Thrive!: Falling in Love with Life - Tapa blanda

At thirty, Shahana found the little girl she once was - brimming with love, creativity and a desire to touch the world in meaningful and purposeful ways - nearly obliterated. Suddenly, she was a performer, achiever, professional, wife, emigrated Indian-American, corporate employee, home-owner...and other such good-good things that earned her checked boxes and plaques and approving nods. Before she knew it, she was co-dependent in a violent marriage, the scars on her soul far deeper than those on her body, unable to love anymore, but mostly hating only herself. Later that year, she walked towards the terrifying flame of light that beckoned to her, leaving behind the house of cards she had so carefully fabricated. In Thrive! Falling in Love with Life, Shahana tells you what happened in the seven years thereafter, and all the amazing insights that came to light. She shares how she nearly died from the suffering that followed...but how one day, a miraculous vision compelled her to choose life. She describes how she found her center of gravity, her Higher Power; how becoming conscious to the present completely transformed her past and future; how compassion opened the doors to authentic power; how she recognized her choice in everything that had happened and everything yet to be; and how her separate physical existence dissolved to connect her with everything and everybody around. And she reveals how, through all these insights, she unlocked the mysterious powers of her creativity: the ability to create her own life at every turn! Thrive! is about all these things...yet most of all, it is about love: that pure, essential, divine, generative life-force. Shahana shares how her commitment to unconditional love opened her to love for the divine, for other beings, for all human creative potential...for life itself. Today she works as a design strategist, storyteller, performing artist, community advocate and creativity coach, but this time around she knows that all she really does, is love. Because she loves, she creates, and because she creates, she acts as a catalyst in the lives of others.

Shahana Dattagupta wishes to be the catalyst for the highest (creative) potential of others, to create a thriving world. She uses various mediums to this end - writing, visual art, music, theater, and architectural design. Shahana considers Seattle the place of her rebirth, and after a decade in her picturesque womb, "home" has come to be associated with both India's vigorous monsoons and Seattle's incessant rain, both Diwali and Thanksgiving, and both August 15th and July 4th. She still tears up inexplicably about the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. And she really does believe that love is always the answer. Shahana has previously written Ten Avatars, a debut fiction collection exploring 'avatars' of womanhood through her transcultural lens. She is also co-founding-editor of the monthly 'zine Courageous Creativity, which curates stories of courage, creativity and change from diverse contributors all over the world.