And it doesn’t matter, it never did
My mother lost her husband when she was 34. At the Durga Puja celebrations in our building society, nobody spoke to her and most looked through her as if she did not exist. She had one solitary friend, an unmarried woman, in a building complex that had 72 families. She stood alone.
In the past few weeks, I have often asked myself, if my mother’s picture had sparked my reckless message to my friend. I wanted to champion #NotAlone, an initiative to build a community that would support women who had lost their life partners, parents, siblings and children and who were also the primary breadwinners. We were ambitious about our objective. We wanted to cocoon these women within a circle of compassion, support them with counselling and friendship, ease their inheritance challenges and enable them to become economically independent.
My rational mind was obviously not working when I had raised my hand. Just one day before the launch, I had declared to my friend that I wanted to spend less time on her venture. I enjoy my own company very much. Any change in routine, which means less time for myself, is very unwelcome. I had become resentful about the demands being made on my time and I wanted to reclaim it.
After my LinkedIn post announced the launch, #NotAlone became this huge baby that crashed into my life and laid claim to all my attention and time.
The inevitable meltdown happened one week after the launch. A new friend, who I had got to know over a recent workshop, politely enquired about how my writing was going. He received a flurry of confused and frustrated messages. His “maybe you are making an impact” elicited loud protests. I hissed, “I am a private person. I don’t want to create impact!”. Stuck in an awkward position, with no easy exit, he helpfully suggested that maybe the value of my time had increased since I was helping people? I go tsssssk, and confess that I didn’t know why I was doing what I was doing and that bothered me.
When I told my friends how busy I had become, they congratulated me. My best friend, was happy that I had finally found something that would keep me “engaged”. I couldn’t understand why. I saw nothing wrong in doing nothing. My happiest moments in the day, when I was with myself, had been taken away. So that I could work with a bunch of strangers, trying to put together a project for women I didn’t know. And I kept pestering myself, why……
…….till I realized. I had never known why. Everything that had happened in my life. My father’s death, my mother’s suffering, my childhood trauma, just like these women, who were wondering why. It didn’t matter why. I had to do what I had to do. And that was something that came naturally to me. I loved creating businesses, relished networking and most of all, thrived in making a statement with whatever I did. So maybe this was what I was supposed to do. Like everything else, I had to accept and allow. What I liked or disliked was immaterial. It had never mattered. It was not going to matter now either. So, I forgot life as it was and embraced the present as it is.
Things became easier after that. Everything fell in place naturally. We got the right people to collaborate with. Extraordinarily generous women came forward to give their time. Student volunteer groups buzzed with activity as they crafted amazing creatives. And we started seeing the community forming. Vulnerable and fragile women, engulfed with grief, needing a safe space to just be themselves. Stronger women, sobbing silently, as they try to deal with the finality of loss. Some women struggling with inherited legal and financial mess. Some of them struggling to pay their husband’s hospital bills, but remaining dignified throughout.
It’s 15 days since the registrations started. 130 registrations comprising impacted women and volunteers. The first batch of 20 women go live in tomorrow’s session of group counselling; we call it the Circle of Compassion. Each woman has been assigned an Anchor, an accomplished woman with a heart of gold, who holds her hand.
In the last 7 days, we created real impact:
- We prevented a young woman from ending her life, and saved a family
- We put another young woman into 1–1 counselling so that she can move from the intense grief engulfing her and take care of her young daughter as she wants to
- We connected with one of the largest life insurers to help with the formalities
- We started connecting resumes to companies
- We lined up expert speakers for information sessions starting June 12.
Most of all, we created a trusted space for women to grieve as they start taking control over their lives. They know that they are not just data entries in a nameless, faceless system. Each woman is an individual with her own story. And we will be part of all these stories.
I still don’t agree with my friend’s assertion on the value of my time, but he was right on creating impact. That I did!
….And somewhere deep inside, I have yearningly wished to go back in time, to change the picture of my mother standing alone, that has been imprinted on my mind.
