Sunday, December 16, 2012

Ineffectual

I Found My Voice in a Hopeless Place

Read!

6 comments:

  1. http://redoable.wordpress.com/about As I say: the stroke may have taken my speech, but not my voice> that's the reason my blog.

    Well written!

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  2. Brave and beautiful. Thanks for sharing your story.

    A reader

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  3. Dear Harshada,

    I want to reach out to you and tell you that I believe you are a wonderful soul and I greatly respect and admire you for struggling so hard and so courageously to recover from your stroke. I couldn't find an email address or a Facebook page for you, so I'll post this as a comment in your blog. Apologies in advance for the length!

    Although no health problem I have ever experienced comes anywhere close to the debilitating disability you have had to deal with, I do know something about what it's like to be a young adult and find yourself suddenly struck with an illness that destroys your life and your sense of self-worth. When I was 23 years old, in one month I went from being totally healthy and having a promising career to being a shell of my former self. I developed chronic fatigue syndrome, panic attacks, and strange neurological symptoms throughout my body. I felt dizzy and faint all the time and had to spend most of my time in bed. Then I got clinical depression. Neither my mental or physical problems responded to treatment, at least not for a few years. Eventually I did recover from CFS and my life has mostly returned to normal, although many days are a struggle because of lingering symptoms (struggle being a relative term, of course; I know that many people in the world are suffering a lot more than me!).

    I think it's very important for young people with a chronic illness or severe disability to look for spiritual explanations or meanings which can inspire them, not make them feel condemned or worthless. For years, I questioned whether God had rejected or abandoned me, and I worried that the hell I was experiencing could be a preview of eternal damnation. I overcame this fear when I began to understand that terrible circumstances in life are not necessarily punishment for sins (real or imagined, this life or past life), but instead could be a challenge for spiritual advancement.

    In an article on your blog from last year called "Allah ke Bande," you wrote, "I've seen my soul. Not just a peak, but a long, never-ending stare. ... And what I saw was a scared, sweet, innocent soul, untainted by vindictiveness or revenge. If this was the same soul inhabiting past lives, I highly doubt it could be capable of doing anything that would deserve this kind of hell."

    Although I don't know you, I believe you're correct. I have always instinctively believed in reincarnation, but I don't believe it's for punishment; it's for learning and growth. Whatever your spiritual beliefs may be, I want to suggest that reincarnation is real and you are living this life not to pay off bad karma, but to make your soul even stronger, so that you can gain the extraordinary self-mastery to do incredible things in future lifetimes, and hopefully also in this life as you continue to recover from your brain injury.

    Imagine that you're a skilled horseback rider. You are already more skilled than most riders, and to improve even more, you need a challenge. Therefore, you are given the opportunity to ride a wild, untamed horse, a horse that constantly bucks and kicks and tries to throw you off and refuses to respond to your commands. If you can succeed in mastering this horse, then you will truly become a master horseback rider -- far beyond the talents and abilities of most other riders.

    You are becoming such a master rider. Your broken body/brain is the rebellious horse. You are in the process of exercising extraordinary willpower to master it and get the most out of it, despite the great difficulty and the frustration. You will succeed and you will have achieved the equivalent of probably a whole lifetime, even multiple lifetimes, of hard-core Buddhist meditation or martial arts training, or something like that.

    Any time you deal with feelings of meaninglessness or worthlessness, please remember that the real you -- your soul -- is a powerful and beautiful being, and you are becoming a mighty angel of light with every day you live this life. Of this I have no doubt.

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  4. Hi, Harshada! I'm reading your story for the first time. Thanks so much for sharing. You're really a beautiful writer. Just wanted to say hello and that I'll be cheering for you Dancing Devil-style. GTHCGTH!

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  5. Harshada,

    I am a childhood friend of Nisha's and I found you because she left a comment on my blog from your blogspot account a few years ago. I have followed you ever since she initially posted that comment, and I just want to say that I am so amazed to see how you have progressed both physically and in finding your voice to share with the world. Watching the video of you walking moved me to tears, and the way you write and your willingness to be so open about what you are going through makes people feel like they know you personally. While I know there are very few that have faced the road you are on, I think almost everyone has faced the overarching feelings that you write about whether on a micro or macro scale, which makes you inspiring and relatable.

    I am really excited to continue to follow you (now on Huffington Post, way to go!) and watch your voice evolve and see your progress. I think this is only the start of your journey and I can't wait to see what huge and wonderful things lie ahead of you.

    So please know that you have no idea just who you are touching out there and that behind these words there is a friend of a friend rooting for you each and every day.

    Meredith

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