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Fibroids and the Unpredictability of Life

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 I am 3 weeks post open myomectomy surgery and almost a month since I was admitted for severe anemia. March has been a bittersweet month for me. I got hospitalised/admitted for the first time in my life and had a major surgery which is crazy. Life has taught me that things could change any minute and death is not as far as we think. Life can literally end at any minute. March has been bitter because I've had to endure peak pain and discomfort from my struggle with heavy and painful menses, to the many injections and blood transfusion in the hospital to the quiet and cold room moments before theatre, the epidural injection and the anaesthetist that i hated so much, the discomfort during surgery, another cold waiting room moment after theatre, the journey back to the ward after surgery, the pain minutes before every next dose of pain killers, the first night after surgery, the removal of the catheter, the first trip to the toilet, first pee, first long call, the pain of sleeping on o...
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My February reads and reflections

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  “In those days, people will no longer say, ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes,  and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’” — Jeremiah 31:29 I came across this verse in both books that I read in February. Initially, my goal was to finish four books by the end of the month. But the first one I picked up,  Bittersweet by Susan Cain, was so rich and layered that I found myself slowing down. Every page carried so many ideas and insights that I needed time to sit with them. That book, together with the next one I read, unexpectedly made me fall in love with the topic of trauma. For a long time, I had avoided anything related to trauma because I saw it as overwhelming, too complex, too wide, too mentally demanding. I assumed it required a kind of intellectual capacity I wasn’t sure I had. But instead of feeling intimidated, I found myself drawn in, curious, reflective, and wanting to understand more. Now I think I want to be a grief and trauma therapist.  These two bo...
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Inherited and generational Grief

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It is crazy to think about how grief can be inherited, just like trauma. This is definitely an interesting topic that I've been thinking about, and I have done a lot of reading around it.  I know we've all heard the phrase It ends with us . Most of us even read the book It Ends with us by Colleen Hoover (very amazing book, would recommend). We have also heard about generational trauma, which many therapists and counselors talk about here and all over the world. Back in school, one of our core units in my first semester talked about the different factors that influence us, our personalities, and character. The most common obvious answer was always nature and nurture: genetic inheritance (nature) versus environmental factors(nurture). The two play a big part in who we are today and who we become. So, generational and inherited grief? This type of grief, just like generational trauma, is not a grief that we experience firsthand. It is unprocessed grief that our parents, their pare...
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Ash Wednesday, Mortality, and the Beauty of Being Human...

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  PC:COUNTRY CLUB CHRISTIAN CHURCH   I am not a catholic, but Ash Wednesday interests me a lot. Arsh Wednesday, to my understanding, is a reminder of human impermanence. The guiding verse is  "Genesis 3:19 for you are dust and dust you shall return." This blog post is inspired by a book I am currently reading titled  Bitter-Sweet by Susan Cain .  It's an amazing book that talks about how sorrow and longing make us whole. In the book, Susan Cain dedicates an entire chapter to mortality, grief, and impermanence; her words are so well put and very informative. What I find fascinating about Catholicism(is this an actual word?) is how rich it is in tradition. It is a faith filled with rituals, systems, celebrations, and structured practices that seem to hold people through every season of life. A few weeks ago, I came across a TikTok video explaining how some Catholic communities have groups of sisters who stay awake at midnight praying specifically for mothers with ...
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My January Reads & Reflections

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This January was quite special for me. I had set out to just live life and not to focus too much on goals that always end up not being fulfilled. Maybe the goal is to let things just unfold(I don't know)  My highlight of the month was def reading one book each week and I loved the books that i randomly chose of course with the help of ChatGPT(what could I do without AI?) The books are amazing, I loved the stories and the lessons in it. I love the growth that came with reading them and I just love me for being such a consistent girlie. Is reading a hobby? These are the four books that shaped my January and the lessons they left behind. 1. Tuesdays with Morrie  : Learning How to Sit With Mortality This book felt like being invited into a very gentle classroom. Morrie doesn’t teach through theory or advice. He teaches through presence, through honesty about dying, loving, forgiving, and letting go. What stayed with me most was how calmly he speaks about death, not as somethi...
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It’s Okay Not To Know How to Grieve

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  Grief — I have come to accept that it is one of the most painful and complicated experiences anyone can face. The feeling of losing someone to death is unexplainable and extremely heartbreaking. For a couple of years now, I have worked alongside loss and grief clients in therapy and offered first aid and emotional support to the bereaved during burials. Most families hire first aiders to help relatives and the congregation in the morgue while viewing the body, when they read the eulogy, and when their loved one is being buried. This is the work I have been doing for a while now. Because of these experiences, I have come to appreciate life more and to be more gracious and empathetic toward anyone who is grieving. It doesn’t matter what relationship you had with the person or how close you were — grief is grief, and there is nothing more painful than knowing they are never coming back. We will never hear them talk, walk, work, breathe, or even open their eyes again. Grief is a pain...
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Pushing On

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I think there comes a time when you stop blaming unemployment and start examining your own contribution to being unemployed. It has now been almost two years since I graduated, and I haven't been lucky enough to get a psychology-related job. But I am not the problem. The counseling psychology job market is very small for various reasons, mainly because our country is yet to take mental health seriously. There are no jobs because therapy is still seen as a luxury, and therapy is not cheap. Ideally, we should have counselors in every school, hospital, and corporate organization, but we are not there yet. The last time I checked, one psychiatrist serves at least three hospitals, and the only hospitals that have their own counselors and psychiatrists are level 4 hospitals and above. When this year started, I swore to work on building myself as a brand and to start sourcing personal clients. By March, I had identified a niche and had already started building my online presence, marke...
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