Be Your Own Hero

Asato mā sadgamaya, tamasomā jyotir gamaya, mrityormā amritam gamaya, Oṁ śhānti śhānti śhāntiḥ. This is one of the many Sanskrit prayers I recited a dozen times per day, every day for twenty years. My father raised me in Swadhyay, a Hindu cult. Take Westboro Baptist Church, make the people brown, turn God into Gods, replace the Holy Bible with the Bhagavad Gita, add some curry, and voila, you get Swadhyay! Swadhyay decreed that parents were Gods and children should worship them. My father’s word was Gospel. My sole purpose was to serve him and cater to his whims. Every day, I had to touch my head to his feet as a sign of humility and respect.

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Dad was a fickle God. He was known to his coworkers as Mr. Sunshine, but behind closed doors, if I looked at him the wrong way, like the Hulk, his calm manner flipped into thundery madness. He destroyed things, yelled for hours, deprived me of food and sleep. As always, the next day it was like nothing happened. I went to school, he went to work, back to regularly scheduled programming. I learned to be light on my feet. I didn’t know when or where it would happen, but I’d inevitably trip on a wire, and BOOM! I still find pieces of emotional shrapnel from my childhood.

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My saving grace was Greek mythology, required reading for my senior year English Lit class. I was enthralled by the drama, contradictions, and power plays. My favorite character was Zeus, the most powerful God. He was a father and a villain. Zeus was my dad. For the first time, I was able to see my dad as a character in my story. He made a terrible father, but such a compelling antagonist. I realized if he was the antagonist, I had to learn to be my own hero.

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I write stories about complex individuals who juggle the dualities of good and evil. I write strong, independent, female characters who are their own saviors. My journey inspires me to have be a voice for the myriad of women who still don’t have one. Swadhyay is a Sanskrit word for “self-discovery”. But it was only in leaving the cult that I discovered the hero I was meant to be.