Life Has Pain. It Also Has Beauty.

Finding joy in the midst of sadness

Freedom

I have had some awful experiences in my life and endured pain, but I have also found joy and experienced contentment.

When I was a young child, I lived in India. I was much loved by my parents, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles — a whole extended family. Then we moved to America when I was three years old.

My father came over first. I was very attached to him and I became so sick from missing him that I was bedridden for weeks. I refused to eat. He sent me a doll from America, and this made me happier because when I held it I felt he was near me.

Then when Dad had found a place for us, we moved to America, but I didn’t fit in, even in New York City, which was filled with immigrants.

I spoke English with a British/Indian accent, and the other kids at school made fun of me. No one wanted to be my friends. Eccentricities that had been accepted in India were not accepted in New York. I wasn’t fashionable, and I was a vegetarian. So I couldn’t eat the school lunches. Instead, I brought home food from home, and because it was considered odd, that was another…