Strength TogetHER 10 - Session 4


Jan 23, 2021.

Strength togetHER is a safe virtual space where girls from different backgrounds come together and share their stories. We believe in rising ourselves by lifting up others. We walk with the motto of “girls supporting girl”. 

Addressing the rising concern of mental health issues, we talked about “Peace of Mind” on our fourth session. We shared our stories and experience relevant to the topic and talked it out. It became an interactive session with an amazing moderator.


Our session was moderated by Shailaja Kharel who is currently pursuing her masters in sociology. Having completed her Bachelor’s degree in social science from National College affiliated to Kathmandu University, she has worked on her own project called “Developing psychological competence” and is an active counselor as well. She is an analytical thinker who believes in understanding the root of mental health issues through socio-psychological perspective. The former President of ‘Rotaract Club of Kathmandu Metro’ and an active member, she has also been involved with various projects under it.  Alongside, our amazing moderator is an avid reader, frequent traveler, nature lover and a foodie who wants to start her own talk show on food. 


As usual, we started hearing from our speakers who spoke their heart out and shared the stories. One of our speakers shared about how productivity of a day determines her peace of mind. She talked about doing something with passion such as reading and singing a song. Everyday our peace of mind is determined by how the day starts or how it goes.

The other speaker shared, “When I do something I love that brings me peace of mind. Beside daily routine, I do something to reflect 30 min before sleep which I believe is very important for self-evaluation and growth.” Another story went as, “When life went downhill, I made me my friend. I discovered my passion of art. That’s how I cope up my anxiety.”


One of us also shared “Cleanliness makes me happy, so I clean my room and arrange the shelf to cheer myself up.” Someone shared about music as a peace of mind in all state. Calm music is soothing not only to hear but also to the heart.

While some carry their peace as dance, music, art and exploring the hobbies, the others might have different perspective on state of peace of mind. 


One of our speakers talked about how over time from teen to now, her perception on peace of mind and state of calmness has changed

Now that see feels the utmost level of tranquility from a small circle, peaceful environment, friendly time which rarely used to be quite a thing during her teen days.


She also talked about how priorities change overtime and that too brings a huge change in our daily life experience. 

Alongside, we also talked about thought processing, prior experiences are the things that often hovers around us and impacts our mindfulness. 


We also talked about how different person deals with issues differently. As we keep on changing in our nature, we also learn to adapt. Adapting to new habits, changing ways of life we don’t feel comfortable in, social media deactivation are some of the common things we do to cope up with stress and limit ourselves to calm and peacefulness. Some people just love their own company. Our moderator gave us reflections on how differences in us makes us cope up in different ways and our perspectives differs too. 



Some of the lessons to take back home from the session would be: 

  1. Knowing about someone is important

  2. We need our space to understand ourselves at times

  3. We deal differently and have different perspective

  4. Our experience and prior things impact on us

  5. Amidst all chaos, our happiness and peace of mind matters the most



This blog is written by Samikshya Aryal, an undergraduate of Bachelors in Development Studies. She prefers pronouns; she/her and identifies herself as a feminist. She has developed a keen interest in literature and is an aspiring poet. Besides an avid reader and enthusiastic learner, she wants to travel as much. 

-Samikshya Aryal, Cohort Coordinator (LOKOPAKAR)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Strength TogetHER 10 - Session 5

Image
F eb 20,2021. Strength togetHER is a safe virtual space where girls from different backgrounds come together and share their stories. We believe in rising ourselves by lifting up others. We walk with the motto of “girls supporting girl”.  On the evening of 20 th of February 2021, we talked on the topic of “LGBTQ”. Our topic for the session was, “Love wins and it is all that matters.”  Our session was moderated by Mx. Soph Gautam, a queer writer, photographer, and advocate for equality. They recently graduated with a BA in International Relations and Media Communications. They are passionate about feminism, mental health, queer liberation, and fat liberation. They use their photography and art to talk about taboo topics and call attention to social causes. As usual, we started with getting to know our moderator and moved on to hearing from amazing speakers who spoke their heart out and shared personal stories. This session was a little different than usual. We had the most productive c
Read more

Strength TogetHER 10- Session 3

Image
  5th Jan 2021 With the motto of ‘girl supporting girls’, LOKOPAKAR, a youth development organization is currently running “Strength TogetHER”, a safe virtual space where girls from different backgrounds come together and share their stories. We believe in rising ourselves by lifting up others.  The third session of cohort ten took place on a chilly evening on 5th of January 2021 which extended up to two hours of interaction. Our topic of discussion was “A Time I Felt Low”. We had a very productive session with strong input from speakers and feedbacks form the moderator. We had Miss Kavya Biswokarma as our moderator, a fresh graduate of Bachelors of Social Sciences. Experienced with mentoring, she have now been emceeing for over 14 years. Previously associated with Maiti Nepal as translator, she has also worked as a junior journalist at The Republica. She is a self-trained dancer who have won many competitions and choreographed for a programme recently for a school named Bloom Nepal. O
Read more

Strength TogetHER 10- Session 7

Image
April 29 2021 Strength togetHER is a safe virtual space where girls from different backgrounds come together and share their stories. We believe in rising ourselves by lifting up others. We walk with the motto of “girls supporting girl”.  On the evening of 8 th of April 2021, we talked about ‘Consent’ and how it comes in various layers other than the mostly talked sexual consent. Our topic for the session was, “NO is a full sentence”.  Our session was moderated by Pratikshya Rajopadhyay who is a mental health advocate and practitioner who's passionate about inclusive mental health education, self-love and body positivity. She recently completed her post-graduate degree in counseling psychology. She's a writer and a feminist and believes in the power of storytelling and radical empathy to bring social change. The moderator asked us a question in the very beginning of her feedback that awestruck us. It was “How do you set a boundary?” This question answered our consensual bounda
Read more