We don't suffer because of the events alone…

For years, I thought if I dress nicely, I will be loved enough

Healing showed me I wanted something much harder to buy.

I got married into a traditional Marwari family where a woman’s saree and jewellery quietly spoke before she did.

People noticed.

People compared.

People judged.

There was just one problem.

I didn’t have the freedom to buy either.

Money wasn’t mine to earn.

It wasn’t mine to spend.

So every family function became an exercise in invisibility.

I would stand in front of my cupboard, looking at the same few sarees, already knowing what would be said.

“The same saree again?”

“Doesn’t she have anything else?”

Sometimes the words reached me.

Sometimes they didn’t have to.

You can feel judgment long before you hear it.

For a long time, I believed those moments hurt because I didn’t have beautiful clothes.

Today, I know that wasn’t the wound.

The saree was never just a saree.

It became evidence.

Evidence that I wasn’t important enough to be invested in.

Evidence that my choices didn’t matter because I wasn’t allowed to make them.

Evidence that I occupied space… without ever being allowed to express myself inside it.

Years later, life changed.

I built my own career.

I could finally buy the sarees I once stood in front of shop windows admiring.

The jewellery.

The colours.

The choices.

Everything I thought I had been longing for.

And something unexpected happened.

The compliments arrived.

“You look beautiful.”

“What a gorgeous saree.”

“You always dress so elegantly.”

People assumed those words must feel healing.

They didn’t.

Sometimes they still don’t.

Because compliments don’t always land in the present.

Sometimes they land exactly where the wound was first created.

A part of me still wonders,

“Would you have seen me if I had worn this saree back then?”

“Was I invisible… or just poorly dressed?”

That is the strange thing about shame.

Circumstances can change long before the body does.

The wardrobe fills up.

The freedom arrives.

The money comes.

But the nervous system is still standing in front of the old cupboard, wondering how to disappear before someone notices.

I don’t think enough people talk about this.

We think healing happens when our circumstances improve.

But often, that’s only when the real work begins.

Because healing isn’t teaching the body that it can finally afford the saree.

It’s helping the body discover that its worth was never hanging in the wardrobe.

Over the years, I’ve realised this was never really about clothes.

I’ve seen the same story wear different disguises.

A promotion.

A bigger house.

The perfect body.

Designer labels.

The relationship everyone envies.

We keep chasing the thing we believe will finally erase the shame.

Only to discover that shame doesn’t live in our circumstances.

It lives in the meaning we quietly attached to them.

This is why my work has never been about helping people become more confident or think more positively.

It’s about gently uncovering the stories the body has been carrying for years.

The stories that turned ordinary things—a saree, a compliment, a dinner table, a silence—into evidence of not being enough.

Because healing, at least the kind I believe in, isn’t about creating a more beautiful life.

It’s about helping you realise that your life was never waiting for permission to be enough.

You were.