At BrilliantRead Media, it is our constant endeavour to bring meaningful and powerful stories from India and around the world to empower and motivate our growing community. As part of this, we invited Rachna Malkani for an exclusive interview with us. She is an Entrepreneur, Influencer, Author, Life Coach and Autism Advocacy. Let’s learn more about her incredible journey, background, and advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Rachna:
We are keen to know about your work, talk us through your background and your journey, please;
Being a Successful Entrepreneur of two Unique Businesses, a Creative Director and a designer of a luxury Leather Brand based in Dubai, UAE. Little did I know what Life had in store. The only thing I have always known is the power of awareness, self-work and consistent learning.
I have been working on self-growth for the last 20 years. Having been through experiences, I once never thought I could rise above, at least not sanely. After having dealt with Depression, Anxiety, Guilt, one broken engagement, one failed Marriage, a Messy Divorce and child custody battles, while having grown up and dealing with a completely dysfunctional family.
It was a lonely path because when you choose yourself, you are a rebel for the world and the black sheep for the family. There was one thought I never let go in my life, I deserved better. I had a visual of the life I wanted to build and the emotions I wanted to experience with it. So I put my blinders on and got to work focused on building the way I wanted to create it.
When I successfully built the life I believed I deserved, I believed I had made it and had it all, But Life had other plans yet for me, my son was diagnosed with Autism. It threw me off in ways I had never imagined I could feel like.
But I not only survived and learnt to support my son, I also learnt so much through this journey with him and came out enriched with learning, but every experience also taught me.
I worked with one belief in my Mind, my intent to seek and persevere to keep showing up with awareness and understanding, an open heart ready to embrace it all without becoming bitter or a Victim. To learn ways to seek self-knowledge, I dove deeper into the depths of myself and found ways through strategic learning and decoding the mysteries of the Mind and how it affects our external Lives.
How our mental frame through the Subconscious Mind is instrumental in outer reality, literally. I studied, took coaching and did all I could get my hands on while playing my other roles of life committed to it all.
No, it wasn’t easy and there were a million times I wanted to give up, and simply live a life of ignorance. Yet every time I did that I realized it made me feel even worse and go back into the space of anxiety, worries and depression.
Having a child with Autism can throw us back into those loops when we don’t choose our actions consciously. Every time I went into my down phases I realized it was harder to stay stuck in the same rut than working to transform. That kept me going. I got certified in Life Coaching and all aspects that enhance Coaching with added skills.
I have been dedicated to Yoga and Meditation for the last 9 years and Now I can say with the utmost conviction that Self Empowerment is the Ultimate Goal of our lives to create, experience and Live a life of Wholeness.
How did you discover your passion in ‘Coaching’?
Being a Mom of a 14yr old son, who is on the Autism Spectrum, I have to say this, If as parents we don’t then who will? I know how overwhelming and stressful this journey can be, not to forget extremely lonely at times. This is something only Autism Parents can understand.
Children across the spectrum are as beautiful, as deserving, as loveable and as magical as every kid in the world that doesn’t have a label designated to them. No matter how different they seem, don’t dim your children’s light just because the world can’t see it.
All they need is your unconditional Love, support and understanding, even when they can’t say, do or be the way you wish them to be.
Helping parents find a place of empowerment and fulfilment beyond the diagnosis of Autism, because it is possible, became my passion to share and coach Parents for.
How do you manage to keep going despite the challenges? What drives you?
Staying Hungry, hungry to seek, hungry to realize and hungry to understand the mysteries of our universe and who we are as human consciousness.
Thinking beyond labels.
Questioning taught beliefs.
Exploring possibilities when others believe there are none.
What are our true strengths and to what degree can we really experience them through self-awareness and intentional work on ourselves first.
Staying in the I don’t know zone, is my biggest space to live in, that helps me stay hungry The day we say I know it all, is the day growth dies in us and in our lives.
This is the mindset that helps me keep going.
Who do you believe has been the biggest source of motivation in your daily life?
Pain has been my biggest motivation. Understanding that either I can let the pain consume me and shrink me further or I can befriend it and look at it as a catalyst for transformation. It’s the only place where transformation has happened for me through different stages of my life.
Realizing the power of free will and freedom to choose who I want to be, has been the game changer throughout my life, no matter the circumstances that came along. It’s the Pain that made me look for answers that I needed for myself and my children.
My dreams and passions, the taught belief of self-sacrificing is the ultimate way for a mother to live her life, is something I didn’t resonate with. So I had to seek something different when we were presented with a life that is different.
Your book is called ‘Conscious Autism Parenting’. What does that mean?
Just as the word goes, staying Conscious through the process and diving deeper into understanding our own parenting styles and the patterns behind it.
What is being conscious: being conscious doesn’t come without being self-aware. Consciousness refers to your individual awareness of your unique thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations, and environments. Your consciousness is your awareness of yourself and the world around you.
When you learn to ask yourself the hard questions like
What are my parenting beliefs?
Who am I as a parent if I didn’t believe what I believe?
Why do I believe what I believe?
Who am I in the moments I am not the Mom/Dad?
Who was I before the diagnosis of my child?
What were my dreams and hopes?
When you are doing nothing for your child who are you?
When your child is at school who are you?
When your child is a teenager and doesn’t want you around mostly, who are you?
And above all, who am I as a Woman when I’m still and doing nothing, in the moments of stillness, what are my thoughts and conversations dominated by?
These are the examples of a few questions we can start asking ourselves, in order to start the journey of self-awareness as a Parent.
In simple words, it would mean to become the person we wish our children to be. If you want your children to believe they are limitless beyond the circumstances, then we need to show them how it’s done.
Children don’t listen to our words, they learn by watching what we do, and if we believe our Autistic children can’t then we are choosing less for them.
You are always positive and motivated, what keeps you going?
That’s the myth we need to bust. It’s not possible to always be positive and motivated. I’m also not that all the time.
This is the belief that creates a conflict within us that makes us feel less if we are feeling low or demotivated. As human beings, we exist in the duality of our being with the complexity of our emotions. Our state of mind is built through life with our personal experiences.
When we choose self-awareness and constant checking in, we learn to embrace the parts of us that feel less, knowing it’s the programmed mind, not you. Allowing myself to feel what I’m feeling with the awareness that these are just my thoughts, not my reality. I can feel my emotions, but don’t have to become the emotion.
Knowing I have the choice and permission to allow myself to feel love and compassion for myself, can help me take a pause and move forward with new learning and understanding of my own patterns and beliefs.
My Mantra is I see you, I feel you, I understand you, I accept and embrace you, I love you and I let you go, Now I release you. Meditation is my ultimate way to seek myself and my authentic way of being in our world that is full of advice on how to be and who to be.
Everything is borrowed knowledge, the only true knowledge you have is the knowledge of your own truth, which is truly unique to us all, just like our DNA. I believe in learning to Just be first, everything flows from there for me then.
In your opinion, what are the keys to success?
I would say first, define what success means to you.
What is your definition of a successful life?
Too many times, we define success by looking at others and how their life looks
However when you first ask the question what successful life means to me, then you can find the ways and resources to create that for yourself. Once you have the clarity of mind on what you want to create, with intentional action, persistence and perseverance, everything is possible.
What is the best and worst thing about being a parent of an autistic child?
The worst thing is the inability to feel we belong and our children belong and they matter. The challenges of wanting our children to feel and live a life of fulfilment without having the need to mask or change who they are can really put us on a path of helplessness and anxiousness for thinking about their life without us.
Just to share something with parents, I had written a letter to my autistic son on his 14th birthday, pls see it below:
Being your Mom has been the greatest journey I could have ever taken in my life. I would be lying if I said, there weren’t moments I wished I don’t want this, why am I being punished with so much struggle and being devoid of living a normal carefree life, where children grow up and leave to find their own lives and parents have a phase where they can do whatever they want.
What did I do to deserve this lifetime imprisonment?
I doubted God’s choice of me as your mother because I didn’t feel I had it in me.
Through all the phases of guilt, doubt, fear, agony and helplessness, came a strength that was unreal to me.
I didn’t know how to be this woman, yet I was being so. Whether greatly or messily and crazily didn’t matter. I was being your Mom the best way I could.
During these 14 years of our journey as mom and son, the realization was that it wasn’t about me raising you as a child. It has always been about you being gifted to me to raise myself. To inspire me and grow beyond the human conditioning of centuries that hold us back from truly reaching our potential in our truth.
Together we make it work through all our madness, messiness, heartaches, confusion and breakthroughs. And I promise we will continue to be each other’s wall. I can’t promise you a perfect mom, but I promise you a human mom, who is committed to be by your side while you live a life of wander, Joy, adventure, exploration and happiness in each phase as it comes.
I pray for you to be the best version of yourself regardless of the world’s expectations for you. You won’t live a life trying to impress the world, you will live a life creating and nurturing your own world, within and outside.
As long as the life permits me to do so, I’ll be by your side cheering you on in your own path and journey just being yourself.
Your ridiculously emotional mess – Mama
If you resonate with it parents, I feel you.
However here I am sharing it all with you, as hope and belief in believing if I can, so can you, transform your lives for and with your Autistic children. The best thing is to have the opportunity, motivation and freedom to learn the possibility of a life beyond the conditioned beliefs.
What advice would you give students and young professionals who want to have a successful career?
It’s high time we start guiding our youth to living a more conscious and fulfilling life that’s defined by their own passions and desires.
If a successful career was enough, we wouldn’t have the rising mental health crisis we are facing in our world today.
I would rather tell them first to define what success looks and feels like for you as individuals.
Don’t let the world’s definition of success intimidate you into doing things at the cost of your own mental health and fulfilment. Follow your heart more, dream often and limitlessly, seek self-growth first, invest in yourself always first, it’s your biggest asset, that no one can take from you.
Above all don’t be afraid to fail, you learn more by failing than by succeeding.
Have the courage to create your own unique path, let your instincts guide you and your heart knows the way, believe in your own voice and yourself.
Last but not least what is the one piece of advice you’d like to share with autism parents?
To stop believing it’s not possible and start playing big. Showing up as your true empowered self instead of living with the belief that we can’t just because we have a child with Autism.
We need to stop wishing for a better world for our children and start creating one. By stepping into the role of conscious parents, leaders, creators, coaches, teachers, we can become the true Architects of the dream world for our children.
While the entities, laws, govt. and the society would move at their own pace to bring about the changes needed, we can take more proactive role and show up differently for the better and much more empowered future of our children.
With Advocacy and awareness, we also need leaders that would show the way forward to Autism parents seeking greater possibilities for their children.
Instead of waiting for the world to change, we must be the change we wish to see for our children and act Now.
Most importantly, do you provide consultations or give training to parents?
Yes, that is the role I have stepped into Now and our vision is, To empower every Autism Parent, so they can go on to create a fulfilling life beyond the diagnosis of their child.
To enable the parents with clarity and direction, while nurturing their child, towards a unique path and Journey, into becoming their greatest version.
It’s a Journey taken as partners and teammates between Autism parents and children, without the need for Parents and their children to feel less.
Our ultimate desire is for the growth and evolution of both, and our Universe through them.
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