Tapestry of life
As I meditate, I realize my life isn’t a neatly woven tapestry, crafted over 51 years to tell a cohesive story. Instead, it feels like a quilt—an eclectic collection of mismatched fabrics, each piece sewn together spontaneously rather than by careful design. It’s a piece of art born from chaos, each square telling its own story. Some pieces are rough in texture and wild in color, while others are soft, silky, and smooth, with gentle hues and prints that hold their own magic in the small chaos they contain. The shapes don’t always align perfectly, yet somehow, they all fit together. Who would even attempt to stitch these pieces together?
One square tells the story of a brown girl from an Indian-British family, a life far from the stereotype of a typical Indian household (if such a thing even exists). My upbringing was marked by pain and abandonment—a father who drank and gambled his life away, leaving my mother to toil at a sewing machine to feed four young children. I was the mistake child, the one she never chose and she made that fact known. Necessity forced me into adulthood far too soon, and I fled home after enduring years of verbal, physical, and emotional abuse. My father’s addiction, my mother’s brokenness, and the absence of love shaped my early years. How could she express love when she had never known it herself? Her sense of inadequacy was projected onto us. I could delve into the details, but what’s the point? I grew up wondering, “Who am I?” An identity crisis simmered beneath the surface, fueled by being a brown body in a white country, starved of hugs or love. Survival became my mission, and success, my validation. Yet, my brokenness seeped through the cracks, despite the many tasks I took on and the masks I wore. It was from this brokenness that I turned to God, to Krishna.
Another patch in my quilt tells of the ten years I spent living in an ashram, surrendering to divine grace. Deep meditation and prayer became my compass. I took on many roles—priest, cook, preacher. So many identities formed, each one adding a new patch to my quilt, each one a story of its own.
My marriage is another patch, one woven with threads of both joy and pain. I was married to a man who was secretly a trans woman, a truth that brought with it a new quest for understanding. What does it mean to live with a trans person? I learned that love transcends gender, that it’s about the person, not their gender. I supported my spouse and held space for them, becoming a mother of two in the process. But living in the closet, with the turmoil, dishonesty, and emotional disconnect that it brought, was too painful. I craved one person, not two, and after 18 years, our marriage ended in divorce. That patch in my quilt came to a close, its threads branching out to form new patches.
A yoga teacher, business owner, Hare Krishna practitioner, dedicated single mother, and sometimes lover—a healer and empath. Each role, each identity, adds its own piece to the quilt. Some are linked to the past, while others emerged out of nowhere, born from the need to survive.
There’s something beautiful about my quilt. Its chaos forms a unique piece of art, and I believe that behind the chaos lies an intelligence, stitching together sequences to form something sacred and beautiful for all of us.
