{"id":451,"date":"2024-06-30T18:07:32","date_gmt":"2024-06-30T18:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tiredandbeatup.com\/writings\/?p=451"},"modified":"2025-05-14T17:36:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T17:36:40","slug":"story-of-pride-part-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.tiredandbeatup.com\/writings\/story-of-pride-part-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"Story of Pride – Part III"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMummy, Dada! I came top in my class of 800! Are you proud of me?\u201d, the message pops up on my phone. It\u2019s Sophie; our exchange student-daughter. She is texting from France where she returned after staying with us for a year of high-school. During her year with us, we became so close that she started calling me mummy and Mark dada. We fit perfectly like pieces of a puzzle. When she left, it was like going through surgery, no one wanted it but it was mandatory. Back in France she is at a top college. And of 800 students, she is the topper, pretty impressive, huh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark texted back effortlessly, \u201cyes proud of you – and missing you – love Dada\u201d. I wrote, \u201cummm\u2026only a little bit\u201d with lots of naughty emojis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later I confess to Mark – I didn\u2019t know how to properly respond to Sophie\u2019s question. Mark asks me why. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I find myself breaking into tears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grew up in an Indian household with a demanding, hard to please father. He held me \u2013 and my sister – to a high standard, we had to earn his love. He told my sister & me how hard he had worked to earn his station in life \u2013 which was true. He was a self-made man, the eldest son in a poor family who rose to become a successful engineer earning two doctorates, and winning numerous national & international awards. Most people we knew looked up to him as a paragon of success. He looked up to him as a paragon of success. He was proud of himself. – Just a little too proud \u2013 for humans around him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t recall ever feeling that there was a pre-requisite to earn my mother\u2019s love. With her, I felt safe. But that safety shattered when she passed away when I was a teenager. The ensuing years were difficult \u2013 my father quickly remarried – and now we seemed to have an avatar of the fairytale step-mother. She took the crack between our father and us, and turned into it a gulf. My father became more & more proud of himself – and harder & harder to impress. – But children are children and they continue to seek validation from their parents long after they reach adulthood. Somewhere deep inside, I wanted my father- my one living parent – to see me, to acknowledge me, to say he was proud of me. But – the words never came. Even when I won the All India Gold Medalist award at my masters, he didn\u2019t say those words. Even when my sister & I moved to America to follow our dreams, the dreams that he himself had inculcated in us, he didn\u2019t say the words. Even when we finished our UCLA course in film with multiple distinctions \u2013 an education from a top film-school that we had self-funded, he didn\u2019t say the words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then my sister died of cancer. And all the words felt frivolous. What did it matter what we said or didn\u2019t say? No words mattered to me anymore \u2013 for a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I met Mark. After living together for 7 years we got married. As a wedding gift, I gave him a folly, a trifle, a t-shirt with a funny line that said \u201cproud husband of a freaking awesome Indian wife.\u201d I thought he would wear it once and we would have a laugh. He did wear it \u2013 but not just once. Instead, he wore down that first t-shirt and then bought another one and then another. He wore it on the film sets where I was directing and he wore it when I was invited as guest speaker at occasions. He wore it during fun times and he wore it when I was sick, and especially on days I felt anxious or depressed. I have only just started to realize he is trying to tell me something! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For years my relationship with the words \u201cpride or proud\u201d has been difficult. I have never felt or uttered the words \u201cI am proud of myself\u201d. For I have seen first-hand how pride in oneself can turn into arrogance & how destructive that can be for relationships. And being proud of someone else requires a sense of \u201cownership\u201d \u2013 it makes a bold statement to life that says, \u201cyou are my person – and you are cool – so I am proud of you\u201d; losing my sister who I had claimed from life as my person makes that difficult for me. That is what made my reply to Sophie so complicated. She has her own family in France, her own people who claim her, who ought to be proud of her. Who am I to make that claim?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I – don\u2019t – know – what happened – but this week for the first time in decades and out of the blue my father posted a picture of me on his Facebook wall with the line \u201cI am proud of your accomplishments\u2026keep it up\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was struck. What just happened? What did I suddenly do to be worthy of his pride? – Maybe the ice between us is thawing. Maybe time; that great healer is doing its job. Maybe the father is beginning to see his daughter. Whatever it is, my eyes misted over as I read that line on his wall over and over again. I wrote back a simple thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But receiving that unexpected gift reminded me of something significant. Everything is possible in life. It is possible for a father to send an unexpected answer to a question his estranged daughter was grappling with, and it is possible for a half-mom to claim her French student-daughter as her own. For the truth is no one truly belongs to us, we only belong to life. But being proud of someone is an act of courage \u2013 it says no matter what happens tomorrow, but for this moment in time – you are a part of me and you are cool and I am proud of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I sent Sophie another message, it said \u201cDearest Sophie, I am proud of your accomplishments, keep it up\u2026.love mummy\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I wore this t-shirt (“Proud wife of a Freaking Awesome British husband!<\/em>“).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Swati Srivastava is a proud wife, mom and sister. She is also an immigrant and a multi award-winning writer, director, and voiceover artist.<\/em>\u00a0A filmmaker & storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and lives in a Net Zero Energy home.<\/em>\u00a0She can be reached via\u00a0Linkedin<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0swati@TiredAndBeatup.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Mummy, Dada! I came top in my class of 800! Are you proud of me?\u201d, the message pops up on my phone.
\nMark texted back effortlessly, \u201cyes proud of you – and missing you – love Dada\u201d. I wrote, \u201cummm\u2026only a little bit\u201d with lots of naughty emojis. Later I confess to Mark – I didn\u2019t know how to properly respond to Sophie\u2019s question. Mark asks me why.
\nAnd I find myself breaking into tears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"chat","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-chat","hentry","category-reflections","post_format-post-format-chat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tiredandbeatup.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tiredandbeatup.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tiredandbeatup.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tiredandbeatup.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tiredandbeatup.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.tiredandbeatup.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":539,"href":"http:\/\/www.tiredandbeatup.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions\/539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tiredandbeatup.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tiredandbeatup.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tiredandbeatup.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}