Mahesh; he was Down syndrome kid, a year older to Emmanuel and goes to school. The rest of the day was a flash back of my son Emmanuel; its only 4 years that he is no more and I find him in all the simple things of life – smile, touch, hug, laughter, fun, togetherness, celebrations, children, flowers that I encounter almost daily reminding me that death can never be final, those we love, continue to live in us; and we can see them everywhere around us…

  

  Me and Mahesh

• I am grateful for the Lenten season for it has helped us to bond as a family, wherein we could go for mass on ash Wednesday and also fast twice a week, David and Dorothy have been my inspiration for this lent, together they have made this season meaningful by fasting and praying – for me it’s a big U turn to practice rituals with a sincere heart, bringing in changes in attitude and desiring to become a better person.

• I do appreciate the blogging community; who have been posting very motivating and inspiring post.  I am happy to read all their posts, especially the 1000 post for compassion was a good initiative, and I was glad to see so many of the bloggers coming together to share their valuable insights; I experienced a lot of positivity in the virtual space.. and I do appreciate the constant supply of energy that I get from reading these posts.

I desire to continue walking with gratitude; and spread awareness on the immense benefits of living with gratitude.

Thank you for reading this post !

Call for Compassion

When I think of this word compassion; the person who comes to my mind is the Lord Jesus Christ, brought up in a catholic faith, I always marvel at this great personality, who was extremely compassionate to every one around him.

I remember the parables from the bible, wherein he had compassion for people because they remained with him for three days, having nothing to eat; at another instance he felt compassion for the people as they were like sheep without a shepherd, when he went to the shore, he saw a large crowd and had compassion for them and healed the sick, moved with compassion Jesus touched their eyes and they regained sight. 

He made the lame walk, raised the dead to life, healed the leper.  Every thing Jesus did was out of compassion; compassion to the extent of forgiving the enemies and praying for those who persecuted him.

Working as a psychological counsellor in the university campus – it is very important to be kind and compassionate; as the students who come to the counselling centre are broken in many ways, they are away from home and most of them come from the rural background with agriculture as the family occupation.  Their families are economically backward and they are financially stressed.

The common issues they face are  adjustments, fear, anxiety, sadness, depression, relationship failure, violence and low self confidence, poor communication skills, too much competition, insecurity leading to loneliness, and low motivation.

I feel honoured when they just open up their hearts and display the weaker aspects of their lives and the struggles they face in dealing with their own issues, I  accept with great reverence and treat it as something very sacred.

The more I listen to the sad real stories of life; the greater I feel is the call to be compassionate; in today's  context wherein there is so much of violence every where, the daily newspaper is full of stories covering suicide, murder, rape, too much of negativity in our thoughts, hurting one another in the name of ideology, religion – there is a definite need to be kind, compassionate.  

Let us join together to spread love, peace and harmony around. I am glad to be writing this post for the 1000 speak for compassion, and appreciate all those who have participated by writing some very beautiful and motivational post, which has inspired me to do this post today.

“The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and

 the will to help others.” Albert Schweitzer

Be Blessed & Be Happy!

 

GRATEFUL FOR LENT!

This post comes with gratitude to  Robyn post http://essenceofafamily.weebly.com, which inspired me to write this post.

This week we celebrated Ash Wednesday, we got up early and went for mass; this year my daughter Maria Dorothy chose to come with us for morning mass, and even was ready to fast for the morning.  I am impressed with my daughter for the choice she has made, even though I always felt one must go beyond fasting and practising rituals.  Every year David is very particular about Lent and he will make sure that we fast, pray and take vegetarian food for all the forty days.

I have not been particular and over the last few  years, as I felt that Lent must be  an opportunity to become a better person, to give up all those qualities that hinders us from being loving and harmonious. I also realize that improving ourselves and becoming human is a lifelong process; and one must not just restrict it to only season of lent.

In a busy life, with too many activities and deadlines to meet, we may forget the need for reflection, to look within and explore to find whether we are happy; and living fulfilling lives. Lent is a blessing for us as Catholics, for it comes like speed breaker, and slows us down reminding us that we are all on a journey and our destination is the same, despite the fact that we may be in a different compartment, the journey is only one. 

There is no second journey on this rail track and the we are all moving, expected to be and do our best. In this little time here on earth, we are called to journey with happiness, while we watch our companions getting down at different stations as their time has come, we take the learning’s, and also share our learning’s in life, enabling those who find difficulty in this journey, extending our helping hands and giving them some comfort and space in our compartment and sharing what we have.

Last evening I was planning for the menu, as today is Friday again David will fast and not eat anything; so wanted to prepare breakfast for my daughter… and then my daughter tells me that its Friday, and she will not eat breakfast and she will only take light lunch; I got worried for her, as the distance she travels for the school is quite far and it’s a full day school, which means she will leave home by 7.45a.m. and come back by 5p.m.  I tried rationalizing with her that she must take lunch enough to sustain her till evening, but being adamant, she had her way and took idli’s for lunch.

This was the first time Dorothy has taken lent very seriously, thanks to her catechism and her friends she made her own choice; which made me reflect too and sometimes it’s ok to fast, with all my reasoning and understanding I too decided to join my daughter and husband to fast this lent twice a week. I felt a lot better and spent more time in praying for my students; and all those who are part of my life.  Fasting for a cause and spending time in prayer makes a lot of difference.

I hope to sustain myself for the next 38 days, and will also allow myself to be flexible in learning adapting myself to things that I did not do before…

Be Blessed & Be Happy! 

  

WORLD CANCER DAY!

My inspiration today comes from all those souls who have survived cancer, which once upon a time was considered a dreadful disease, and people were afraid even to mention and bring this topic to speak about and discuss.  It is still considered terminal illness, and unfortunately cancer gets identified only in the last stages.

I feel privileged to encounter persons who have fought and bounced back fully alive; and have become a source of motivation and inspiration for many, it’s a complete turnover of what life was before they were contracted with cancer and what it is now.

One such lady whom I have met 6 months ago was referred for counseling, as she had some issues with her daughter who was in college; interacting with her and exploring reasons; she told me all her problem about how difficult it was to deal with her daughter, who does not listen to her, and who is all the time busy on phone, she seemed upset that being the only daughter, she seem to be isolating from her for tiny issues , and how she is feeling helpless and lonely; in the few more consecutive sessions her focus was only her daughter and she seemed desperate to change her daughter.

Listening for a few sessions and providing space for her to articulate and vent; I felt it was time for her to   shift her focus from her daughter to herself, so I started enquiring about her own well being – she started sharing all her struggles, married young, had lot of issues in her marital life, difficulties in traditional joint family system, forced to take divorce, live with stigma and discrimination as a divorcee, She had to chose to bring up her only daughter single handedly, took up a job to fend for herself and after few years, she was detected with cancer in the last stage; it was shocking for me to hear that she had survived cancer of the lungs from 4^th stage; at the same time, I admired  her strength,  courage and persistence to fight back and take control of her life. 

  

She did not want to give up easily as her only ray of hope was her young daughter, for whom she was ready to fight the battle and come out victorious, and she did not stop there; she explored alternatives to prevent it from reoccurring, by changing to Ayurveda medicines and continues to live a healthy life…… Suddenly I felt compassion for this lady and began to understand her desperation to bring in changes in her daughter’s life… so I encouraged her to love herself, to do all those things that can make her happy, let go of the past, practice gratitude every day, spread peace and I found improvement at every session and things started improving, she stopped coming but kept in touch on phone; updating me regularly as to how she is coping with whatever problems she is facing. 

There was another women who survived uterus cancer in the fourth stage, where in the doctors gave her only a month to live; and she with determination fought and went on to live for another 10 years of her life… what I found common in both these women were that they did not give up but trusted themselves, trusted God and made positive choices to keep themselves happy. There are many more persons around us; who have fought cancer and have survived

Doctors say that most of the time 80% of the healing is in the patients themselves; with right attitude, positive thinking and practising forgiveness, gratitude and taking good care of themselves, they are able to come out of the disease…… awareness is the key, let us spread awareness that cancer Is treatable, and a person can come back to leading healthy life style..

You may even read the posts on

 http://www.blogforacure.com,

 http://www.ihadcancer.com/h3-

http://www.provcancerblog.org/

Be Blessed & Be Happy!