“Culturally, Kaur for me signifies a South Asian Sikh woman. More importantly it defines who we are as women - somebody who represents a very diverse culture that we see all around the world. I am very proud to say my Kaur name when I introduce myself. Kaur defines who I am as a woman, but more importantly what my values represent as myself as a Kaur. I stick to my values and some of those values are how I was raised by a very strong mom in a very positive way. Being a Kaur is really standing by your values and really being true to not only yourself but to the rest of humanity and not being afraid to stand by those values. Values don’t stop at a defined time. Moving forward, it does not mean that those values get stale. You can still be a good human being, you can still live an honest true life and people can carry on those values forever. For me as a Sikh woman, being raised in a family with five daughters, my dad instilled those values in us 30-40 years ago and I still live by my values and teach my kids the same.
I was born in Kamloops in a fairly large well-established family. We grew up in a very humble environment. Although we didn’t live in a big mansion, we lived in a nice home but what I do remember is that our home always had an open-door policy. We were always socializing, we had many family members that emigrated to Canada and they would always stay with us until they were able to stand on their own feet and venture on their own. And that’s what I remember as a child and of my parents, it was always the social aspect and the sense of family.
I remember in the beginning of grade 6, my teacher approached me asking if I wanted to skip grade 6 and go to grade 7. And I thought why me, why would you choose me? I said yes without realizing what it really meant. At that time, I had that doubt inside me thinking that I don’t think I am that smart. I found that when you grow up in an environment with so many daughters, it’s almost like a quiet competition going around a bit. My sisters and I were close but I didn’t think I was the smartest one. So I remember being put into grade 7 and thinking that this is my moment. This is where I can feel confidence and feel that I am kind of at the top here. I didn’t realize at that time that it was probably a dip in the water to sort of test my confidence.
Growing up, I think that there probably was racism but nobody really explained to me that that’s racism. I just thought that it is how some people think. I remember in high school, I used to walk home from school for lunch, there used to be a guy walking ahead of me and he always had a disgusted look on his face. He would say, “Hey Paki, get away from me.” He would call me a Paki and I would say “I am not a Paki anyways, I was born in Canada,” not understanding what he was really trying to do. At that time it didn’t impact me but obviously it did because it is still sitting in my memory. Now when I look back I think about where the world has come to and we are still living with the same issue. How do we move things forward? That’s the kind of thing that hits me sometimes. Is that how we want to define ourselves as? Here we have an opportunity as South Asian Sikh women of colour, this is our time to really define who we are, be who we are and stand proud of who we are. We can stand beside all these other people who are vying for their place in our society.
After college, one thing my dad always said is that you can’t move out of Kamloops. So I remember thinking that I like looking after people. I have always had a passion for that, and still have a passion for that, so I am going to become a nurse. So I went to college and then got a job. Before I got the job, I remember I failed my RN exam the first time. I remember having that insecurity again that I am not that smart. For me, it was a part of my resilience that I got to pick up and move on, that there was no time for a pity-party.. From that I picked up again, studied really hard and passed the exam. Then I got a job as a nurse with a specialty in the operating room.
I got married in 1990 and at that time it was arranged marriages. My husband was from Campbell River. So moving from an environment of a stable home, surrounded by tons of family and sisters around you to the island in a small town up north in a family of three boys and a more simplistic home with hardly any family - it was like shell-shock for me. Again resilience builds up your character and it goes back to my values. My parents said you get married once and you have to make the best of your situation without losing who you are and I adapted to that situation quite well. In 1992, we moved to Vancouver, and raised three kids. I will admit it hasn’t been perfect all the way. We just kept moving along. I would tell my husband that it’s okay, it all works out for a reason. He would say how do you say that? Because I had my faith in God and I never lost my faith in God. From day one, even before I got married, I have always done my prayers in the morning. I have always kept my faith in God no matter what the ups and downs in my life have been.. I still haven’t lost my faith in God.
My mom was always a rock in our family. She always taught us to stand on our own two feet. She was the one who emotionally provided for the family. And that’s one thing she instilled in all of us girls is that how do you provide that emotional support when other support may be fallen. I would advise everyone to always keep your emotions in check. I learnt that along the way and I do that a lot more now. I stop, I pause and I think about what I am feeling when I am going through stuff now. How do I correct myself and take that emotions and filter through how I am going to get through that emotion. I think my faith in God has really helped me through that.
In 2004, my dad died suddenly of a stroke and in 2009, my mom died due to cancer. She was really sick and I remember looking at her and thinking, you are not my mom. My mom is that other person, that strong person who could socialize, who could make anybody laugh. She was such a smart, bright lady – that’s my mom. I look back and think who am I as a South Asian Sikh woman? And when I think about her, I am thinking that is part of who I am. I am that strong, brave, courageous woman. Sometimes it’s okay to let your vulnerabilities go. It’s okay to let people see your vulnerabilities because that’s what makes anybody human. In this day and age, more and more people are allowed to express who they are. We should all be allowed to let our emotions out. Even on the day that my dad died, I remember my uncle saying we are here in this country because of this man and it really stuck with me. My dad was 65 and people still appreciate what he did for them so many years ago. That makes me think, what do I want people to remember me by? How do I want to be defined as a person?
The work that I have done in the South Asian community brought a light out for me. Looking back with South Asian health, what was missing was the real connection to our community and I think that work really helped me better what our community was all about – the good, bad and the ugly. That job was more about being accepted as part of the community. It was just being in the moment around people, it gave me that sense of pride, of being in a very culturally, diverse group of people. It made me proud to be who I am. It was South Asian health work that really got me back to a sense of community and giving back to community.”
“For me the concept of Kaur is an embodiment of individual person. What I have come to learn is that culture does not look one way, so everyone understands it differently. But we have this one value or one word that puts us together and for me that is Kaur.
Growing up, I was not privy to what my culture was; we were a really non-traditional family where we didn’t even speak the language. When I was 13 at community school, some kids asked me what my caste is. I had never even heard that word before. So that was my first authentic exposure to culture in a way. When I went home and asked my mom about my caste, she couldn’t believe somebody had asked me that. She looked at it from the lens of discrimination. It was interesting to me because I never realized there was a difference in caste; I thought it was all the same. That changed a little bit in the way that others saw me but it didn’t shift the way I saw myself.
Growing up, things were fine and then they weren’t fine. My parents split up; it was earth-shattering as a child trying to understand it. It was at that point I realized that I didn’t have to do life in a box anymore. Even though I was a South Asian woman with certain underlying expectations, I didn’t actually have to do it in that order. From that point, I lived my life that way and it has been really challenging. I think for me it is just a lifelong continual of journey around opening myself up to certain aspects of things that I wasn’t privy to or want to explore more and being okay with that, and not just put it under the rug and talk about it later or not talk about it at all and move on with my life. Going against the norms has been the catalyst for all the discovery, exploration and thought around culture, tradition and on what I should be doing and what I actually want to do.
The gym was where I found solace and peace. I started bodybuilding and competing. It became so addicting to me because it was something I was in control of, I could manage it the way I wanted it. For me it was important to have some sort of ownership over something, and that’s where it crept from but doing it in a non-traditional way. Not every Indian girl is going to be up on a stage in a bikini. So it was frowned upon. It took me a really long time to just be okay with that. Also, I got professional help to cope with the changes in my family dynamic. I meet with a therapist regularly and that was really helpful. I believe we should engage with mental health professionals as much as we engage with our doctors. With my physical health, my mental health is equally important. I don’t find it is quite okay to talk about it in our community but I am willing to talk about it even if it is uncomfortable.
There are so many layers to body image. At this point, I am getting comments like, “You should stop, you don’t have to do it.” You go somewhere and someone says you’re too skinny. Then you put on a few pounds, and then people ask if you have gained weight. Does it matter? Does that determine how good a human being I am? When people comment on body image, I can’t stand it. I think there is a disconnect between my generation and the older generation around body image.
I also get the question: when are you going to give up fitness to get married? When are you going to settle down? I feel settled down but everyone’s definition of it is so different. I think we have this underlying standard in our community that marriage is everything but I am not going to go into a marriage not 100 percent sure or because someone else wants me to do it or because it is something I should do. I feel that if you don’t want to do it, then don’t do it because at the end of the day, the people that love you are going to have your back no matter what. As I get older I feel my family is concerned that I am not taking the path of tradition. I think a lot of Kaur females are up against similar things - this decision of whether you want to make yourself happy or do things for your family or to obey cultural norms.
I moved out recently, and this was a bit of a surprise to my family. They said, “Why are you doing it, you don’t need to.? Why do you need to move out when you’re not married?” Because I want to and I can. We as young people, as women, as Kaurs need to stand our ground. Your family is still going to love you; it is not going to stop. There is no way people are going to completely isolate you if you choose to make a decision for yourself.
Fitness is still continuing to be where I find motivation but I think also looking at the people I am surrounding myself has been really important. As we get older, we close our social circles more and more every year. And I am finally more confident with that because those small handful of people are there for you in the good and in the bad. And it’s not about who’s there during the good times anymore, it’s about who is there when I really need someone to pick me up from the ground.”
“Kaur to me means strength, power and heavy roots. Kaurs are women that have come from a strong lineage and background. Going forward, we continue to bring that strength out. Whenever I hear the word Kaur, I think of strength, a lioness, a goddess, and the highest divine feminine energy that you can think of. When I try to work on bettering myself, that is me bringing out my inner Kaur – that’s how I associate it with my everyday life.
I have a background in sports; I did competitive gymnastics and coached for about 10 years. From there, I decided to retire and continue on with my studies. I have a degree in business management and I specialize in marketing. I own a company called Buddha Beads that I started five years ago to help spread the message of spirituality and energy. We work with gemstones and healing stones. I also have some background in acting and then got into modeling and worked with some awesome local brands along the way.
When I got into coaching, one of the best things for me was to work with young Kaurs. We worked with the Sikh Academy so they would always come in for a field trip. They would look a little scared, then they see an Indian woman as their coach and feel happy about that. I slowly introduce them to the movement, you can see a bit of timidness on their face and eventually by the end of it they are everywhere. That’s what really drove me to do what I did with coaching. Seeing young Kaurs, just how timid they were, only because they were taught to be timid before they were taught to be strong. And that’s what really got to me. So I made it a point to myself that I become that example because even if I didn’t have that example doesn’t mean that I can’t become that example for other people.
Since I was a kid, I was always fascinated with rocks, crystals and gemstones. I collected rocks as a young kid, fast forward to buying my own gemstone jewellery and crystals. In business school, we were asked to come up with a project, so I took it upon myself to start a company, and that’s how Buddha Beads came to be. So with my marketing expertise and my love for gemstones I just put two and two together and started a company with my partner. These gemstones are stones in rocks that are found beneath the surface of the earth. They are essentially minerals and have different healing properties.
I had a customer who requested for an Ek Onkar charm. I worked with my suppliers and got a charm. It turned out beautiful. I had shared it with a couple of my clients and customers and they loved it. Now, it is one of our best-selling products. That alone to me was sharing my journey as a Kaur not only with the people within my community but the entire world because that also ties with spirituality at the end of the day for me.
My journey with spirituality began as a child growing up in a Sikh family. More than a religion, it was a form of spirituality. I grew up with a mother who did paath and meditation daily, so my parents’ values are within me. When I was in high school, we started taking more courses on history, culture and religion. Going into more diverse communities, it really made me reflect on who I am, where I come from, and what my people are all about. Besides gathering information from my family, elders and peers, I started to do my own research. That was my spiritual awakening, and it always related back to Sikhi. The more spiritual I became, the more I knew about my own culture and people. The more it made me want to keep diving into that world, becoming the best version of myself. That I really believe is what Sikhi is based on. You are a student of life, you continue to learn and give back and you continue to be the best version of yourself. For me it just became a lifestyle eventually.
Due to quarantine and living in Toronto, I had a bit of anxiety that I couldn’t go to meet my family. I took this time to reflect inwards and started the Harvard course on Sikhi. In times when I feel disconnected or away from home, I always think to myself, how can I bring home to me, and that’s learning about my roots, about my family and where I am from. So it all comes down to healing spiritually. When I started to take the time to organize my thoughts, spend time alone, meditate and focus on healing what was not right on my mind, I felt every aspect of my life healed. And I realized the rippled effect I can have on people and they can have on other people.
With everything that is currently going on in this world, I am seeing all these people fighting for different things and it’s beautiful to see how much drive and power they have. As a Sikh woman I feel that we do not have that in our community, enough. There’s not enough of us that are out there killing the game. Us as Sikhs, we are such strong people, but we are also lacking that push. Once I made that connection in my head, I thought what can I as a young Sikh woman do to break that, to just keep going and to show people there is no limit, that you can keep putting yourself in different roles just to keep that energy flowing.
No one is going to believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself. If you can’t believe you can do something, you will not have enough energy and willpower to complete that. I realized that and started to implement that in my life. That’s the only way I was able to grow and wear so many different hats.”
“To be a Kaur means to read some form of scripture every single day, hopefully from Sikhi. I am working on finding a feminist translation of the Guru Granth. To be a Kaur also means to engage in some sort of langar, a nourishing meal that we share with people and the community around us. It’s making sure we are taking time to have nourishing meals for ourselves and chosen families. Being a Kaur is to remember Ek Onkaar - one being, that in this massive moment of adaptation in humanity right now we all come from one place. These three pieces put together my identity of Kaur. My most recent venture project is called I’m With Periods, it’s a social enterprise that revitalizes South Asian and Punjabi knowledge about period, pregnancy and pleasure. Part of that relates to my identity as a Kaur in that I think and I’m learning that the idea of really centering the body in our work is something central to Sikhi as well and central to my identity therefore as a Kaur.
My childhood was a dark place to me. I was born to two people, my mother and father, who are an example of how a poorly arranged marriage can exist and happen. The laws and reason why Sikhism needs to keep evolving and continuing to adapt and exert the presence of gender equality is that in my childhood home, I experienced a lot of violence. My parents separated when I was eight. I lived in a bunch of different cities in the Lower Mainland as their relationship exploded all over the place. I felt really discontented and rebellious of having that tradition of patriarchy passed down through my family. I spent a lot of time thinking that it was a flaw in our society and a reason why the world is like it is and that’s why people had to leave South Asia. I had all those pre-conceived notions of why this happened and why my life turned out this way.
Being a nerd and really liking reading, I found an escape through fiction. Being able to go to the library after school, I could just lose myself in these stories about other kids who are going through the same things as me, and have some sort of solace and community because when violence was happening in the home, the last thing that I wanted to do was talk about it with people. So I’ve grown to just be able to compartmentalize and have that as a reminder of the process of growth and regeneration.
At 18, I moved across the country to Mi’kmaq territory which is Halifax, Nova Scotia now to do a biology degree and used my nerdiness to get out of a situation that I didn’t want to be in. I studied in Halifax for four years and experienced a lot of ups and downs. I was really depressed, I was trying to find community in this new place because I didn’t know anybody here as the population of Punjabi is very small. I made my way through biology; as much as it was a struggle I think that the process of learning about diversity of life on the earth really helped me put things in perspective a lot. In Sikhi this is talked about as well, how do we realize our ego and realize the struggles our ego goes through, the struggles that our spirit, mental, emotional, and physical health go through, and also constantly be like we are all connected and that there is all this life around us that also experiences struggle, pain and depth.
The next part of my journey was that I decided to apply to graduate school at York University in Toronto. I was very interested in health, interested in how body and women’s health also connects to social justice and women’s empowerment. So I moved to Toronto for grad school and learnt about post-colonial feminism, about the reproductive rights movement that started happening in the ‘90s between women who had formed something called the Third World Coalition. It was a lot of focus in what’s now South Asia and African continent and island, and doing a lot of pro-creative activism at that time. For me, research, figuring out and making connections between all these different aspects of our lives as Kaurs helps me just get through the day to day. At the same time, one of my close family members was hitting rock bottom with an alcohol addiction. They went to rehab for 90 days and are now five years sober, so I moved back to Coast Salish territory, to Vancouver, to support and live together after they had gone through their program. I started my Phd at that time at UBC.
In 2017, my mental health really started to deteriorate. I had gone through dark moments and unconscious times in the past. I had learnt as a coping mechanism to not talk about it out loud. I couldn’t take it anymore and I started going to see this lovely, amazing traumatic therapist, and she is trained in this field of therapy called generative traumatic. The therapist told me about this book called, Taking Charge Of Your Fertility. It’s a book about the fertility awareness method which is a natural form of birth control or you can use it to just track your own menstrual cycle which is called Mahwari cycle in Punjabi. I use the cycle for natural birth control, and it talks about three fertile signs of the average female body which are the cervical fluid, basal body temperature and cervical position. You can choose preferably two of them to track your cycle across what I am starting to call the four seasons of Mahwari cycle. All seasons come from earth so I am trying to make sense of what has been passed down through us and what has been lost through processes, colonization and patriarchy, and now we are just resurfacing it. So you can use the three fertility signs to know the Mahwari cycle as existing in the seasons. So winter would be period, spring would be pre-ovulation, summer would be ovulation and PMS is autumn, and it is a cyclical process. So I have been doing all this research on uncovering ancestral South Asian indigenous knowledge about how people thrived potentially to having menstrual cycles, on how to make choices about pregnancy, how to use herbs and plant-based medicines to do simple at-home self-care for not only our period but our pelvic health in general. So what I have been doing over the last two years with I’m With Period is just revitalizing all that knowledge and also continuing on our own journeys of self-care and figuring out what we are even doing on this earth.
There is so much shame about talking about period and pleasure because of the British Raj. The Victorian period of sexuality even in England was very repressed, there were very strict interpretations of what constituted romantic relationships that you could have out loud in public. In South Asia, prior to British Raj, there were all sorts of diverse sexualities in South Asia, the bottleneck of sexuality happened at that time. Then partition happened and then there was so much violence that came with the drawing of the borders and based on these crude distinctions of religion. Then our moms’ generation experienced the inter-generational trauma and migration and feeling like they had to stick to their family and extended family – part of that was doing the process of arranged marriage just so that people could literally survive. In terms of shame, I think it comes from that because we have been in survival mode for the last three to four generations.
In talking about pregnancy, period and how it connects to pleasure and sex, I think that the reaction is yes, we want more and everybody needs more tools to talk about sex, period, pleasure and pelvic health out loud. I wrote a book called the Self-Care Down There and that has been the main way I have been gauging reaction. Prior to that I started an Instagram account and this is where it all started. I started putting my own health journey on Instagram and then I started writing about it and then the book came out. The gap however is taking it to the next level where we can start to go deeper into conversations about our bodies out loud in English and also in Punjabi. My long-term vision will be continuing to revitalize ancestral South Asian knowledge about sex, sexuality, period and pregnancy. I am using this time to reflect what I envision I’m With Periods looking like and how to adapt and evolve to the current situation.”
“Kaur is identity for me. I never used to have Kaur as part of my passport. About seven or eight years ago, I went through the submission process to add it to my name in my passport because I identify with it and it means a lot to me. I think identity is individual first, so if I didn’t take that step or didn’t feel so strongly about it, others wouldn’t be able to see that as a strong part of me.
A strong part of my growing up was my radio show; it really changed the way I think and my interests, it got me into public speaking and opened up my network to connect with a lot of people. As I got older and I had experiences, what really opened up in my mind is that there is no right way to do things and morality is very subjective. I think overtime getting exposed to different people and industries, getting a chance to write, and interacting with a lot of people has really opened up my mind to accepting alternate forms of thinking and recognizing that from a philosophical standpoint, you are only able to know more when you admit to yourself that you know nothing. That has been the biggest evolution for me from my mindset standpoint. From a professional standpoint, I have come to this acceptance that you can’t really plan out your professional journey. It’s really good to leave the door open and go with the flow because that will help you evolve the most and get you outside of your comfort zone. So from a professional standpoint, the evolution has really been to not over stick to your plan or what you think is good enough for you.
I did everything on time - high school, university and then a good job. For a lot of people that might be a source of happiness but is it a source of contentment? Are these things contributing to your inner peace? And I would often think is this the course of life that is meant to be? I am always looking to strike a balance between practicality but also satisfying my soul. For me, that inner awareness is very important, so if I am feeling constrained that my life is being mandated by society or by a norm of how it is supposed to be, I am always trying to step out of that to do something for myself individually rather than fulfilling a checklist.
A big part of why I live like this is because of my upbringing and my parents who always supported me in my decisions. I watched my father say, it is important to do a job but what are you doing for your community? It was very important for him that I was on the radio, I was speaking Punjabi and helping students connect with our culture, or that I am writing articles or going out in the community and speaking like that. I grew up knowing that it is very important being an active community member.
A lot of people use paath or gurbani as an outlet or way of learning but what really helped me self-reflect while reading Gurbani is actually knowing the meaning of what you are reading. It was life-changing for me. I have grown up in a household where I have done paath since a very young age, so it was memorized in my brain but I realized that I didn’t really know what it really meant. So it’s not about just listening or reading but about what you really understand from it and how it applies to you personally. I would then check resources or apps to understand what its non-literal meaning was. Also, I used to ask my dad a lot of questions about it as well. So find that person, talk to people, have conversations about the meaning of Gurbani, not just what it means literally but how it applies in your life.
With the influence of technology or social media that we have right now, we constantly feel that we are not enough. And sometimes that can put you down. So for me one of the biggest challenges that I still try to overcome is knowing that this is my journey and while I should get inspiration from others, I shouldn’t let them control what I think about myself. Another challenge is that I see a lot of people have timelines for you. I have relatives or friends saying: isn’t this the time you should be getting married? Even the way you look or dress is commented on so easily. To overcome this, a word that comes to my mind is filter; you keep moving in a positive direction and filter out the rest. Also, just talking to my parents about things and knowing that they are there to support me, that’s a big help too. Both my parents are educators so they are around kids and understand the struggles that kids have, so I have the privilege and luxury to have parents that can understand and empathize with me but I know that a lot of Kaurs don’t have the accessibility to them. So I think for them it is important to strengthen themselves internally and overcome those challenges by talking to other people in the community.
If somebody asks me what my most favourite place is, I will always say it’s the stage and the mic, that is where I most feel home at. I want to use the outlets I have in tandem to my voice to express my ideas and expand the power of the network. I want it to be both a process where it is one to one and one to many and just connect with people and learn from them as well. I want to be fluid and be somebody who is constantly soaking information and other ways of thinking. Professionally, I want to be contributing to something that has a bigger meaning.
One of the biggest propellants of mental illnesses or just loneliness that people feel in general is because in today’s world we are so bombarded with technology that there is never white space for us to really reflect on who we are and questions ourselves why. Especially as Kaurs, we are many times told that this is how to do it or this is how it should be or this is the timeline for you, so we try to suppress our questions and lose our identity in that process many times. Not doing something on the phone is really hard for people and that lack of self-awareness and not knowing who or what we are leads us to pointing fingers at others. Being a Kaur especially, it is important to push away this noise and practice self-awareness as much as you can. And that comes from actively asking yourself why am I doing this, why do I think like this? That is what I am practicing as well. I urge other Kaurs to practice constant self-awareness and I think that is the way to making the world a better place.”
“Being a Kaur I have been blessed to inherit the values of perseverance, strength and service. It has given me such a strong foundation in who I am, who I am willing to be, and commit myself to fully evolve into who I am meant to be. It has given me a lot of inner strength at every stage of my life. That strength is what keeps me grounded. It has given me trust and faith in the power much bigger than us all.
I had a happy and wonderful childhood. I was born in a small village in India where my father was a school teacher and my mother was a homemaker. I actually witnessed the concept of service through my entire family. My dad along with a couple of friends started a society that provided adult education programs and held annual events for children including public speaking and sports days. I watched my mother not only look after my brother and I but also the entire extended family. Growing up in this environment II was loved and appreciated unconditionally.
At the age of 10, getting on a plane and flying over the oceans to land in this beautiful country, has left a permanent mark of gratitude on my being. However, it was a privilege that did not come without its challenges. Not only was it the biggest cultural shock but also the most isolating experience as I could only speak a few words of English. Fortunately, there were a few other girls in my class from my native land and we were all in the English as a second language class together. We were all each other’s biggest support as we learnt the language and the ways of our new culture. Of course, we would communicate in Punjabi amongst ourselves as that was the only way we could express ourselves. While the majority of people were understanding and kind there were others who were annoyed and would make fun of us including some teachers who told us to speak in English.
In a grade six classroom it was a common misconception that if you didn’t speak English you had a lower IQ. It was the most humbling experience of my life that taught me the value of self-reliance. My biggest strength came from my family as they had taken on the challenge to settle in a new country in their 40’s. My father went from being a school teacher to a mill worker doing grave-yard shifts. My mom must have felt so isolated without the language skills but without a complaint she was there for us all.
Within the first six months I began to speak English quite proficiently. In grade 7 we had to do a debate on capital punishment in our Social Studies class. I was thrilled as I loved public speaking and this would be my chance to show all my classmates that we were no different than anyone else. I not only won that debate but blew everyone away with my strong arguments. I learnt that day that people will judge you only from the level of their understanding. It is upto you to stay on your path and continue being the best you can be. It was also during this time that I had an unforgettable conversation with one of my teachers. I don’t remember the teacher’s name but what he said has stayed with me. When I mentioned to him how some kids were mean he said to me, “I want you to remember that people treat you the way they feel. If they try to make you feel inferior it’s because they feel inferior inside.” That message has still stuck with me and when I come across unkind people I send a little prayer for them to find peace within.
When I graduated high school, my parents thought it was very important for me to get further education. For them it was ideal that I do my post secondary education in India and we would also settle there. So I moved back and that was a second cultural shock. Now I was back in my own country but I didn’t belong because I had come from a different place and I was different than everyone else. I was there for four years and probably the most growth happened during that time. It was an amazing time, and that’s where I met my husband. Both my husband’s and my father were proponents of understanding the religious principles and practically applying them to life. As a result we both grew up living by the principles of our religion. Unconsciously, it just became a part of who we are.
Back in Canada, together we dreamt our biggest dreams and fully committed to making them come true. Over time we ran three businesses together and have done many construction projects including building our own home. Of all the things we have been able to accomplish the most beautiful and rewarding has been raising three kind and beautiful humans.
Motherhood, I feel has been my true calling. I found true purpose and such joy in raising our children and wholeheartedly giving them time, education and good values. This was my service to humanity and it was something I passed forward. Yes, motherhood can be challenging at times but if one keeps the focus on the joys it’s an opportunity to live life all over again through the wonderstruck eyes of a child. That to me is a true bliss.
The most difficult thing I have realized is to learn to unmother after so many years of mothering. Most of us tend to get stuck in that role forever. At some point we have to realize our job as a parent is done and as Oprah Winfrey says we need to become their consultants. Re-establishing our relationship with these capable, independent beings is even more rewarding than parenting them.
The seed of service had always been in my heart and when our children became independent this seed began to sprout. With the support of my family, help of my younger daughter and my amazing friend group I founded The Saheli Foundation. It is a non-profit, 100% volunteer foundation with the mission to empower young minds. This year we have celebrated our 5th anniversary, with many solid programs running locally as well as internationally, and close to 40 volunteers across four generations of like-minded women.
At The Saheli Foundation we truly believe every child deserves a chance to be the best they can be. With this belief we provide tools, resources and support to children and families in need who are willing to help themselves. We have proudly been able to directly impact over 3,000 lives so far and we are going strong.
When my children left home to pursue their education and careers it was the perfect opportunity for me to look at my own dreams and decide what the next stage of my life would be like. I take pride in being a lifelong learner. That is exactly what our first Guru, Guru Nanak Dev Ji taught us. With this open hearted attitude to learning and growing I find myself reaching out for new thoughts, books, pod-casts and stories of people. I have also learnt that it is our duty to share with the world all that life has and continues to teach us.
With this mission, at the age of 55, I started my own blog Fabulousfiftyfive.com. This has become my sacred place where I share my life experiences, stories and thoughts. This is the first time in my life that I took on writing and have truly embraced the joy it brings me. I have been able to connect with so many incredible women and build meaningful relations. I have found that we can have it all but just not all at once. The key is to focus on what is and give it our very best. I leave you with this: “She knew if she could rise up to meet life at her very best, life would reciprocate and meet her at its very best. “Such,” her soul whispered, “was the law of the universe.””
Advice for other women:
“Our focus should be to continue to discover our true essence till our last breath. Let us figure out what is truly important to us, pursue it with passion and give life our one hundred percent. Don’t ever say I am done. Take every opportunity to learn and create yourself anew.”
“To me the concept of Kaur means that I am an equal, I am respected, I am part of a community and I have powers within myself to improve everyone and anything around me that I put my heart into.
I experienced a beautiful childhood. I never felt that I was a girl or that I was any less than my brothers. I was always accepted, given lots of love and opportunities, and never told that I couldn’t do anything. So that upbringing and connection to Sikhi at the same time gave me roots and wings. Growing up in India, I was in such an empowering environment. The values of Sikhi that my parents have given to me really led the foundation to what I do today in my life and in education. I have connected to Sikhi through stories. I really commend my parents for that because they really drove the real love for gurbani and Sikhi. And that’s why those values are so important to me today.
I moved to Canada and started working as a teacher right away with the support of my family. When I started teaching, I started noticing that a lot of our youth that I was teaching in classrooms were Punjabi and South Asian and many were lost. Many had no connection to their heritage; the values that I got while growing up, I saw that missing. Some of them were making decisions that really didn’t reflect good on the community and themselves. That was my turning point; that’s when I thought that other than just teaching science in a classroom, I need to do something more. How do I connect these kids to themselves and their identities, so that they can become better citizens and do something better for the community? That decision drove me to pick up Punjabi language classes at L.A. Matheson where I teach right now. I made it more like a heritage, culture history and Punjabi language class. Unfortunately in our community, I noticed that anybody who as an educator is choosing or teaching the Punjabi language program is not given the same respect as somebody who is teaching English, Physics or Math. I had many people asking me why I am doing this. Also, people thought I came from India and was not good enough for doing anything else. But I didn’t really pay attention because one thing I really learnt as I grew up is that you do what makes you happy. With time you realize, you can’t make everyone happy at all times. So I just filtered out all the negativity.
I noticed that kids were coming to class regularly, they valued what I did, and they started opening up about issues in their lives. I started thinking about what I can do to channelize all this information. We started with video projects, making videos in Punjabi language on social issues. Then we started a film festival by collaborating with other schools.. We created a dialogue. We initiated the first Punjabi Youth Dhahan Literature Prize in BC for Punjabi language Students. This dream that I had of teaching them Punjabi language just transpired into something bigger and deeper. Academic excellence in my students is only achieved when they also become contributing members of their communities. We are trying to get our kids included in real life service in the community. Maybe Waheguru had this vision for me to connect our youth to our values, and do it in a classroom - the best way you can teach.
I honestly don’t think I regret anything. Every single decision I have made in my life, I stand by it. The only regret is that I did not start this sooner. It took me about four to five years to get into what I am doing right from when I first started it. I think I worried too much about what other people were saying to me first. I was giving a lot of power to people to decide or pass judgment on how I was doing which I learned as I grew older. For the longest time, I thought it is a job; you teach and then go home. Eventually I thought I need to do more, I should do more and I have the skill set to do more.
Some of the things that come up in the videos and stories have a lot to do with gender discrimination. Girls have a different set of values they are being raised with. Boys are given really different messages on how to be strong, brave and courageous. At school, they learn everybody is equal and needs to be respected and then they go home and all of a sudden they are told, you are a girl, you are a boy or a lot of racist language towards other cultures. Gender discrimination and domestic violence is such a huge problem in homes, people are being suffocated in their homes and girls have no voice or choice. They are watching this and they are crying out loud for help. These are stories kids are sharing in the class, there is alcohol abuse and drug problem, physical and verbal abuse, so kids are dealing with a lot. I feel kids come with a lot of baggage to school; not just our kids but in every community, this is pretty much the pattern.
I always tell new teachers that your kids will meet you where you want them to meet you. So always think positive, especially the ones you think are troublemakers are the ones that need you the most. Everybody has a story that needs to be respected and it takes time for the stories to be out. Whatever people are comfortable sharing, just go from there and you will never end up discriminating against anyone or saying anything that is hurtful because you know everybody is dealing with something.”