The real job of Moms

Aira    Featured Post     daughter, feelings, Happiness, Love, mother job, parenting, Parents, real job of mother, son, teenagers

It’s not cooking dinner, changing diapers or helping a preschooler glue colored macaroni on a coffee can as a Father’s Day gift.

The most important assignment a mom has is to nurture her children.

But what does that mean, exactly? Most of us have a vague notion about what being nurtured feels like, but here are a few specifics.

A nurturing mom goes beyond being the “maintenance person” in a child’s life. She doesn’t just keep a child clean, fed, warm, and dry. She also helps enable her children to develop fully by pouring life into them. She models joy and passion. Nurturing is filling your child up with aliveness.

A nurturing mom takes time to play, read, and take pictures when the toddler’s spaghetti ends up on the head instead of in the mouth. She enters the child’s world to see things from his or her perspective, even if it means the carpets don’t get vacuumed for a while. She provides empathetic understanding from a position of strength and support. That’s true whether she’s dealing with a toddler or a teen — except for the part about spaghetti on the head.

Like dads, though, moms have a natural urge to protect their children. That can lead them to cross the line between nurturing and futile attempts at control.

You can’t control the results, but you can stir in the right ingredients. You can seek to know your children as individuals, different as they might be, and bring out the best in each. You can demonstrate by example how to explore life with zest and express the unique gifts God provides each of us. Your nurturing can blossom in emotional and spiritual growth.

Before you feel burdened with a mile-long list you can never follow through on, let me be quick to say that nurturing is not about “doing it all” or doing it perfectly. It’s about doing the best you can — without losing yourself or driving yourself crazy because your own needs aren’t taken care of. You won’t be able to nurture your children if you’re exhausted from burning the candle at both ends.

So please take care of yourself, too. You need aliveness in order to pass it on to your teenagers.

Just love is not enough

Aira    Featured Post     happy couples, happy married life, Life, Love, love in marriage, married couples, responsibility in marriage, Romatic married life, secrets of happy married life, wisdom and maturity

I have been married for many years now and many of couples approached me asking for what is the real essence and secret of happy married life. And I would only say – not just one thing to work properly in marriage but there are something very essential and necessary ingredients to have a happy married life.

What if you think true love is all it takes to make a marriage successful? No matter what you say, how hard you love or how long you have tried. Sometimes is it just not enough. No, just love is not enough!

Today, I just wanna reveal that for you all whoever wants to know the secret to be happy and happy in married life. Far from it, the main things in a happy marriage is trust, understanding and respect come first. Love ranks way down the pecking order. It grows unheeded as long as you have these three things. Trust is most important.

Trust is not just the feeling of cheating but having believe that your spouse has your best interests at heart especially, when you fight and say things that you don’t mean. Understanding breeds companionship and love and equips you to handle each other’s behaviours even during difficult times. Things such as giving each other space, communication, taking time out for oneself or one’s friends, etc, all stem from understanding.

Respect can’t be a power game. So don’t demand respect, rather command. It should be extended to each other’s family, job, time, friends and feelings too. Another rule: there are no demands, only requests — be it on time, favors or sex. Also, there is no place for ego in a happy marriage. And it’s not as difficult to shed yours, if you have basic trust.

You must share responsibility say if both spouses are earning, they should contribute in proportion to their incomes. It’s not fair to expect the husband to take care of all expenses just because he earns more. Finances are often a point of contention, and it’s best if couples manage investments and money separately, while pooling in for joint expenses. Each spouse must be responsible of their expenses to balance the power equation. The more you think of yourself as a unit, the more you act like one.

Love alone can’t see you through a relationship. I know one couple who has been married for more than 3 years now and it was a love marriage, sometimes they scream and abuse each other which is ridiculous. Where has the love gone? Love must be nurtured with trust and understanding else it evaporates. Love also builds false expectations when it starts with romantic love. Couples in arranged marriages, on the other hand, learn to love each other with growing trust and understanding. Love also changes with age. It may start with romantic love, go to sexual love and graduate to caring and companionship at a later stage.

An important component, even when things go wrong. It’s important to bring back physical intimacy, if a couple has lost it. If you are in joint family then it is very conducive to a happy marriage. as an elder gives you perspective or point out how it affects your children. The is always a bonus. Also, never have children to save your marriage or stay together for them, just stay together because you want to. A child needs stability and you can give him or her that even by divorcing. Sometimes that’s healthier for the child rather than seeing parents fight bitterly.

A happy married life is as essential for fulfillment as food is for hunger. Give priority to your spouse over everything else in your life. …

Love each other, for your child’s sake!

Aira    Featured Post     Children, Family, Father, Life, Love, Mother, Parents, Relationship

You can do anything for that smile on your little darling’s face. You can act like a monkey; treat him to an ice cream, read aloud his favorite story. But beyond the smile, for inner happiness, you have to love not only your child but your partner as well.

When a child grows up observing a close bond between his/her parents  and a relationship of mutual understanding, trust, and respect, he/she automatically becomes loving, and caring by nature. Such children  are more confident, more giving, more positive, more expressive, and much happier than children who witness quarrels and ugly scenes between their parents and experience negative strains in a relationship. The relationship between his/her parents is the first relationship that a child observes very closely.

If parents fight or talk disrespectfully to each other, children lose faith in relationships and fear entering long-term relationships. Not only this, they also lose respect for their parents. They nurse bitterness. Think of it this way. If you feel bad when your child is unhappy, how cans he /she feels good when you are going through an unhappy phase? They say the best gift a father can give his child is to love his mother. And the best gift parents can give their child is ‘to love each other’. What is ‘loving each other’? Never argue with or criticize each other in front of the child. Sort out your problems in private. Your child should know the language of love.

If it happens despite your best efforts, apologies to each other in front of the child. Show him/her that the misunderstanding is over. Your child should feel the power of love. Show respect to and deal with your partner lovingly. Your child should see the beauty of love. .

Love each other, for your child’s sake!

Enjoy every moments of happiness

Aira    Featured Post     Happiness, Happy moment, Joy, Life, Love, Mnd

We usually tend to believe that happiness  is rare. Our minds are so burdened with worries and thoughts about the future that we miss that small moment of happiness which keep sparking in our lives. In fact, these moments  of happiness keep coming into our lives but we ignore them because we keep waiting for a big bounty of bliss.

Osho gives a few clues for increasing these happy moments by becoming aware of them and strengthening them. Whenever you feel happy, look at a light; any light will do, just a candle, but do it only when you feel happy and relaxed. When something like joy permeates your beings, then look at the moon, at the stars or the morning sun or the evening sun; any light will do. When you feel happy look at the light and meditate on life so that light and happiness become joined together and there is a kind of conditioned reflex. After three to four weeks of practice you will be able to evoke that joy whenever you look at light; then it becomes simple. But first you have to make a deep association.

Whenever you feel happy, just repeat your own name again and again. Then the sound of your name and the feeling of happiness become intertwined. Later whenever you repeat your own name you will find that some source  has been touched and a great blissfulness has been released. Whenever you feel depressed or low, stand outside a room with closed eyes for three minutes before entering and put all your negative feelings  in a bundle. Deposit it just by the door and enter, and then forget about it. And you will be surprised; it is such a simple thing! Then when you exit the room, stand again for three minutes, put happiness in the bundle and collect it. Whenever you sit alone, not doing anything, feel light entering you from above. Soak it in, drink it; let it sink into your heart.

Let it permeate your entire body. You will find yourself disappearing as a material body and becoming a body of light.   So enjoy  moments of happiness!!

An Inter Caste Marriage.. Laugh together, Live together!

Aira    Featured Post     Family, Happiness, Humor, Intercaste marriage, Life, Love, Marriage

Well,  What do you think about it??

An intercaste  marriage is a myriad of sweet and sour adjustments. Unlike same caste weddings, the differences begin to show up even before the wedding ceremony takes place. An intercaste marriage raises more than just quizzical eyebrows.

Weddings being all about tradition, customs  and rituals, the differences are many. By and large these are marriages of choice or what we generally call love marriages where the girl and the boy make the initial decision to come together in a martial alliance. There may be resistance from the parents, making an intercaste alliance into a more complicated ‘arrangement’ than even the arranged ones.

But then, customs or traditions are seldom the reasons, which can break up relationships. The differences can be easy to handle if you mark out some basic rules for yourself. Especially the bride who may find it unnerving to be amongst people who speak a different  language, dress differently, have distinctly different eating habits  and follow a different set of customs than what she has been used to in her growing years. Naturally it requires a certain mental steeling of sorts.

One of the best ways to save yourself from a culture shock is to familiarize yourself with your husband’s family. If you know, for instance, that your mom-in-law follows and believes in certain religious or traditional customs, you will find it easier to handle the stark difference  when you are in her house. During your visits, take pains and ask questions on how they celebrate different festivals or observe fasts etc. You will find, that there are similar reasons and beliefs at the core of varying customs. It is just the exterior difference. Often, different castes worship different deities, but if you care to understand the philosophy behind the worship, you will soon feel comfortable. It won’t be very different from what your mother told you.

Believe in change. Yeah, surprisingly food habits are reported to be a real trying test in an intercaste marriage. Years of habit and liking rarely change. Idli-dosas may be savoury to your palate for a while, but you will soon start yearning for ‘your kind of food’. Also, some girls say that the different aroma in an unfamiliar kitchen can sometimes put them pickles are different, so are the homemade namkeens. Besides everything smells so differently! New aromas can be strangely alienating, making you homesick for your mom’s kitchen.

But hang on. Can’t you cook your type of meal off and on? Surely you could, unless your in-laws are deliberately hostile. You could introduce some of your favorites recipes now and then. Don’t deprive yourself of the food you love. Find a way around it. LAUGH TOGETHER, LIVE TOGETHER. Humour has no language, no olfactory contradiction. You can laugh in a sari or in a pair of tight fitting trousers. You can laugh if you are married to a Tamilian or if you have decided to wed a Kashmiri Pundit. Loving and living together has a great deal to do with laughing together. Cultivate a sense of humour in life. It should be the most important homework you do before getting married into a family or caste, which differs drastically from your own. You will discover a oneness, a sense of belonging when you find that human traits are the same, despite the difference in pickles, papads or the idol of the deity worshiped.