I don’t have a good relationship with my parents, grandparents, and extended family in general. I’ve faced trauma after trauma during my childhood, including multiple sexual assaults. It’s hard to get over the existing toxic relationships and trauma in your life that you grew up with and before I even realized, I found myself in a toxic romantic relationship for 9 years.

As children who have grown up in the Indian culture, this emphasis on the importance of words merely doesn’t exist. Indian culture, in my personal experience, is a culture that is more firmly rooted in actions and achievements, not the words that describe the feelings behind any of that. As a consequence, despite all our beautiful languages capable of expressing the deepest love or the most harrowing pain, we as a culture don’t nearly utilize these words effectively and continuously fail to understand the impact that they have on our young children and the upcoming generations.