The phone call with the news of my fathers death came early in the morning. My mother’s breathless voice said, ‘he’s no more, he’s gone’. I had only arrived back in home in the U.K. the previous evening after being called to visit the hospital in India, where he had been admitted after another stroke. Even if I had taken the next flight straight back, it would have taken me 2 days to reach, a long time in a country where bodies are cremated within hours of death. Plus, I was 4 months pregnant, with an 18 month old baby to care for, and I was already exhausted. I made the hard decision not to go.I missed the moving tribute that my brother made to the man we called Baba, an intelligent human with great potential whose life had been a rollercoaster going mostly downhill for the last 25 years. Bipolar disorder had turned the dependable, softly spoken head of our family into someone frightening and unreasonable with unpredictable mood swings. There were manic episodes when he was highly impatient, irritable and barely slept, going for a morning walk at 3 am; and depressive lows when he sat unmoving and lifeless on the sofa all day, smoking and staring into the floor. In those days, medical treatment was hinged on the belief that faulty genes were responsible for bad health. Stigma and despair came with the diagnosis handed out by the white coated professionals, along with the warning that the faulty genes can be passed on hereditarily.I wasn’t overcome with sadness or overwhelmed with tears at the news of my fathers death. I felt relief that he would finally have some peace, that all of us could breathe now. There was resentment at the way life had failed him. I wanted to be left alone with my own experience, away from the projections of how I must be feeling. Grief doesn’t look a particular way, all kinds of emotions can arise with the loss of someone close to you, and there’s no fixed timeline to it either. There’s peace and healing in my heart today as I offer a lamp and flowers to my fathers memory, it’s been 14 years.If you also grew up in the shadow of the ‘faulty genes’ belief system or are still carrying a legacy of the hereditarily passed on mental disease idea, you don’t need to. Epigenetics, the biggest growing field of research in medical science today, clearly says that we are not just at the mercy of genes. Our deepest beliefs shape the outcome of our lives, and while this doesn’t mean that we won’t ever get ill as long as we think positive thoughts, it shows us that we are way more powerful than we realise.Learning to meet all your feelings and cultivate a space of non-judgemental, loving awareness to integrate the frozen, neglected and abandoned parts of yourself is the path that I recommend and teach. It’s a practice that has supported me into the sense of wholeness, peace and joy that I always dreamt of.
Pic credit Eyasu Etsub on Unsplash