Amma: Celebrating an invincible spirit
The past three years have been the most difficult years of my life. I've been navigating a demanding PhD program with an entire universe of ups and downs, watching my dad go through a stroke, sink into being paralyzed and bedridden, and then inhabit the universe of chronic pain and illness. Last year, my grandfather joined him in the chronically ill world, and I look back and see a blur of health scares, hospital admissions and grief. My parental home resembled a hospital, with sick people (two) outnumbering the healthy (one), and my Mom as the primary caregiver to both her husband and her father. We lost my grandfather a few months ago, and now my father seems to be teetering on the edge of sanity. I won't even get into all the other things that have been going on in the family. This alone is enough to shake and uproot a person and drive them insane. If I am here today, still continuing my PhD and holding on to my sanity and health, I have primarily one person to thank. My am...