This is my newsletter #10: Muskaan Palod
Hi readers,
I am going to claim this space as mine this week since Rohini was so kind as to offer that.
I am Muskaan, almost 20 years old, trying to find inspiration in everything around me. I am an average writer, I try to consume as much poetry as I can. In my newsletters, you will find a compilation of the best of poetry from some celebrated, some overlooked South Asian poets. Other than writing, I am a student of social sciences which means I read into the politics of everyday life and carry a whole lot of grief that roots from the world outside me. I also carry a lot of passion and one of the things I am a strong advocate for is mental health.
To begin with, we are too late to advocate for something like healthcare. How far will we go to deny its existence? You could have good health, or bad health but everyone has mental health. In South Asian culture, we talk a lot about growing resilient (when mental well-being is mentioned) but we rarely talk about the cost of resilience. Growing resilience does not always mean you’ve healed. The more one ‘fights’ to success, they expend a vital amount of energy. ‘Fighting’ also means aggression and that is often reflected inwards.
This is a scene in Modern Love, episode 3 (available on Amazon Prime). This is the exact moment when Lexi (the character played by Anne Hathaway) finally opens up to a friend about her bipolar disorder. I watched this series when it first came out in 2019 but this episode has stayed with me. The act of breaking out from the expectation to behave ‘normally’, owning our dysfunctionalities, is relieving. There is comfort in empathy, in kindness. There is comfort in having to drop the fight to show resilience, in being vulnerable.
There was a time in my life where I was still processing growing apart from a very close friend. I couldn’t cry or talk about it because who would I go to? She was my confidant. I would try my best but it would just be so hard to talk, to connect with other people, to trust. Then one day, I just found the space in another relationship to unburden my pain. I wasn’t told to ‘let it go’, or ‘just move on’. I was given the hug I needed, the breathing space to grieve and also to push that grief button whenever I needed to. It did not mean I restarted, it meant I figured my way to accommodate the non-okay stories in my life’s mainstream.
One of the poems that I hold close to my heart and has remained to be inspirational has been Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. It talks of loneliness and the need for belongingness. Oliver delivers an assurance of hope while acknowledging the fact that the world often seems torturous.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
The better half of this narrative is that us, humans, were never supposed to learn to carry our pain alone. Needing support is something we are automatically vulnerable to and our vulnerabilities only reflect our strengths. There are a lot of conversations doing the rounds on how to be emotionally independent and self-sufficient. These messages ignore our biological reality that demands safe relationships. Healing does not mean overcoming our human need to connect. It is healthy to need other people. We need to understand this with frank and vulnerable conversations about the difficulties of existence as a human in an imperfect world. Not just existing as a human but existing as one in the face of trauma. I think it is time we promote communities of open and honest conversations. We are largely influenced by each other. We affect each other’s well-being. We are a community no matter how individualized we would like our presence to be. In such a world, not using your own traumatic experience as an excuse of violating a second person is RADICAL. What is even more radical is to be kind; to be kind to self and those around you.
Having said that, here is a poem I wrote about what kindness means to me:
words
if i ever tell you i am hurting
tell me you see me and put up a blanket of compassion
wait with me for my spells of tears, with eyes squirting
without the tiniest aversion
indulge
if i ever tell you i am hurting
share my whiskey with me, bear with my yearning
roll a joint with me but most of all
hold my balloon of hope for me without a brawl
love
not the forever kind, just
the one that doesn’t die without saying goodbye
where faith exists without temples or idols’ lust
where our spaces exist without walls or limits of sky
stay
with an umbrella on rainy and sunny days alike
even with graves dug, always returning with our hearts alive
when i am in the grey
perhaps unreachable and seeming to be away
promises
such that we can journey closer to home together
where there is a way to mould, we hold
everything we’ve wanted and never had from each other
sheltering empathy, even in weather cold
Other poems I enjoyed reading around kindness are:
Unnamed by Megha Rao
(Megha has been an angel of sorts to me, somehow she always writes what I need to read. This poem is a reminder that it is okay to not be how you are supposed to. It is okay to just exist.)
Icarus Dreams by SufiSoul (Arunoday Singh)
Kindness by Naomi Shahib Nye (a classic read)
Some series that make me believe in a kinder world are:
This is Us on Amazon Prime: This is for when you need to reinstate your belief in the fact that you matter, your kindness and goodness is valued.
F for Family on Netflix: It is a limited series and shows intergenerational trauma. It will show you how radical it is to break the cycle of trauma, how essential and powerful.
In Treatment on Hotstar: It is an insight into the life of a therapist with his own insecurities. This is for when you need to reaffirm how similar we are in our fears and anxieties.
For when you need to cheer for a kinder world, check out:
Tender Tales by Letters of Kindness
The narrative needs to shift from “fixing” abnormalities to adapting with them, I found Therapy Notebooks providing tools to help with anxiety.
I curate Poetry Mixtapes and you can find the archive here. Hopefully I will see you there!
You can also find me on Instagram.
Much love and warmth your way :)
Muskaan