Sujala Shastry | A Cross-Cultural Story of Childhood Loss, Growth, and Finding Your Voice

In this soul-stirring episode, we explore the profound journey of Sujala Shastry, who lost her mother to a brain tumor at age 11 in India. 

Her story illuminates the complex intersection of cultural silence, emotional isolation, and the transformative power of breaking generational patterns around grief.

Key Takeaways:

• The impact of losing a mother in a joint family system that provided physical but not emotional support.
• How 20 years of survival mode led to disconnection, anxiety, and lost memories.
• The awakening that came with motherhood and the desire to heal generational trauma.
• The cultural dynamics of grief in Indian versus Western society.
• Finding one's voice and creating boundaries after decades of people-pleasing.
• The launch of her podcast "Discovering Journeys" as a platform for authentic connection.

Sujala shares how one can be profoundly lonely even when surrounded by loving family, the importance of emotionally safe spaces in healing childhood loss, and how unprocessed grief affects identity formation and relationships. This episode will inspire the importance of taking steps toward healing sooner rather than later, not as a means to rush, emotionally bypass, or forget. Instead, one must immerse oneself in one's inner emotional world to truly feel the hurt and pain so that it can be transmuted to live as full of a life as possible.

RESOURCES:

• Episode Sponsor: Magic Mind
• Podcast | Discovering Journeys

CONNECT WITH SUJALA:

• Podcast Website
• LinkedIn
• IG

Transcript

Victoria Volk: Hello, and welcome to another episode of grieving voices. Today, my guest is Sujala Shastri. And she is here today to share a story of loss of her mother when she was a child and just recently launched her own podcast called Discovering Journeys. And Thank you so much for being here today. I know it's been a while since you have applied and I'm excited to have you as a guest and for you to share your story. And so what before we get into that, I just want people to get a little sense of who you are, where you're from, what do you do, all of that. So welcome.

Sujala Shastry: Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Victoria, for having me on grieving voices. I am Sujala. I'm basically from south of India called the place called Bangla.
And I and I've been living in France for close to a decade now. So yeah. I have been a engineer before. Then I moved in here as an expat, leading my life, starting a family and Oh. The life goes. Then then I did my masters because I just wanted to come back to again, go back to carrier and everything. But that didn't pan out very well. So got a job. I lost a job. Then I was like, okay. This is something was not something was not right. So and the idea of podcasting came and after a year of learning things, again, learning things reinventing myself because I know that my voice is going to be out out in the world. So I was very uncomfortable even though I loved the idea of podcast. So it took a while for me to be Okay. Be comfortable with it and to come. So so very happy that I launched my podcast and happy to be on the other side of the as a guest as well. So that's been my recent one. And the point of if I have to share my start sharing my story, I lost my mom when I was eleven years old. And it it was not something which anybody expects. It just happens. And she was ill. And I lost her to brain tumor. It was really hard time because I didn't know how to navigate. I think I think my grief journey started with that not knowing what to do. So my initial feelings were just numb.
And a dissociation. Maybe maybe I was struggling with accepting the fact that she was no longer there. So yeah. I think I think those were the very initial things. And Unfortunately, it stayed for a very long time with me because I did not understand I was grieving. I was just I just thought I was not coping well. But now and adult me understand how young I was when I was eleven years old. But I did not understand that time, and I think I understand her very well. Why she couldn't understand she was in a date of shock and so what happens in a grief when you lose a parent or somebody who is so close to you at such an engage is You don't know how to navigate this one path. Second thing is you don't understand what's happening around you. Within you, around you who in life, everything freezes for a while. And for me, without having I had a lot of people around me. They were all great providers. They took care of me. But, emotionally, there was nobody to held my hand and Help me and tell me that it is okay. It is okay to whatever you're feeling, sadness, pain, heavy, you can name because many grief grief, you can't define by one statement because everyone experiences, you know, completely separate ways. So I just wanted, I think, somebody to tell me that it's okay. Whatever you're feeling, it will go through. And I think I needed that emotional save space. So that is something I struggled with. And, unfortunately, it went for too long for for two decades, I was in a survival mode of not understanding what's happening to me. Why why am I angry? Why am I so sensitive? Why I am so lost? I couldn't connect with my friends. I couldn't connect with their, you know, the lightings because you I was just before the teenager, I lost my mom. So when you shift to a teenager, you try to know about yourself, I never had Ziel for anything. So yeah. That took a very long time. And finally, after moving to France, I think I got time to be with myself and started to heal, wanted to be a bitter mother for my son. And I I think that's where I started and Then I then I started to understand lot of things about myself. And yeah. Here we are. So just to put it in a nutshell, this was been my this has been my grieving journey so far.

Victoria Volk: What do you think was the turning point? Or was there something specific that helped you turn that page?

Sujala Shastry: I think something was bothering me. It was bothering me something was not okay. Santa, because I couldn't I felt I was very different from all of my friends, all of the society and everything. So a typical thirty year old or a twenty year old, I never matched that. So people were interested in, you know, ambition, which party to wear, which clothes to wear. You know, the sort of normal things, and seventeen, eighteen year old, or a twenty year old does. But I was never interested in that. So I think I had I had started noticing it because I'm a very sensitive person and I observe and I care a lot for people. So I started to notice it was there. In my back of my mind, I think it was there. But as I had developed high functioning anxiety, I suppressed it. So I was always in the school mode exam exam, then engineering work, that is push, you know, I deviated myself for a very long period of time because it was comfortable. Because I didn't know that I have I had to look inward, but that that's something inside was totally so so messed up. And I think coming to France gave me that space. I think at that point, I think I was also, like, around thirty. So it told me that, okay. You know, you're very sensitive. You understand everybody. I think it's time to understand yourself a bit. So I didn't know that it would be next few years would be so painful for me to start the healing process, but yeah. That was a turning point. The pause helped me. Because I did not have anywhere to escape, you see.

Victoria Volk: So what was what was that like? Because you just described, like, you were, like, walking to this into this abyss of healing and you didn't know how painful it would be. What were the resources or the tools? Or what were you doing during that time to support yourself in your healing?

Sujala Shastry: I think Vesta had to go through the uncomfortable hang of sitting with the emotion. I think that was the most painful part. Because I allowed myself for the first time in my life to, like, you know, hundred percent feel. What I missed about my mother that I that my mother was dead, I had to tell it out loud. Even though it looks very simple to many of them, but to the grievers understand that when you say it out loud, it hits you Mhmm. Every single time. And I had to deal with that emotion and this took time. And I also had to come face to face with the fact that I didn't know my mother well. I think that hurt me the most while in the initial time because eleven years you're a kid. You just know very, very basic things.
And because of being in survival mode for twenty years, I have lost memory of her for so many things. There was dissociation, and I have deep sense of loneliness, and a brain fog as well. So and panic attacks at times. So I think I had to it was like an onion, like a big big onion. And I had to open. And the thing was I didn't know that how many layers were there. Now I can say, fast forward to know I can laugh about it and everything, but Yeah. That thing, I think, that shook me quite a bit. That shook me quite a bit.

Victoria Volk: Reflecting back, do you feel like a lot of those emotions were coming back up when you became a parent?

Sujala Shastry: Oh, definitely. Definitely. Definitely. That is like I know the name of the head. There is no escape. There is absolutely no escape.

Victoria Volk: That was my experience too because I lost my father when I was eight and my mother was emotionally unavailable. And so just similar experience just flipped different roles. But, yeah, it wasn't having kids. Like, they bring up every single insecurity that you have about yourself and all of your shadows and everything about you that you struggle with. Right? It they they challenge just the core of of who you think you are. Yes. I'm curious because, like, for me, my journey was a lot of my personal development really started was when my youngest started kindergarten. I had so much of my identity wrapped up in my kids. Right?
And that's when it really started for me. So self health books became huge in my life at that time. Personal development programs, I was taking every personality quiz known to man just to help myself understand myself, figure myself out, fix myself, get my shit together, and and that went on for a good five years. Until I discovered grief recovery, which completely changed my life. So is there anything in specifically for you that changed your life? A program, a person, certain therapy? What was it? Do you think?

Sujala Shastry: I think books books helps a lot. That helped me a lot. And on the Internet, learn learning about joining a grief community. For a very brief period, I joined a community where griefers can just tell how they feel. And for the first time, I felt, oh, I was not really mad. I didn't have to be mad about myself or feeling something so normal normal in this line. You know? So I was like, okay. Not bad. Okay. I am in okay. This is my community. And even though we don't know each other, but the sense of loss that gave me comfort, books made me understand. And and learning about, you know, why I became like this and how it is connected to my grief. And because I wasn't able to navigate it well, I was I I did lot of, you know, developed a lot of consequences part of it. So this helped me in understanding me, and I think That told me that, okay. Now I need to help. Now I have understood myself. I've sat with it. Okay. Yes. It's not good, but I cannot let another twenty years go by. So I think all of these things helped and and also many grieving interviews like this. Help me. So sometimes it used to be overloaded for me as well because I'm on I'm on m path. So I absorb very easily. So so for me, tap to be breaks, So it has to be in at my own timeline, I had to take space, breathe, understand. So some it was, like, it was gradual for sure, but it was all the pounds were moving together. So if it was one month, was understanding a concept of brain fog. I didn't know what was brain fog, but I had the symptom myself.
So that took me understand. And then it just helped me that others also faced it. So that gave me comfort and that gave me some better strength that, you know, I have I, you know, this was a thing. When you don't have anybody to navigate, you think you're not strong enough or you're not you're not coping well, you're not good enough. But I did more than my capacity, and I'm so proud of that little girl of mine now, but unfortunately, that time I wasn't. So I think that this understanding with various groups and moving gradually everything, then I said, okay. Okay. This is my whole mess. This is my understanding. And what can I do?
So that is when I started the this one. So everything helped. I think everything helped. There is nothing. One thing which didn't help me because I took you know, it's like surviving again. It is like surviving to understand and surviving to come on the other side. So I took every material, like, possibly I can book, paper, interviews, stories, journeys, lectures, YouTube, and tech talks on grief have done everything. There's nothing I have left page unturned. It's just that I didn't come out and speak to people. That's probably I didn't do it. Because I never felt emotionally safe to do that because I felt around me people didn't understand what I was going through, and that happens. So apart from that, I did everything.

Victoria Volk: You had touched on being an empath and I'm too. And so I imagine as a young child, like for me, I needed a lot of sleep. Like, I slept a lot. Was that your experience too?

Sujala Shastry: Nice to cry myself to sleep. Damn.

Victoria Volk: I would hide to cry. I would fall in the under my bed and fall asleep crying because we're in the linen closet. The kitchen covered. Like, I would hide to cry.

Sujala Shastry: Yeah. I lived in a joint family, so I think the only time I could cry my heart out while I was crying. I mean, while I was before I go to sleep, So that's one time I cried. I think I've cried. I don't know. It's almost every day I can say. Maybe maybe the timings of my cry would vary. But, yes, every day it was. Yeah, being an empath is not easy and losing a parent is not easy. And they're not having emotional support is also not easy. So it is, like, we are already your personality, your situation doesn't, you know, give you a give you a strong foundation to navigate.

Victoria Volk: What have you learned about energy? Like your personal energy, energy work, energy healing? Has that been a component of your healing as an empath? No.

Sujala Shastry: Oh. I have just learned that I didn't have a boundary as an impact. And now I have the boundary maybe speak the same language, but in a different terminology maybe. But yes. This has has been my discipline. So I understood why this whole emotional trauma led to people who are like, why I've why was it tolerating them? Why was I tolerating their posiness? Why was I tolerating their snappy attitude? You know? But you do. I did. I clearly did. And I am angry at myself that that's that that my friends group and everything was was not so we haven't there for me emotionally as well because that is how you attract.

Victoria Volk: Well, and you're very selfish as a as a young person. Right? Like, you're just gonna be selfish. It's all it is all about you. Right? But I think too, when it comes to being an empath. It's when you were speaking to the idea of tolerating how people are treating you. I think it's – I think as an empath, we internalize. Well, that What does that say about me? I did something. And we we almost own the response of other people

Sujala Shastry: Yes.

Victoria Volk: Because we immediately think it must be something about us.

Sujala Shastry: Mhmm. We accommodate them, give give our own reason. For me, at this point, I'm like, what was I thinking? But well, that was a part of me, which is no longer there. So

Victoria Volk: which brings a great segue into the Sajala before. Sajala now, what are the key differences do do you feel about you? If people who know you knew you then like, I'm and I imagine that you've had a lot of people fall away in your life. Just Oh, yeah. This is brown.

Sujala Shastry: They just automatically just dropped like, a pack of cuts, you go forward and they just drop. So the before Sujala was tolerating, bossiness, snappiness, and, you know, crankiness of others. Was a people pleaser? Was was always available for others? Always. Whether they have been there for me or not, but I will still be there for them. They can just decision I will I'll be there and they then people could walk over me with their decisions, with their attitude, or they could just use me as a punching bag. You know, and somebody who was so low like, have no confidence, no self esteem. All of this was me. All of this was me.
And now, Desjola, I think I have fallen in love with her for the first time in my life. I can't remember previously as a baby I had loved myself or not because with the brain forgets that itself, that's also gone. That memory is gone of me. That I think I fall in love with with this version of myself who do not tolerate nonsense, who who is very caring, who is very understanding, but with boundaries. And I can recognize far off that you're being, you know, all those attitude, the which doesn't come. You're just pushed away. So that one and I am confidence wise, I am getting there. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. But how how much I have come? I'm happy, Pete? No. Yes. And then I now I have meaningful people in my So people who come into my life match my energy and people who don't who are not in my life. Either they know the old version of Sakella, and not the new version. And another interesting fact is they cannot the new version of Sadhana. They're like, what? What happened? To her. I'm like, I am no longer the old version. So this is new me, happy me, peaceful me. So, you know, speak or small mindedness is no There's no space around me for that. If that the gate is closed and you can't say whatever you want to my face and I'll be quiet. I'm no longer that girl. So yeah. It's been quite a journey, but I'm really be proud of myself. And I feel so happy to say to anybody, you know. Because you asked I feel so happy you asked this question because not many understand that it's like you have really you know, you have to really go through that that whatever. That tunnel of, you know, hardship, that uncomfortableness, that burning sensation, the sleepless nights, the anger and the and the huge amount of crime. So and you come outside of the another tunnel and you find yourself the new you. Is just amazing. So yeah. Anybody who haven't spoken to me in the last, I don't know, seven, eight years. If they haven't connected to me face to face apart from just a bit wish is not considered I don't consider wishes as connection. It's just a wish. But if you haven't connected me as a person, you don't know me. I sometimes I look I can't recognize myself.

Victoria Volk: Imagine if we all just went through, like, our Facebook friend list and just eliminated all the people that really don't know us. How many how many people would we actually have on our friend's list or

Sujala Shastry: a friend's head? One hand, two hands lucky. One hand, I think I think it was okay. Yeah. That's what I did. I I think it was five or five years back. I just deleted myself from all the WhatsApp groups. School engineering, some office groups. Everything everything I was out. Apart from the family one, I have two or three, the family groups apart from that, none of the groups I'm associated with.
I just deleted myself. And guess what? Nobody bothered. May one or two of them asked, oh, what is it? You've logged in. I said, I I just didn't feel good being part of the group, so I removed myself. And that's it. No more questions asked. Nothing else. And I'm happy with it. I don't expect them to understand it as well. So Yeah. It is very surprising that out of all the groups you, like, delete yourself from. They were only I can even count. There are only three people who contacted me.
There are so many that what happened. And that when I gave this answer, they all they said they they just said, okay. And just left it at that. So yeah. Because sometimes people don't want to know more about you. That's what I realized. They're not as interesting that I as I was there for them, they don't want to ask me how I am, what is it, and everything. And and the surprising factors in the initial part oh, this is one thing I didn't mention during this what helped me to change was blogging as well. So I opened one blog web side called Medley Tales and I just started to write letters to my mother. This one and this helped me and I published it on the WhatsApp group, on Instagram, on Facebook, but apart from because for many people, it was a new it was a news. Not many of my friends knew that I had lost my mom. Yeah. So I was in school, like, till the grade ten. In one school, everybody knew because it happened during that time. So anybody who was known after the age of fifteen, I ordered only one or two, three people.
That's it. Not many of them new. And now I wonder why. And then I know, first of all, I wasn't comfortable. Second, People never gave me that emotional safe space for me to share it with them. And to the ones I shared, were taken aback, were so uncomfortable, and they don't want to talk. So many of my friends who even though they know the they know that I have lost my mom, they don't even know why I know how I lost my mom. They don't ask that question. They're so uncomfortable. Do you

Victoria Volk: think this brings up a great point? And I actually have a note for myself. Is Do you think that's and granted, I know in Western society that's very true, but in Indian culture? Is that, like, what were the beliefs about grief and death and dying that you learned in your culture? And how is that how do you What do you recognize are the differences now being in France and and knowing what you know now, like, what are the cultural things that you have connected the dots with growing up and what you were taught and learned and and

Sujala Shastry: No. That's a great question. I never thought about that, but I will try answering it. Back there, there's a support system in India. So since we are all, like, you know, joint family and close knit it, We have a lot of people. They take care of your food, your is your dress ready, or going to school, everything is taken care of, but emotions are not discussed. It's it's wrapped. Another carpet shoved it far away because people I think people don't know how to support a griever. They they know how to be insensitive. They know how to make very easy. I don't know. Rough. Rough for a rude comment, but they don't know how to be good. And and during the course of the last five, six years, I have spoken to a lot of people interactions, sometime one off, you know, just for fifteen, twenty minutes, just sharing. What I have felt is I think whole world were just not comfortable to speak about the dead person, especially to the person who are very close to them.
It's closed. I think this has been a very uniform aspect to what to my understanding is. And in India, what I felt was you have a good support system in this in terms of providing taking care of, you don't have to cook meals. There are people who will do that stuff for you. That is a good part of that, but the emotional part.
I think it was I I I don't say it's low. It was zero. Let us you know, let's be honest, it was zero. They will not talk about they nobody spoke about my mother in front of me. Nobody. Oh, we will make her sad. Oh, we will make her. But that's the whole point. They got it wrong. I felt that only I was keeping my mother and everybody else were moving on. But that's not true. They were grieving in a different way, but it affected me more because it's my mother. But not speaking about your person, doesn't reduce anything, but rather it increases. It increases the heaviness what I had to hold on to for so many years. It was not needed. Yes. We lost a person. All of us did. They were his my mom had both of their parents. My dad I, brothers, such a closed neck, big family, but we all love somebody we love. And I don't know why we couldn't speak. And I think that really breaks my heart. It really breaks my heart to say that why you why it's not that others were in grieving. It's not that my grandfather was not grieving. She was the only daughter. Among the boys. So she was scared. She was she was loved. But why you couldn't share it with her own daughter? There is nobody tell me that, oh, your mom used to do this. Yes. I would miss her, but I would also feel I would have felt good that, oh, okay. She was like that. I'm You're learn you'd be learning about her. Yeah. Exactly. And I suppressed my emotions so much that all the bad and the good memories. Everything is in a box that sometimes, like, out of the bloom, I just get it top. And I'm like, what? From where was this memory from? So I'm still in that process. I don't have a lot of memory, but it keeps coming up in the most unexpected day all the time. I think that is the most uncomfortable thing because sometimes you're outside and sometimes my son say something and something just strikes back. I'm like oh, I'm like, okay. That night, I'm like, okay. What was that memory? What was that memory? I'm now I'm curious because now I'm not in a separation mode. Does the opposite. So I'm trying to dig deep and sometimes it is half memory and it hurts me. It hurts me to the cover that I don't have a complete memory of that at least particular situation. Yeah. Yeah. I I think we deviate I think I deviated what was the question?

Victoria Volk: No. You answered it and actually Okay. You have a lot of pictures.

Sujala Shastry: Yeah. Some. For those for that time, yes. It's quite a few. No.
It is not now that you can have twenty.

Victoria Volk: No. No. Exactly.

Sujala Shastry: But yeah. I do have I do have the memories I traveled with her. I do have memories of playing board games with her. Yeah. Yeah. I do. Yeah. Slowly. This yeah. It's there, but I'm happy. It's there.

Victoria Volk: You mentioned Well, and I was just gonna say too, the art for my podcast is me on an island holding a megaphone. Right? And I think that's when you were speaking, that's what I envisioned as, like, as a family. Right? You're each putting yourselves on these griving islands. But if only you would just talk about it, you could come together on the island and Oh. It'd be your own community. And so has that started to shift and change as you've been talking more and going through your process or no?

Sujala Shastry: No. No. Because not everybody is still the is still uncomfortable. They read my blog they get emotional. They say you've written it very well, expressed it well. That's it. So I think it's difficult for them as well, and I think it's I think it's a generation. Right? It's the whole generation. Just didn't know what to do with the emotions. And I am glad that we are there is a wave of change in terms of emotions. In the last five, six years. So somehow it coincided with my healing journey and my age as well. But yeah. I think it's it's sad, but I feel I think if after hearing on the podcast, maybe if somebody picks up the call and shares some memories about my mom, I think I will I will let you know. I think it is a win. It's a start. But sleep chances. I don't have any expectations.

Victoria Volk: But I think the most important thing too is I know the impact my healing has had on my parenting, which in turn has an impact on my my the journey my children will take emotionally. Yes. And that's why I always say the greatest gift we can give our kids is our own feeling and why it's so important for us to dust and sweep our own doorstep first before thinking our kids are the problem, our kids have behavioral issues, our kids are have emotional issues, what have you look in the mirror And what is it that you are not looking at that is being projected onto your kids? Or what are they emulating and learning from you? Because we

Sujala Shastry: learned yeah.

Victoria Volk: We learned by the age of three, seventy five percent of how to respond to life. The rest comes by age fifteen, those formative teen years. So and it's not to say, once they hit fifteen or three or four or five, it's too late. Mhmm. It's not it's not too late. You know, it took me thirty years, three decades to figure my shit out. But, you know, how many times I've said to myself, man, I wish I would have discovered grief recovery sooner. I wish I would have, you know, that's grief too. That's grief too. Always. And you did touch on job loss. And I don't want to gloss over that because that's that's a loss too. Nobody has to die for us to grieve. Right? And so that was a catapult for you to lean into your creative urge to do your podcast, but I'm sure at the time it was painful.
Yeah? Yes.

Sujala Shastry: You bought a very beautiful thing. They always think I grieve about my mom, but I have so many other points to grieve. I would really like to tell that. I had you I also have to grief about the girl I would be if my mom would be alive. Yep?

Victoria Volk: Yep. What what could have been?

Sujala Shastry: Yeah. What could have been. I agree for that girl. Who could have been and I just changed the trajectory of it because of one death and that's my closest person. And second one is for all the last years of me being in the survival mode. That's a grief too. Mhmm. I still grieve it, and it angers me. So, yeah, it's like twenty years I was alive. Okay? But I lost those many years in coping. Copying the unknown. I don't I didn't even I was coping something, but I didn't even know I was coping. I didn't understand. So I have to so People talk about always the grief.
Your mom won't be there on your wedding day or when your kid is born. That is a given. But what people don't understand is all the in between days, you grief, there was this one instant where I think it choked me so much. My son was two years old. He had a very bad year infection. My husband was done with vital flu. I had to take care of everything in the house. At that point, You know, I I still remember. I just screamed in the night saying that why you had to die and make me struggle so much because mentally, physically, it was exhausting for me. Do all the work, keep up everything, and no way to look. And I know one person whom I could have backed on blindly was my mother. And I haven't had her for twenty eight years. So I have to grieve for that as well, not for the glossy part of, oh, he she will miss my, you know, my son's birthday. Birth birthdays, you know, parties and everything. That's a given. That's a given. Everybody knows that. But they don't know that that feeling what you have. It's every day in different ways. And it hits you like like just like a sudden slap pat and you're like, what? Oh my god. You grieve again that night. So it's like it is so much and this also makes me feel I have never heard my mom on the phone because I lost her in nineteen ninety seven. The mobile phones were not in our hands yet. And it was only landline. And I and I stayed pretty much with my mom's who never had a chance to. I was not college or anything. So I've never heard my mom's voice over a phone. I don't have a call that says, I'm a calling. I don't have it. I have never experienced that to this one. So I grief. I can't take a selfie with her. You grieve. So there are so many different ways you grieve. And it's sometimes the pain brings you to numbness. You stop thinking, you stop missing, you stop feeling, and sometimes your body and your mind can't take it. Just can't take it. It goes to that blank state. And I just let like, it's like a big wave has hit me and I have to just stand there Allow the big wave to pass however long that is because sometimes it's just that. I think that this part, people who have increased, don't understand.

Victoria Volk: Or allow themselves to grieve. Yeah. What gives you hope

Sujala Shastry: for your future? It's just that I allow my son and people around me to be themselves. And in one of my therapy session, I was called the black sheep of the family. Because nobody speaks emotionally in my family, like the way I do. So in at my therapy at one point, I so he asked me, this this this this he's like, you know what you're called? I said, I don't know. You know, the flagship of the family. I'm like, what that was the first time I got even introduced to that word and he explained to me what it is and I was like, oh, okay. So I think I would I'm happy that I had to bear all these things, but I'm happy that I can be an example if not for many at least for my son. And to be who he wants to be, how he wants to be, and I am his emotional safe space no matter what. And I give this to all my closest people, who are my people. And I feel this is my like, personally how I can change. This gives me hope that I am the change in my situation. Secondly is I started this podcast. I lost the job, and I wasn't ready to relocate because for me family comes first. So I got lot of opportunities to move to Netherlands. Germany, but I can't I can't travel back and forth. So I said no to many of the offers and because family comes first to me no matter what. So I already had this idea of starting a podcast, but I thought after working for a while I'll start, but then I think God redirected me to earlier. So I started it. So the the whole concept of podcast is also to just to listen to other people's journey. That's it. Because if nothing, I can be in this world. I just I just want to be I just want for that one hour, the other person feels that somebody listened to me. I think that is all I would like to give it to that person.
And in a way, if it reflects to the huge audience, so let it be. I think somewhere we have lost the capability to listen to other people, emotions just because it gives us makes us feel uncomfortable. So that is my little part of and I want to build a community over it, and I have I I can't even say I have begun. It's just that I have made up of mind, I've just opened the door. So let's see where it goes.
So These are the things. And thirdly, when I see other people, there are so many podcasts like yourself and like so many people who are there to listen. Like, it's very warming to me that you asked there was this old versus new nobody had asked me that question. So thank you for that. So it just feels that somewhere as a community we are going, somewhere. Maybe it's a small, but I always believe a change will be small. It it it takes it takes years to see the see what it what wave can it bring about. So, yeah, that gives me hope. So these are the three different areas I feel it'll hopefully.

Victoria Volk: And what would you say your grief has taught you?

Sujala Shastry: That it's so lonely,

Victoria Volk: but it doesn't have to be.

Sujala Shastry: Yeah. But it was. So whenever whenever whenever somebody says grief, I don't I think it's a scar. It's a trauma. I still carry. So I still feel lonely about it. That is how I feel, but what it has made me learn is you can also cherish people who are dead. In a vein, and you

Victoria Volk: can build your own community.

Sujala Shastry: You can build the community that you need. Yes. So it doesn't have to be doom and gloom. Grieve. You can't cherish it. You can share ish a person personality or something they loved or something you share something. You can share ish. That's what the healing part of the grief has taught me that Yes. It is painful. Nobody says it is easy. It's not that all but once you cross that path of accepting and feeling the pain, you can cherish the person.

Victoria Volk: What is one of your cherished memories of your mother? Mhmm.

Sujala Shastry: One of my cherished. I think never left me alone. She was always present with me. Like, whether I was doing my schoolwork or playing with her board games, she was always present with me when she was around me. As I said, was in a joint family. I was I lived along with eleven other people in the house. So so which of a little bit time I got with her after school and over the weekends, she used to be completely present with me. And I think this is something I I think I'll feel her, you know. So that her presence makes me feel so when this I think why now I understand why it was so so painful for me because her presence were so comforting and wow. So yeah. I think playing board games with her was the most I think all the board games, the classic board games I learned from her. And we used to always go for haircuts together. She used to get hers. She used to get mine regularly. Second and third one was I think we used to I used to go with her for everything. Even she has to buy a small thing in the next door, I used to run with her all the time. So I think these are the few moments, I think, which comes to my mind currently. Oh, at the time?

Victoria Volk: I think one of the lessons that you've shared without sharing it as a lesson is that you can be completely surrounded by many people who love you and yet still feel completely alone. Yes. And that the one key differentiator that we have to those we are in relationship with is emotional connection. Yes. And had you maybe felt that your grief journey would have maybe taken a different path?

Sujala Shastry: Yes. Definitely. I wouldn't be stuck in a survival mode for sure. At at least that would have changed. What

Victoria Volk: is all your family still in India?

Sujala Shastry: Yes.

Victoria Volk: Do you see them often? Or

Sujala Shastry: Yearly? I go yearly. Yeah. I break them.

Victoria Volk: You you mentioned you have broke. No.

Sujala Shastry: No. I'm the only kid. I have cousins.

Victoria Volk: Only child.

Sujala Shastry: Okay. Yeah. I'm the only child.

Victoria Volk: See. And that's another aspect too. It's, like, one thing I've learned in doing my podcast and and just the importance of siblings is that they kind of fill the gaps of your childhood for you, especially if you have an older sibling. And I never really looked at my siblings in that way, but it is. It's a relationship that is so unique. They're the people that know you in a way that nobody else does. What is one tip that you would give a hurting heart today?

Sujala Shastry: If somebody gives you the emotional space, don't be reluctant or or to take it. Please do. Please do take it. You can pay it forward, but please do take it. If somebody is giving. And secondly, if there is nobody, try to be self aware of what you're feeling and try to find books or online help something which you can do with your own capability. Don't don't prolong. It does no good to you. Forget about others. It just doesn't do good to you.

Victoria Volk: That's very good advice. Is there anything else you would like to share that you don't feel you got to?

Sujala Shastry: No. I think I've shared so many bits of it. You you have answered I mean, you've questioned me so beautifully that I have shared few of the things which I haven't shared so far with, I don't know, with many of them. Maybe my husband, I have shared, but not not to anybody else.

Victoria Volk: I feel honored. Thank you so much.

Sujala Shastry: Thank you. Thank you so much.

Victoria Volk: On my podcast, your story. And I feel like even through cultural differences grief is the one thing that unites us all. It doesn't matter Yes. It doesn't discriminate and we all grow up learning these unhelpful and almost hurtful ways to cope and and and how to grieve. We do it very poorly. And that's why my program is called do grief differently. It's time we do grief differently. And so thank you so much for sharing your insights and what you've learned on your path, and for starting your podcast because the more voices that get on the mission that is similar to mine, which is changing the conversation wrong grief, talking about it, like we talk about the weather, the more that do that. The better off our next generations will be.

Sujala Shastry: Yeah. And thank you so much for I never thought I would share so many things that you were so warm and your questions made me think and Doug's memories out of me. So thanks to you, and thank you for, you know, I really enjoyed speaking with you. And as you say, I strongly believe the how we support the grieber and how we speak about grief needs to change, and there is no doubt about it. And and I'm happy that somewhere you and me are trying to bring about a change in our own little ways. So thank you for giving me this space.

Victoria Volk: You're welcome. Where can people find you if they wanna connect with you? Unless it's your podcast.

Sujala Shastry: Yeah. I'm on although I'm on it is called Discovering Journeys. And you can find it on YouTube, on Spotify, on Apple, on Amazon, and then you can connect with me on Instagram, on FB, on LinkedIn. I'm there on pretty much everything. And I will I will give you the I'll share the links with you.

Victoria Volk: Yes. And I'll put those in the show notes. So thank

Sujala Shastry: you very much. Thank you.

Victoria Volk: Have a blessed rest of twenty twenty four as we record this. It will be published in twenty twenty five. So happy early New Year to you and holidays. I wish you a great end of twenty twenty four. And and remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life, much love.