Maa & Paa…

Hi everyone, Hope everyone is having a great summer, Happy summer everyone! Love to connect with you all! Finally life seems to be falling back on track maybe not quite yet. Regardless there is a frenzy of activity everywhere. It just feels a little overwhelming, fatigue from the last two very challenging years is kind of starting to surface. We got a reason to complain about everything! Don’t we! Things get bad we complain and then when things get better we still find a reason to complain.
I was feeling a little bogged down with all this and was resting home with a splitting headache. As I came to the door to see my daughter off to the daycare. I looked a little unwell and the woman gave me this beautiful smile and sent home this card with my daughter Meesha. The picture I shared with this post is a little card that the daycare helped my daughter make or rather they made almost all of it and maybe Meesha just gave it a little touch with her chubby fingers! And they probably read it out loud to her and made her repeat after them! Love them they are such a nice bunch of women. My daughter absolutely loves them. The person who comes to give Meesha a ride to the daycare is so sweet and she emits this brilliant energy. Everyone at home is so fond of her, she feels like this beautiful bright and gentle morning sunshine. Here is what was written in the card,

“Any woman can be a mother but it takes a brave and strong woman to be a Dad too!! Thank you for everything Mom, I Love You!”

It almost brought tears to my eyes! I thought I will share it all the other Momma’s who do this. Perhaps a lot of you face way much more challenges than myself. But I want you to know, you are not alone. We are in this together and together we can do this. It’s not easy but you got it in you! Go girls go! Parenting is a privilege, motherhood is a gift from the divine mother. I had a hard time having a baby, so I put my hands together and asked for a baby from the divine. I got it, but it came with a little message. “You wanted a baby Navjot, here I am giving you a very special one, someone that is closest to my heart and someone I can trust you with. I gave you way much more than I gave a lot of other people, I am giving you a challenge befitting your capability and resources.” I held this gift from the divine mother to my head and accepted it as is.
Yes! This was challenging and I was lost for a little bit. I think this was for good. Living through that phase of my life was the most difficult but most empowering part of my life. I understood who I was and how I would live each moment of my life. What surfaced during this phase was the fact that no matter what life presents me with I will not let the positivity and goodness in me die! I will always use my energy towards a constructive pursuit. I will never give up and I will live each moment to the best of my ability.
This was also synchronous with my move to another country. My credentials were not recognized, I had no job and no possibility of getting a job befitting my qualifications! Walking away from a well settled and affluent life. And my child was diagnosed with Severe Autism – Low functioning. I was at the rock bottom. I had the option to go back to a well settled life in India. This was the first real decision I made as a big girl. Until this point, I lived a very sheltered and protected life, I received everything on a platter.
I said to myself, is this what you are going to do each time adversity strikes you, run away? do you want to spend your life running in circles or do you want to bring your life to a conclusion! So running away from adversity was not something that appealed to me! What use is the education and training, if it cannot be used to deal with adversity and overcome the challenge? Is that not the purpose of good education and upbringing? What a waste of my parent’s investment in my education and upbringing. I am going to accept this challenge and run with it. Interestingly! Much as I felt crappy and depressed, I never lost my basic strength and buckled under pressure. In fact this adversity actually empowered me to develop a firm resolved to fight back and regain everything that I had lost.
It took me a couple years to come out of the shock and accept the diagnosis. Navjot never went back to being the Navjot before the diagnosis. This was a new Navjot! For the first time the real Navjot surfaced during this adversity and I was introduced to my real self! Thank you! Mother divine for this opportunity. At least, I won’t vanish from the face of this earth without understanding myself. I will die a happy satisfied soul. Ultimately, you do have to strip down to bare naked to see you’re real self that is a fact of life. All the covers and layers hide the true self!
Difficult times also expose weak links. In all of this I lost interest in being a physician. I felt it was futile to be a physician and not be able to treat your own child. I just lost love for the profession. I had to do something to make a positive contribution to the community. And I still liked working with women and families so I decided to practice midwifery until I could decide what I wanted to do. Soon after joining midwifery, I recognized that I did not want to go back to being a physician. I was the first Obstetrician to embrace midwifery in Canada and first Indian in midwifery. Now we have more Obstetricians and Indians in midwifery. It is a very competitive process and it is difficult to get into this course.
I liked midwifery because it believes in holistic form of care. The way it is delivered, it empowers the woman receiving the care and the person delivering the care. There are no judgements here against anyone, because care provision is about what the client wants from the provider vs the provider believes is good care for the client. Through research and evidence based education and information exchange the client leads the care. My job is done if I have empowered someone to receive the care they desired. I learnt another lesson in this profession, empowering others empowers yourself. Somehow the positive energy that you are trying to reflect on others gets reflected back to you. Today there are few professions that have this kind of work model. Women empowering women.
My Marriage took a beating, I became a single parent to a child with severe disabilities. It was a partnership spanning 17 years and so it was not easy. All of my family supported me in this. My parents, brother, niece and my Sister-in-law. My Sister-in-law is a second mother to my daughter. Meesha is the princess of our house and the entire family treats her like one. All celebrations starts with her and all our lives revolve around her.
Meesha, brought me to the divine and united me to the divine. Everyone in my family believes that Meesha has taught them a lot about life that they were unaware of. She empowered and enriched all of us.
Today all our family is well settled here! There are in the same business that they were in India! Both my brother and I did not give up something that we valued and we pursued what we chose for ourselves. It was a long and tiring journey but we did it.
My Brother is a good singer and he used to sing this song for me on all my birthdays
“Phoolon a taron ka sabka kehna hai,
Ek Hazaron mein mere behna hai,
Saari umar humein sang rehna hai.
Jeevan ke dukhon se yun darte nahin hai,
Aise bach ke sach se guzarte nahin hai
Sukh ki hai chaah to dukh bhi sehna hai……
Will keep chatting as we go along, As I end this, I have two big tears welling up in my eyes, but they are about happiness. Everything does not have to be to our liking, most difficult experiences are the most empowering ones. Here’s my message to you,
“Life is not about a physical goal, it is all about the enrichment on the journey to this goal. A challenge in life is an opportunity to meet the real true self. The true self is a very powerful and auspicious aspect that rules this physical body, it is your soul, the seat of the divine.”