A New Chapter

My life has never followed the norm.

I came into this world with my twin sister, Nina, a little over 29 years ago. We were born in Jackson, Mississippi, to a mother hailing from Yankee country in Indiana, and a father hailing from overseas in India. My parents decided that it wasn’t enough to raise a multicultural baby in Dixieland; they bestowed on me the name “Asha Anand,” which doesn’t roll so easily off a southerner’s tongue. (It’s a soft A like ahh, not the hard A like ashes.)

Oh and that’s not all. My parents also raised Nina and me as vegetarians in a state where even the green beans come seasoned with bacon.

From an early age, my aspirations were simple: my mother recollects that, in a room full of parents whose children’s dream jobs were doctors, lawyers, and astronauts, she had the pleasure of announcing, “My daughter wants to become a country music singer.”

(If you have the misfortune of stumbling upon my Instagram page, you will be comforted to know that, for society’s sake, that dream did not come to fruition.)

Instead, I began a long climb toward achieving, in lieu of figuring out who the heck I really was. I defined myself by every external accomplishment I could get my hands on, and grew increasingly distant from knowing what my true values and aspirations really were.

I’ve experienced heartbreak and embarrassment, anxiety and fatigue, self-defeat and cowardice because I cared too much about what other people thought of me.

I isolated, screwed up relationships, battled with frustration in jobs, harbored resentments, and was on a path to self-destruction.

I’ve been called a drama queen, too sensitive, a pushover, and more, but the worst things I’ve been called have been labels I’ve given myself.

And after awhile, I got sick of it.

Sometime in the last year, by God’s grace and nothing else, I’ve been able to release the reins I’ve so tightly held on to, and let go. In this new phase of surrender, I am experiencing life on life’s terms, and y’all, the universe sure knows what it’s doing a lot better than I do.

Let me be clear: I’m still figuring all this out. The biggest blessing I’ve learned is that life is more about the journey than the destination. It’s about the connections made along the way, the sights and smells and sounds that make up a moment. If anything is clear, it’s that life is unpredictable, and we are not in control. But what greater freedom than to know we do not have to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders? That there’s a greater power with a greater plan painting the canvas of our lives with colors we didn’t even know exist.

Somewhere in all this discovery, I realized that being ‘normal’ is overrated. The things that make us different are the things that allow us to connect with people from all walks of life. It’s our unique attributes and differences that confirm equality and shatter any notion of hierarchy in a world where we’re all made from the same stuff.

So, I’m excited to share the next chapter of my life. I’m uprooting again and moving East, closer to my father’s origins. I won’t speak the language or blend in all that well, but I rest easy knowing that love transcends culture, race, religion, ethnicity, socioeconomic status. That, when I surrender and get in tune with my true self, I am connected to that same power of love which sustains us all.

Namaste, y’all.