To every Indian woman who felt her heart stop this week

This newsletter is hard to write.

If you grew up in India as a woman, this week was very likely hard for you.

Trigger Warning: Distressing themes in this post. Feel free to skip this.

This week has been about the brutal rape and killing of a 31-year old woman, a doctor, in Kolkata, India.

It's been all over the global news, hard to ignore.

And - this is very personal.

To you.

To me.

No matter where we live.

Women's bodies, the battleground.

Our bodies feel it. Deeply.

For some of us, we get hit immediately.

The news - the racing heart, the sadness, all of it, the tears.

But for so many more of us, we've trained our bodies to "function" through the powerlessness.

We completely switch off mainstream news.

This is when a specific pattern sets in.

It manifests in ways we might not even recognize:

? Sitting on a towel after a bath, for a while after you get out of the shower

? Sitting inside your car, at the parking lot, at your garage long after you switch off the ignition

? Going into a room multiple times, wondering why you went there

? Mindlessly scrolling for hours in bed

? Watching an entire Netflix episode, with no idea what happened in the plot

? Reaching out for sugar (or carbs) or crunchy foods

? Opening your inbox multiple times, not remembering why

? "Add to cart"

? Reading an entire bedtime story, with no idea what happened in the plot

This is called "functional freeze".

The enormity of what's happening around the world, to women's bodies, is too much.

It's overwhelming.

And the body needs to shut down, to collapse.

But we brace - plow on, power through.

Yet, the weight of it all lingers, surfacing at the most unexpected moments:

? During a team meeting

? At a team retreat

? During a holiday after deeply connecting times with your spouse and kids

These moments of vulnerability remind us of our shared sadness.

To every woman feeling the weight of this tragedy:

It's okay to not be okay.

It's okay to feel lost, angry, or numb.

Your pain is seen.

In this moment, maybe we don't need to be strong.

We don't need to have answers.

We can simply be - in all our hurt, confusion, and vulnerability.

Know that across cities and time zones, there's a sisterhood of women carrying this same heaviness.

Be tender with yourself this week.

Your feelings, in all their complexity, are echoed in countless hearts across the world.

#YouAreNotAlone