In Karma, Deception and a Pair of Red Ferraris, Elaine Taylor lays bare her relationship issues, childhood trauma, failed marriages, and her quest for love – all in her witty, sassy, down-to-earth voice. She gives it as it is – straight up – with complete honesty and vulnerability. Her insight into personal healing and acceptance as a pathway to love is both illuminating and inspiring. And her message of worthiness is one that needs to be heard – loud and clear. Weather or not you’ve had a traumatic childhood or relationship struggles, her honesty and doggedness will have you firmly rooting for her. By the time I finished reading the book, I felt like I really wanted to hear about her self-realization and the lessons she learnt along the way. So, without further ado, allow me to present to you – Elaine Taylor!
Tag Archives: relationships
{G} I'm grateful for…
Getting back to art
Starting some DIY projects
My adorable fur babies
Walks in the park
An inspiring husband
A peaceful life
What are you grateful for today?
I wish someone told me…
I wish someone told me…
That the sun and moon wouldn’t really rise with his smile
That life isn’t really a dream that you dream with the one you love
That just believing I could wouldn’t help me to fly
That a hero doesn’t always lie in me, there is a coward lurking in there too…
This post is dedicated to those incurable romantics, who believe the songs and the movies and the books…who believe that what is sung and shown and written is literal…and are heartbroken when they realize that it isn’t.
Come on! How can you think that love would be so all-consuming that it would seem like a utopian dream from which you’d never wake up, or that just a smile from the person you love would light up your life, never mind their words and their actions? If it really was like that, life would be so exhausting! You wouldn’t be able to get anything done, because you’d just be melting into the other person. Not to mention that you would lose your identity – lose YOU. And seriously, that isn’t healthy. A relationship requires hard work. There are nasty fights and heartbreaks along the way. If you’re going to breakdown at the first sign of disagreement you’re going to be a mess!
Replace that narrative with this empowering thought:
Can you really be so naive as to believe that just thinking is going to attract what you want into your life? Really now! The Secret may be great and all, but it’s very simplistic. Thoughts turn into things, sure, but it’s not magic. A lot of hard work goes on behind the scenes. You cannot just think yourself into a new job, for instance. You need to create or update your CV, send it out to multiple people, attend interviews, and only then might you find yourself with a job. And given the economy in most parts of the world, that isn’t even guaranteed! What thoughts do is help you focus on what you want, and give you the necessary inspiration to put in the hard work required to “attract” it into your life.
Replace that narrative with this empowering piece of advice, given to me by my teacher at school:
Do you believe that you will eventually find the hero within you? That you can always rise to every challenge thrown at you? That you can face anything and everything that comes your way? Listen to the lyrics carefully – all of them. To those lovely lyrics, I’d like to add this: It takes a great deal of courage… and before you can find the hero within you, you have to confront the coward lurking in you. Your fears and anxieties. You need to calm that coward down and reason with it. At times, you just have to downright ignore it. That is hard. Very hard. To listen to the fears and insecurities and go ahead anyway. Not everyone can do it all of the time and in all circumstances. And that’s OK, too. Instead, learn your limitations. Work on what you can, accept what you cannot, and take your decisions accordingly.
Replace the thought of always wanting to be the hero and beating yourself up when you aren’t with this little gem:
This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.
The prompt brought to mind my role as agony aunt with a friend who believes everything you tell her – literally – including these things I’ve listed above! If this helps you or someone you know, if you agree with the thoughts I’ve shared here, please feel free to share this post with your friends.
Now, it’s your turn. What do you wish someone had told you?
How I rediscovered the zest for life
Since a while now, I’ve known that not everything was right with me. Somewhere along the way life dragged me down. I lost myself. Lost my zest for life. My days became practical, mechanical. The only thing I looked forward to was the weekend – Saturday, when I would meet up with friends and we’d go out about town and Sunday, when me and the husband would do things together. The rest of the time, I was on automatic pilot.
All that changed this week.
A fun interaction with a very close friend on Facebook turned into a more serious talk. She told me she had started avoiding meeting me because I had become too “practical”, had lost the magic that was me.
That one comment forced me to think – something that I had avoided doing even though I knew that things weren’t right. We inbox-ed one another furiously, and as she asked me questions that forced me to think, it made me want to cry – for all the time I had lost, for all that I wouldn’t acknowledge even to myself, for losing the magic.
She’s one friend with whom I can be 100% myself. She’s my mirror. So when she tells me something, I stop to listen and think. And I knew she was right.
We went out that night, and she turned the spotlight on me. Asking about my life (going on), what I feel (nothing much), how I feel about life (that it’s happening on auto-pilot).
Then she made me do something. She made me tell her 10 things I was grateful for and why. And as I spoke about my blessings, I felt a shift inside me. Slowly, the ice around my heart began to crack. As the night wore on and the conversation flowed, the crack spread and eventually began to chip off.
I feel much more positive already. More cheerful. More hopeful. And it was all due to that exercise, which I’ve been doing everyday since.
Try it.
I am grateful for ______ because ______. (x 10)
Nothing is too trivial to list out. If you think it is, imagine your life without it. Awesome perspective, eh?
Bonus tip: make a list of everything you love – and I mean everything. People, places, food, restaurants, movies, books, activities, plants, flowers, animals…you get the drift. Any time you feel negative (sad, angry, irritated) think of this list. It will lift you up immediately!
Here’s to a wonderful life!
What are you grateful for? If you’ve already experienced the power of gratitude, tell us about it in the comments!
Hit by an epiphany
All marriages have their ups and downs, fights and make up scenes. There have been times when I have found myself wondering why I ever got married, telling myself that I am not marriage material, and on occasion, wondering what it would be like to be free. This is not to say that I have fallen out of love with the husband, because I love him to pieces, I really do. It’s just a reflection of how hot-headed I can be, and how irrational I can get when I’m really angry.
However, while browsing through PostSecret a while back, I came upon this secret, and it made me pause and think — is it worth it to get so angry that I become totally irrational? I know that the momentary thoughts that I have are just that — because once I cool down, I realize just how much I love the husband, how much he means to me, and how well we complement one another.
Have you ever wanted out of something, only to find out that you want back in? Or did the secret above give you a sense of epiphany, the way it did to me?
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Sweet little things
Lately it seems like almost all my friends are going through a tough time with their marriages. So many of them are getting divorced, or the love is long gone and they’re just staying together for practical reasons like their children or finances. And in most of the stories I’ve heard, it’s almost always the husband’s fault that things aren’t going right. There are the cheaters, the beaters, the emotionally detached ones, the downright insensitive ones. Every time I hear their stories, I send out a silent “thank you” to God.
I’ve been blessed to have a wonderful hubby. Yes, we have fights. There are days when he drives me absolutely nuts. There have been times when in the heat of a fight I’ve wanted to give the whole marriage thing up. There are times when I think he’s an insensitive jerk.
But even now, after 13 years of knowing each other and 7 years of marriage, my heart skips a beat when I look at him. Even now, he does the sweetest, most wonderful things for me.
Like never forgetting birthdays or anniversaries – a lot of my friends are amazed by that…
letting me sleep in on weekends while he finishes up the laundry…
just knowing when I’ve had a stressful day at work and turning the TV off to talk to me or give me a massage…
sharing the dinner heating and clearing up chores…
making an effort to come out with me on weekends even though sometimes all he wants to do is stay at home…
giving me my space…
letting me be all silly sometimes…
making me feel like a girl and a woman – I don’t know how he does it…
being cool with me having a slumber party with my girlfriends…
making me a fresh fruit gateaux because that’s one of my favorite deserts and he makes it so well!
Yes, I love the husband!
And with all the marriages breaking apart around me, it’s so wonderful to know we’re still rock solid, and to see other men out there doing special things for their girl. Like Debra’s husband Tony, who made her this wonderful chocolate cake!
So here’s a toast to the husbands we love and to remembering the little things that make our marriages tick!
The minefields of an inter-religion marriage
Recently, one of the the husband’s relatives invited us over for dinner – it was a small birthday celebration for their four year old daughter. Since it was Muharram (the Muslim period of mourning), they weren’t doing anything fancy, but it was the first time we would be going to their house, and it was a child’s birthday, so we had to take her a gift. The only problem was, it was a weekday, and getting back from work, going to a gift shop and then for dinner would have been tricky.
The (supposed) solution: We thought we’d give her a story book I had picked up for another friend’s four year old daughter (we never ended up visiting them, so the book was still with us).
The problem: I got home from work, found said book, looked at the list of stories, and thought uh-uh! You see, it was a beautifully illustrated Book of Classic Indian Stories for Children. The problem? The huge number of stories from Hindu mythology. Sample this:
The Brahmin Who Ate Up A God
Bhishma’s Sacrifice
Krishna and Kalia
The Kidnapping of Sita
Shiva and Sati
How Ganesha Got His Elephant Head
Almost the entire Hindu pantheon was in there! Of course, there were other stories too, but the Hindu mythology stores outnumbered them by a huge margin.
Here’s where the minefield comes in:
1) It would be the first time I was going to their house, and they lived with parents, who are likely to be a lot a bit more conservative than youngsters.
2) It was Muharram, so a gift like this would be hugely inappropriate.
3) Since I am a Hindu, it would look like I’m trying to force sell my culture on to their daughter.
4) It would might spoil relationships.
Ridiculous, I know. But given the whole Hindu-Muslim divide and how difficult it has been for some of the older people in the husband’s family to accept that he married out of religion, and a Hindu to boot, the book was completely inappropriate.
One of the husband’s aunts finally accepted me and said she “realizes that I am a girl who has been brought up with excellent values” and admits that she “treated her very unfairly” after eight years of marriage – yes, eight!
So, the only solution was to make a mad dash to the market before the shops shut down, which we managed – barely. We bought her coloring books and crayons. Said gift was a HUGE hit with the young girl – she finished coloring two pictures while we were there! – and the dinner went off very well.
What can I say? It’s all in a day’s work! 😉
Love is…strong
Relationships can be messy and complicated. There may even be times when we wonder what possessed us to get married in the first place. So when a friend recently asked me what makes my marriage tick, I had to think long and hard about the answer.
I’ve been married 8 years and knew the darling husband for 3 years before we tied the knot — that makes it 11 years with the same man. Wow!
If I said it was an easy journey, I’d be lying. If I said I was blissful every single day, I’d be lying. But I do know that I am truly blessed that we found one another. There are times when I can still get weak-kneed just looking at him…times when I marvel at the universe that brought us together…and yes, even times when I wonder how insane I was to have gotten married! But those are fleeting moments, generally brought on when I am really angry or frustrated with the husband — and those moments happen in every marriage.
So, what makes me feel like the luckiest woman alive when I wake up next to him every day?
The fact that, no matter how many fights we have, the core of our relationship —our bond — has grown stronger over the years. We can fight and argue and storm out of the house on each other, but at the end of the day, when push comes to shove, the love is very much alive and growing.
What is it that makes your relationship tick?
A moment of happiness – Rumi
A moment of happiness – Rumi
Image by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center via Flickr
A moment of happiness,
you and I sitting on the verandah,
apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.
We feel the flowing water of life here,
you and I, with the garden’s beauty
and the birds singing.
The stars will be watching us,
and we will show them
what it is to be a thin crescent moon.
You and I unselfed, will be together,
indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.
The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
as we laugh together, you and I.
In one form upon this earth,
and in another form in a timeless sweet land.
A crazy thing called love
While channel surfing today, I happened upon a program called The Great Indian Love Challenge on MTV. The program “tests” the measure of love on TV! Lovelorn contenders are given three tasks to complete to get something special for their special someone; it could be a romantic vacation, a diamond ring or a Longines watch!
In the episode that I watched, Harshvardhan Rane did three tasks to win a diamond ring for his girlfriend, Meenaxi Das.
- Task one – His body was painted so it looked like Superman’s suit; he wore just the trademark Superman red underwear and cape. Attired thus, he was to go into a crowded mall and sing Hindi film songs.
- Task two – He was taken to an akhada (wrestling ground), where he had to fight three wrestlers. 10 rounds, 1 minute each; 10 chances of getting pinned down; he had to make sure he wasn’t pinned down all 10 times.
- Task three – He was taken to a walkway with three arches. The arches would be set on fire – he had to walk from one end of that walkway to the other, while being set alight himself!
Before the third task, Yuvi (the VJ hosting the show), got Meenaxi at the venue, told her what Harsh had done for her and why, and told her what his third and final task was. There was the usual crying and pleading for him to not do it, and he was all fired up (no pun intended) to go through with the task to get her the diamond ring and see her happy.
Image via Wikipedia
Like I said, interesting concept; I was hooked onto that particular episode, to see the tasks and if Harsh would be able to complete them. What really struck me as I watched was how much he loved Meenaxi – doing those three tasks wasn’t easy! The first opened him up to embarrassment, the second was the most dangerous – one of those wrestlers getting over-eager, and he could have ended up breaking some bones – the third looked dangerous but was done under very controlled conditions and with all safety aspects taken care of.
The sincerity with which Harsh did all the tasks made me feel all happy and fuzzy inside. During the second task he was tired, he was outmatched, but the thought of Meenaxi, of seeing a smile on her face, made him go through and manage to avoid one pindown right at the end, when he was most tired.
I have just four words to say: Three cheers to love!
Do you have any interesting love stories to share? Something special that a special someone did for you?