The Maternal Influence: Shaping Children’s Body Image and Perception
My mother had a significant impact on how I perceived myself and how I perceived my body as a child, as I recall my early years. My mother suffered from postpartum depression that led to unrealistic expectations of how a body is “supposed” to look after birth. This led to body image issues that she […]
Working Moms and Balancing Work Life
Is there some Balance in Mother’s Work Life’s? Balancing work – life is an art. While anyone can understand how to balance work life through various workshops and seminars conducted by soft skill trainers and experienced speakers and motivational speakers, it is still different when it comes to a mother who is working. As a […]
I would avoid staring at stray dogs whenever I walked down the path.
The fear started at the age of 10. It was a chilly Sunday morning. I woke up while everyone else in the neighborhood slept. My sister and I decided to go play outside, with my parents believing that we were fast asleep. After a while, I got bored, but my sister insisted on continuing to […]
I was body shamed at family gatherings.
Growing up, I hadn’t really been ‘fat’ or ‘chubby’. But as soon as I hit puberty, my lifestyle and eating habits changed drastically. And these bad eating habits led to excessive weight gain. Originally, no one at home pointed out these weight gain problems to me, perhaps because they are more sensitive as parents to […]
My parents’ regular conflicts at home affected me in ways I couldn’t imagine.
I still remember when I was in 7th grade, I came home running joyfully to my parents with a silver medal swinging in my hand, to tell them how fast I ran in the race and came second in the school. I was very happy that day. But as soon as I reached home, I […]
I would avoid talking to my father about my career choices.
It was a regular Sunday afternoon for us; my father was at home on Sundays like most working parents, and I wanted to have a serious talk with my father about my career choices. But somehow, I could not gather the courage to speak up. I had been struggling to express my feelings to my […]
My child would get excessively tensed on the day of his exam.
My son was a bright child. He was good in studies, and performed well at school. But he was overly afraid of taking exams. We first noticed that something was wrong when he was supposed to write his half yearly exams in grade 6. That was the first time he was giving exams since […]
I hated my younger brother.
I have a brother, who is four years younger than me. I remember how happy my family was the time he was born. My parents had dropped me at my grandparents’ house, where I kept asking why I was not there when my sibling was born. They had simply said “I wouldn’t understand”. Honestly, I […]
I wanted to quit smoking but I wasn’t able to.
What started out as a leisure activity had become an addiction for me. I started smoking back in school on the insistence of my friends. They always forced me to try out a cigarette whenever we would hang out or chill. It started with taking a single drag occasionally when we were out at parties […]
I didn’t think I had any future.
I had just entered class 12, and I had taken up Commerce as my stream. I went for these subjects because most of my friends had taken Commerce, and I was told that opting this stream would open up a variety of options for my career in the future. But I wasn’t sure of the […]