pj temple

We live in a deeply ignorant and segregated country. Accurate history hasn’t been taught. Which means we have a lot of learning to catch up to. In the meantime, not dehumanizing people for being different is a good start.

Your parents’ praise of your performance doesn’t equate to love. It equates to praise for performance. Love however is words of affirmation, nurturing, even in absence of performance. Yes it’s that simple. A parent’s love is unconditional. Unless their egos get in the way.

Mom told me I was American just like the other kids as I got ready for my first day of kindergarten. This was helpful for me in a school of children who didn’t look anything like me. I carried pride, even if it was sometimes confusing. I’m glad I walked into that classroom with my head held high.

The space between a child’s love for their parents and anger on the other end is tremendous guilt. The guilt creates paralysis of the mind. Of decision making and commitment to others. Commitment to self. It has to be excavated to find freedom. #generationaltraumapatterns

Last night was the launch party for my latest book, YOUR KID BELONGS HERE: An Insider's Guide to Parenting Neurodiverse Children (Johns Hopkins). Thank you to La Vita Dolce Cafe in Chapel Hill for hosting, and to all who braved the COLD to come out. Get yours at yourkidbelongshere.com

If you haven’t listened to @mybadpoetrythepod.bsky.social you have to check it out. I had a great time sharing laughs and my awful poetry drenched in teenage angst with the hilarious hosts. Felt like talking to old friends. Take a listen.

Safety isn’t reserved for one. It’s for every beautiful living creature. It is for the brilliance of emerald caterpillars, for rooted tree trunks as strong as my grandmother’s will to exist. Safety is for every soul made to feel she’s outside of what’s good and precious. It’s nonnegotiable.

It’s collective grief. And you didn’t have to know her to grieve her.

This is inciting yet another wave of collective trauma added to every other ongoing act of systemic evil. But our survival is calling us to cleave to each other for protection. It’s not about one of us. It’s about all of us. Division must be overcome.

Boundaries are respect. They are care. They are the fullest depths, the co-existence of love. #boundariesandprotection #boundariesarelove #generationaltraumahealing

Tradition or trauma? Who’s asked themselves this question a thousand times growing up?

I’ve never met anyone who regretted following their desires for their lives over the pressures of abiding by customs.

I was 4 when I went to India and met the boy I was to marry one day. He was 14. I can’t say I was disoriented by it. I didn’t have context. I just knew it was what I’d have to do. Funny how children process things. It took time to begin to connect with the confusion & wisdom to undue the compliance.

We didn’t talk about sex. Nor did we talk about when it shouldn’t happen. Or what protection looks like. This is when tradition is harmful.

I’ve been thinking about doing an anthology around generational trauma for a long time now. I’m done thinking. I’m going to start planning. When you have an idea that doesn’t leave you, I believe it’s something that’s demanding to be explored.

The trauma you endured is not your fault. The trauma you endured is not your fault. The trauma you endured is not your fault.

Culture teaches us to conform while spiritual principles teach us that we’re uniquely made. Reconciling the two can take a lifetime.

What is trauma but a curse we all carry waiting to be broken.

It’s not that I’m giving them a pass. I’m just past it. Call it forgiveness or a way to protect your peace, it’s fair if you feel this way.

Some parents tell their children how disappointed they are in them throughout their childhood. Children get to express their disappointment too. Doesn’t have to be disrespectfully. But you get to say how you feel. And maybe you weren’t even a disappointment. Maybe they were projecting.

There’s the ever present torment in children of immigrant parents. Obedience versus identity. Do I disappoint my parents or turn on myself? Someone has to win.

It’s not surprising that OCD and generational trauma can overlap, especially in the context of immigration.

To be able to watch Mississippi Masala with my boyfriend in the 90’s was something special. Man did we feel seen in that rare moment. Someone out there knew what we were facing at a time when he was a secret from my family and I knew how Black Americans were seen by the Indian community. #miranair

“Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.” - Horace Mann #BookSky #WritingCommunity

Some days when everything feels like far too much, the best thing we can do is to stay grounded. Today might be one of those days.

Seeing comments on the vile racist things being spoken over the souls of the Air India crash is another layer of heartbreaking. I pray their loved ones are protected from seeing the hatred as they grieve.

When was it that the dissonance began to rattle in your chest, between who you were told to be and who you were? Which version won?

Immigrants bring stories and carry them in language, food, nuanced ways of expressing love, holding heartbreak and sometimes passing the pain through generations. Read immigrant stories. They are necessary now and always. www.pjtemple.com

When I’d think of expressing myself, a quiet voice would whisper, “But you’re being selfish.” Expression would take up too much. It wasn’t said. It was in the way adults talked over me, how others’ needs seemed urgent, in how females were spoken about. It was in the way life was lived out each day.

the sun lingered a bit longer today to see what type of tea the earth’s beings concocted a ray of civility? a touch of reality? a newly enlightened society? what she saw made her weep and she had to rest just for the night all now midnight blue for cruelty does not end with two warring humans

I’m not here to keep you comfortable. I’m here to drag you into the deep end— past the line breaks, where your voice cracks. Let’s write what we never meant to say. #WRITEITRAW starts now. 🖤 Bring a line you’d never read out loud. I’ll be waiting.

This isn’t a Broken Spine project. It’s bigger than us. This is about you, the poets burning up the margins, the community that keeps the culture alive. We’re building it. For you. With you. Let’s sell some damn books and get your words in front of the world. #PromoteIndieLit #PIL

We’re in a church divided by people of two ethnicities on each side, Indians seething that I was marrying someone Black. Church is an ironic place to be when people are divided. I held my head higher and kept walking. The opening of my memoir. I wrote it bc love overcomes hate every single time.

“This is the moment that dances like ripe mangoes in women’s heads and causes men to drink a little too much Johnnie Walker the night before.” This is the first line of my memoir. Wedding day. Nervous and excited to share. Thanks for reading. ☺️

People in our community lit up at the sight of those with lighter skin, honoring them as though they had done something valiant. Caste is embedded in the nervous system like it’s the blood running through our veins. #Indiancastesystem

Whenever Mom would say, “You’re getting so dark! Who will marry you?” I’d wonder what the threshold was. At what point did my skin fall out of the realm of being loved?

We’re monsters in human skin.

We were Hindu before conversion to Christianity. We could’ve very well been one of the families who converted to Islam to escape a Hindu caste system. Religion is not as concrete as we think. It transforms, as do we. But people still want to war over who should live & die due of it. #indiareligion

It’s a funny thing when you can’t remember exactly when your sense of childhood wonder was silenced. It’s gradual probably. Nor can I recall how it returned. But safety must’ve been the catapult. #Indianmemoir

When I was hit by my parents, the mantra in my mind was, “That didn’t hurt.” I started to say it out loud. It diffused their power, so I carried it like a shield. Until it became a monster. I write on the unfolding. It’s how I examine the monster. We all deserve to examine our monsters.

A beautiful anthology, @brokenspinearts.bsky.social

So honored to be a part of this beautiful anthology alongside these stellar poets. Thank you, @brokenspinearts.bsky.social

People fiercely against #empathy seem to not have received much of it. It’s not a bad word. It’s emotional health.

How do you hold on to who you are, despite all of the messaging to be someone else? #immigrantchildrenandidentity

Today is #RighToReadDay which makes it a great day to start supporting libraries and defend the right to access books. How You might ask? @uabookbans.bsky.social has a whole bunch of actions available uniteagainstbookbans.org/right-to-rea...

No matter how much people may deny the deep roots of colorism, it’s connected to dehumanization. There’s no other way to interpret it. Skin color does not equate to worth.

My family & stoic Indian culture didn’t allow open expression of emotions. #Poetry has been the veil from where I cried out. I credit it partly to my healing & desire to be a psychologist. And my parents were navigating immigrant life so that I could have the privilege to write. Both are true.

Golden Trossachs. A post sunset image from the Trossachs and the low cloud creates a natural frame with this image. The remarkable abilities of modern mirrorless cameras meant I was able to recover some detail in the foreground as, to my eye, it was completely dark when taking this image.

I’m a psychologist. Dismantling oppressive systems means honestly answering clients’ questions when appropriate. Being a blank slate is antiquated and harmful. Healers historically based their work on connection, not power. I’m no more resilient than the next person. We’re all on a journey.