Malcolm Stern: 0:47

Welcome to my podcast, Slay Your Dragons with Compassion, which is done in conjunction with my friends at online events. This is a podcast which explores how the nature of adversity and the overcoming of suffering can create great change in ourselves and in the world, and my guest today is Rosie Datt, and her story is involved with a lot that went on in India, and her key words, when I spoke to her before about this, was transforming suffering into art, and that's a theme that's arisen before, that art is actually a wonderful way of transforming suffering. I know for me, when I wrote my book Slay your Dragons With Compassion, it was to look at my daughter's death by suicide and actually in the writing of that and in the shaping of that, I thought there was a healing. So, Rosy, let's come to you and let's explore the work you're doing in India, which is very interesting. Rosie, you're a therapist and you have a project in India called Shakti. Tell us a little bit about that project.

Rosy Datt: 1:56

The project is to take women and women in trouble, whether they're abused by their husbands or even parents, and they feel quite trapped, and what I do is I interview them and help them improve their lives. So finding them work, finding them stability and just liberating them so that they can take care of themselves, rather than being dependent on a man to take care of them, as supposed to, because that's the belief system that goes with you're a daughter, and then you're a good daughter, and then you're a good wife and a good mother. And then they lost their identity, as I personally did. And then how I rose that self-disclosure. I continued.

Malcolm Stern: 2:47

So tell us about what happened for you. You were brought up in India.

Rosy Datt: 2:51

I was 10 when I arrived to Canada as an immigrant and faced a lot of bullying, racism, and all I wanted to do in school was to make friends and be included, and so my studying and my you know, academics sort of flew out the window. And at this age I'm still studying and that passion is still going. So, yes, I came to Canada when I was 10 and I'm 60 in June, and it's been quite a journey, coming here, being a victim of two cultures.

Malcolm Stern: 3:28

So, yes, it's quite hard to land from one culture into another, especially as a young child who has to navigate all of the rights of childhood, and presumably you found friends and support along your way, or not.

Rosy Datt: 3:48

No, I didn't, because I couldn't understand the teachers and the school system, where this is how it is. I would go home and it would be. We're only here to improve ourselves and you have to. It's okay not to have friends. You do work and you take care of things and you work hard and that's that's that we're. There's a purpose why we're here. So as a child, I couldn't understand what that meant, and there was a lot of dedication, uh, to India, um, which my parents had, and we weren't a uh, we're, we're a middle class family. But there was, it was quite struggle, there was a lot of struggles, and so I was what took you out of India?

Malcolm Stern: 4:34

what, what? Why did you leave India? Why did your parents leave India?

Rosy Datt: 4:38

they left India? Um, because my father wanted to see a broad country and my mom's family was here, so it was mere family class at that time. Now you can come in very different ways as an immigrant, and so they immigrated. My little brother who was six months, and then we three stayed behind, so it was a family class. So he wanted to come and wanted to be invited, and then my mom's brother, my uncle, invited them, and then we came after two years of being alone, three sisters in India and not really knowing my youngest sister would call my mom Auntie Auntie, could I please have a cookie? And it was hard for my mother to. So that separation, I feel, causes a lot of friction and issues.

Malcolm Stern: 5:31

And you've found your way into becoming a therapist. You found your way into taking confirming action for people who are much less fortunate than yourself. And what led you to that? So what did you go through in yourself that led you to actually understand the nature of the suffering that goes on?

Rosy Datt: 5:52

Well, I was molested by my uncle at 11. And because my parents, you know, thought that it was just the education and care wasn't there, so they were busy trying to take care of a family. And that happened from 11 all the way to 18, making me believe that it was love. So I became very confused into the soft, vibrant child. I became louder and there was this anger build up for some time and that followed by an arranged marriage with a gay gentleman or a guy who, at 22, because that was the order of things, my younger sister wanted to be married and the older one it would be shame on the family. And so I agreed because I thought I didn't know any better and as developing, so I would continue university and back and forth.

Rosy Datt: 6:46

But I played those and after a lot of abuse, after two years I felt this isn't going to work, so I divorced and then there was a lot of brutality in the house. They didn't know what to do with me. I was this bad child who was molested and who was tainted and fragmented and nobody would want me. And now I was this bag of issues that nobody knew what to do, this bag of issues that nobody knew what to do, and a lot of verbal abuse, a lot of physical abuse as well and just unworthy sense of feeling. And so then, at 29, I agreed the only way to escape was to say yes to another arranged marriage, and it might be better, but it'll be better than the prison that I was in. Maybe I'll have some freedom, which wasn't the case Then.

Rosy Datt: 7:35

The second one ended in 24 years of suffering with two children, and that's when an awakening or sense why the suffering? And I need to do something. So I was dancing with five rhythms. I was dancing conscious dance, dancing with five rhythms. I was dancing conscious dance, near neuromuscular integrative action, and those dances and that movement allowed me to, I want to say, find myself, but it was the ability to go inward so there was such a difficult set of circumstances around you that you had to find some creative way of coming to yourself, and the dance would have been one of those.

Malcolm Stern: 8:11

And and when you said you were abused and, um, physically and and and sort of verbally, was that by your parents?

Rosy Datt: 8:18

yes, because I tried to take my life. And then they beat me harder because shame on you for putting us, we would go to jail for you and what. What an awful child. And I couldn't breathe. So my mother put water in my mouth so I could breathe because I was hyperventilating, and and while my father continued, and yes, shame, yes, shame. And so that that shame part I just lived and I thought where is the shame? And but what about me? What about me? And so I felt like some, everybody needed to find who they were, and it was very important to go inside and find the healing and seek help. And that therapy wasn't shame. So when I started to talk to people, they were being friends and family friends were being helped by something that I said that made them feel, oh, I'm not alone, oh, I'm not alone. And so that's where the birth of becoming a therapist began. It wasn't a choice, I was driven to it.

Malcolm Stern: 9:19

So your first arranged marriage was with a gay man. Did you know he was gay before you married?

Rosy Datt: 9:26

No, nobody knew. But he knew and his father knew. But they thought a nice girl was going to fix their son and he was also in India and it was usually I was a ticket both times to immigrate into Canada from India. And so, and fixed by I mean by he was an ENT specialist. The father really adored me, everything was great and they just thought that because he was a troubled boy who lost his mother at 14, he would. I don't know if the father knew or not, and I kind of found out. And again, the education was very lacking in my upbringing. So in 1980s not too many people came out.

Malcolm Stern: 10:07

How did, how did you deal with that? So there you are in a marriage where you're um, you're with someone who doesn't desire you at all. Physically uh, presumably um, and did you get on emotionally? Um, intellectually?

Rosy Datt: 10:20

no, not, not at all. I was just this, nobody and nothing. But because of the traumatization that never really I didn't get support or therapy from the molesting. I felt this body was undervalued and not, and I was raised and I really, truly believe that a woman provides a service to her husband in every single way and, whether you feel like it or not, it was, it was. For after years and years I found out that pleasure was both sides.

Malcolm Stern: 10:54

I'm glad you found it at some point. So your second arranged marriage sounds like there were. There were difficulties there too, and and it's interesting because some people say arranged marriage is is, is, is is good because you sort of you have to find your way together. But I think there's something also very dangerous in that, for the spirit. I don't mean no, dangerous physically necessarily. What happened with your second marriage?

Rosy Datt: 11:19

Second one, he just was. You know, normally Indian men from India a family would rarely marry a divorced person and 29. But they were very eager and everything was, you know, happy and the authenticity you speak about in your book resonates and it was like, ah yes, it's so important to say something uncomfortable and get it over with. But my own truth was that I was looking for an escape from my parents' prison, as it felt, and I thought it wouldn't be. So I tried to make everything work and I overlooked some things, thinking it's not as bad as that. It's not as bad as that.

Malcolm Stern: 11:59

So you gave yourself permission to live a mediocre life effectively.

Rosy Datt: 12:06

Because that's as good as it gets.

Malcolm Stern: 12:08

I thought so there was no expectation of any possibility that you would lead a rich and potent life, but something must have happened to you in that process where, I mean, you stuck it out for 20 plus years, um, but something must have happened to you in that process which woke you up. And what? What was it that happened to you that that actually led you to believe that actually you can have a rich, meaningful life when I found my enough.

Rosy Datt: 12:36

when I found my enough, that because, um, when I would ask for um you know money or for the children needed something he asked me to abort the children. When I became pregnant and, being a physician and a doctor who I put through medical school here in Canada from MBBS because you're really nothing when you come from as a MBBS and so all of that added up, what turned was when he told me to abort. That was when I found no, like I found my no. Otherwise, it was just when I said that, um, I want to sleep alone and have my own space in that um, and he would say you have this nice house and you have this house by the river and you're a doctor's wife and so therefore suck it up and not in those words, and I began to lock my door and have that peace.

Rosy Datt: 13:25

So I uh found the no when he asked me to abort. Both times I didn't. And then I just kind of separated and lived to provide a nice environment and a comfortable environment until my children were old enough and I led a separate life. So I was a single mom, but not really, and he just provided whatever security financially we needed and he did his own thing, I did my own thing was he?

Malcolm Stern: 13:55

it was what was he? A parent to your children? I know it's physically apparent.

Rosy Datt: 14:00

So he, he didn't want much to do with them until they were teenagers, until the divorce came and I had held a no position and he threatened divorce. But the divorce happened because the Canadian system, you know, saw it that way. And then he was shocked. So it's like a bully or a narcissist sort of comes to you and says I'll have you on the street and my, my way of being and that solid sense of knowing and inner flame that I had, that there's got to be a way. There will be a way. I had faith and trust and that sort of of knowing and inner flame that I had, that there's got to be a way. There will be a way. I had faith and trust and that sort of led me and I looked at my two children and thought this is my purpose, this is my job, and that's what the work in India and the spirituality allowed me to understand. After meditation, an answer or some hope would come, and I held on to that hope.

Malcolm Stern: 14:49

So the work in India you've been doing, which is helping people who've been in rotten situations because in fact, you've been in a rotten situation yourself, and that's very often in the same way as the abused becomes the abuser there's also a sense that the person who's been brutalized will sometimes, if they wake up to what's happened, will actually find a way of helping others in the same position, which is, it sounds, like what you've done. So tell me a bit about what you've created in India. You've created a sort of like a college, or what is that?

Rosy Datt: 15:21

Yes, so there's an ashram that we have. So we start with the ashram and when women come they're screened and they talk and then so I interview them and see what it is that they need and what is holding them back or how to get out of a marriage, and they are absolutely afraid. So we begin with chanting, meditation and how to return to self. Is the program returning to self? And so there's movement and I just find what inspires them if it's music, if it's sewing, if I always wanted to be a dancer, but girls don't, it's all the what women don't do, or what good girls don't do, and society and the shame base. So we try to come out of that and some are gone into acting, singing, music, so the the art piece that's their anchor.

Malcolm Stern: 16:12

Yeah, the words we had when we were talking about the podcast was transforming suffering into art, and I think that's a very important message that actually we can suffer in silence, as many do, or we can find a way and find support to ease the suffering. And it feels to me like art. And you look at the sort of the great literature and the great paintings that have been made and mostly you've seen that their purveyors, the people who brought them together, have suffered, and in that suffering comes this great art. So one of my heroes is Viktor Frankl, who wrote Man's Search for Meaning, and his suffering was transformed and his work was part of the transformation of that. So what I'm hearing is that your work is part of the transformation of your own suffering and also of dealing with other people's suffering.

Rosy Datt: 17:07

Yes, it's a new marriage I want to call it.

Malcolm Stern: 17:12

It's quite interesting that you've chosen to find a route where you're no longer someone else's plaything, pushed into position and made to behave as others want you to behave. I wonder how you were with your parents. It sounds like they were quite rigid with you and of course I'm looking at this from a western perspective and probably it's different in in India but it's feel it still feels very brutal to me that they they were actually physically abusive and um and and undermining as well, and I wonder what you did with that. I.

Rosy Datt: 17:45

I think I transformed that too, because in the beginning I thought they were mean parents. As I grew I felt they did the best that they could with the knowledge that they had. They were immigrants. They had three daughters, poverty. My mom really didn't want to come here.

Rosy Datt: 18:03

She followed my dad and so, watching my mother become so sick till the end, I thought I would never allow myself to be that way and we have to find our voice. So she used to say if your husband says this to you, you tolerate it. If your mother-in-law says something to you. And I would come back to her and say this was said. And I found my voice and I said oh no, my goodness, you said that. Oh, shame, shame. So she learned from me how to find my voice.

Rosy Datt: 18:31

So, before she passed away and I took care of both of them till the very end, it was quite healing in the sense when my father started to have dementia and my brothers and sisters were not well off to take care of my dad. He was, you know, so fragile at the end and I would sit back and look and say this is the hand that is now shaking and can't even pick up. His spoon Used to hit me and I wonder if he would hit me now, he would fall first. Those kind of thoughts would come. But I cared with the sense of forgiveness and that I owe this they gave birth to me and that I owe this they gave birth to me. So I used the traditional as well as the modern and I integrated a sense of knowing of a parent does their best as I and, yes, physical abuse, all that isn't, but that's the patterns. They knew it was done to them. They did that to me and I broke the cycle. And that's one other promise I made and I teach is that children's and discipline, that it can be damaging and we have to find ways. So there's some books in the way that are going to do that.

Rosy Datt: 19:36

So parenting also was something that I thought I had to reach out and tell parents, especially traditional ones. So there was a sense of forgiveness. So I transformed that in a very healing way and it felt good because, as before my mother passed, she worried and she says, oh, what about you? Everybody's all settled and are you going to be okay financially? And I said, mom, you're on your deathbed at the hospital. Please don't worry about anything else. Go, you don't have too long, and this is what the Bhagavad Gita says and I'm okay, worry about yourself because you didn't do that all your life. And she goes okay. If you're okay and satisfied, then I guess I'm okay too. And she passed within three days of me sharing that.

Malcolm Stern: 20:23

It sounds like she genuinely loved you. That's what I'm hearing.

Rosy Datt: 20:27

And they both did.

Malcolm Stern: 20:28

And they both did.

Rosy Datt: 20:30

And when caring for my father he would say, oh, you're helping me shower, you're helping me. He would come in and out of dementia Early stages he started to know that he was, so I would cover him more when I would take care of him for his privacy and that to sit him. But later on he would forget, but during when he did know he goes, oh god should just take me, because this is awful, that a daughter is taking care of me because his son was absent and didn't care. So the son is re-raised as um, the prince and the king and the daughters who did all the work, so that he felt that sense of guilt. But but so that that was. I said no, no, no. You drove me to school once upon a time and now we've changed sides. Now I'm driving you to your doctors, to the park, and it's OK, dad, don't let that be heavy. I'm happy to care for you.

Malcolm Stern: 21:24

That sounds very, very healing as well, because you could easily have felt a lot of resentment and pain. And well, there was pain, but you didn't carry the resentment along with it.

Rosy Datt: 21:34

Because it didn't serve me anymore.

Malcolm Stern: 21:37

So what led you to becoming a therapist?

Rosy Datt: 21:43

I felt the world needed that spiritual sense and the people that were coming to me and speaking to me, whether in colleague sessions or a conference or even in my circle, community circle that I built spiritually, in that everybody was suffering but only some were stating it, so high functioning physicians including the second ex-husband it was high functioning, being smart but their emotions were way over. So I wanted to see if we could stir the emotions and look at them and see where they could go, that energy up and out. We call it in dance and conscious dance and Nia and then the breath work. So I felt that there was a way and little bit by little bit, people found hope and I was able to guide them.

Malcolm Stern: 22:33

Yeah.

Rosy Datt: 22:34

In their own way. They actually led me where to go, but they had to come and show up and suit up boot up, how they call it in AA.

Malcolm Stern: 22:48

So were you in AA at one point?

Rosy Datt: 22:49

No, no, no, no I supported those groups in Al-Anon for people who were also the shame base. So I would sit and listen and support anybody on the side who was having a tough time staying in the group, especially if they were of color and tradition. Because the Westerners they were, they had no problem, they would come. There was no shame, they would do the program. But the resistance some that were resistance and thought, oh, how can this work? Um, so I would have a one-on-one and supported them that way. So, um I, I was called by someone and just said to come and speak. And so when I did that, they said would you mind taking on some if they're willing? And then I would just sit on the side. And then afterwards, and then I thought people couldn't afford the underprivileged community. So I thought I need to get the RCC and if I had my master's then people could use their extended to pay.

Malcolm Stern: 23:45

What's the RCC?

Rosy Datt: 23:48

A registered clinical therapist.

Malcolm Stern: 23:50

Ah, okay.

Rosy Datt: 23:51

A BCAA, so it's our governing body as a registered licensed therapist.

Malcolm Stern: 23:57

Yes, so you've actually managed to make a living for yourself as a therapist and you've actually managed to channel some of that money into India to create projects for people who have suffered in similar ways to you, but actually ways that you could recognize.

Rosy Datt: 24:13

Yes.

Malcolm Stern: 24:14

And so you've actually sort of like you've used your life. Despite having been sort of quite squashed for a long, long time, you've used your life to actually find a way forwards. That is not just about looking after yourself, but is also about looking after yourself, but is also about looking after others yes, it's the purpose.

Rosy Datt: 24:32

I felt that I was searching for a purpose. Who am I? Why am I here? Why is human existence, why are we here? You know that existential uh, angst and and what we do with it and and. So, yes, and 30% of what I make goes directly to my projects in India and and it's rewarding I come alive when I go or when I set my ticket to go.

Rosy Datt: 24:55

The family I never had that is family in a way, because they wait for me and the children when are you going to come back again? And some of them weep. And there's a blind children's school that we had just opened and 167 students and, um, they, they, they just have these smiles on their face. They can feel that I'm there. So it taught me that we don't have to use the senses to sense and feel and have emotion. Even without the eyes, they can sense and feel that is it February yet. Is it February yet? So they have a sense of me. Coming is what the caretakers will say.

Rosy Datt: 25:31

So that's quite special and rewarding, and the smile is so big that your jaw can ache, and my jaw used to ache when I used to cry and be so down and be quite frustrated and not knowing what to do. But there was that light. Um, I think it's Cohen who said that you have to crack to see the light. I don't know if you mentioned it in your book. There's a few things that you mentioned in your book. I felt Malcolm wrote this for me.

Malcolm Stern: 26:01

This is me that's when I know the book's done the right thing. When someone says that's for me, I actually think I wrote it for me. I think I wrote my own manual for myself. But that's lovely. I'm glad it's touched you as well. And it was Leonard Cohen. There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. Yeah, so well, that's. I mean, it's a a. Really. It feels like you've turned your life from a place where you could have been ground into nothingness into a place where you're helping people who could have been also ground into nothingness to become something. Who was involved with the Saver Foundation S-E-V-A. You may know them and where they were actually sort of like finding the money to pay for dealing with cataracts that would have caused blindness. So they went to India and dealt with that. So you're dealing with the blind in India and do they get operations and this sort of thing?

Rosy Datt: 27:05

Yes, they do, they do. And then we look for funding and that. And yes, because they're children, there's not so much cataracts but 67% have recovered fully, that have had some sort of surgery or Ayurvedic medicine. We try to go the natural way, more so and I just wanted to pin the piece about when you said about the transformation piece of moving towards, my therapist used to say you're not a survivor, you're a thriver, and it didn't make some sense the first time he said that he goes. Most people with what you have gone through would either have become alcoholics, drug addicts, killed themselves or killed somebody else and sitting in jail. But here you are and I thought, oh, he's just trying to liberate me. So I was a tough patient. And then the cultural piece was difficult and that's another reason why I became a therapist was because some of the therapists didn't know what to do with me. Either you're oh, that's big Rosie, and I thought what is big, ask me. I know it was big, I'm only five feet, but the big part. And then the culturally responsive piece was lacking.

Rosy Datt: 28:13

In Western North America of all range marriages 21st century, does that still happen? And you don't push a patient away when you hear. You hear as they are. So I thought who trained them? And I thought, okay, I'm going to do better. And so I hear these Indian women Even my own doctor would ask. She says, rosie, I feel uncomfortable asking other people why the dot, why the burqa in the Muslims? And she says, I don't know, a cultural appropriation. What can I ask? That is okay to ask, because we don't ask a Western, why do you wear a cap? But we ask why this? And that we are a culturally diverse country, as in Canada, where I am. But I feel there's so much lacking in wisdom that they need to collect Even yoga. It's so commodified.

Malcolm Stern: 29:13

And so I keep writing and I keep informing so that, before I exit, that I leave something behind that is worthy of healing for mankind. Lovely Well, that'll be a great legacy. So we're coming towards the end of our podcast, and the question I always ask people is what is the particular dragon you've had to slay in order to become who you are? And that that means what is that? What's the obstacle you've had to overcome in order to be who you are now? And? But whatever comes spontaneously is fine.

Rosy Datt: 29:36

I would. I would say that unworthy message. Girls are not enough. I feel I'm way and I, like I would say at in the beginning I used to say I'm five feet nothing. And one one of my participants in the group therapy say no, rosie, and they got me a big frame with Rosie and flowers, rosie and five feet, everything. So and I thought, wow, and it looked kind of like your book, where the letters were big, it was white and the soft green, and so it reminded me that, ah, okay, then they say, look at it every day, because what you've done for us, you're five feet, everything okay so that's.

Malcolm Stern: 30:16

That's wonderful, so that's uh, your. So your sense of of, uh, insecurity and not being enough has been changed, and it's been changed with the help of others, but also with your own. You've actually clawed your way back from a place where you were severely disadvantaged and and and actually you've made something of your life, which is really lovely. So thank you for coming on the show with us today. Really appreciate it my pleasure namaste, namaste.