In May 2008, my mother needed an urgent surgery to re-align her lumbar spinal column and my dad came down with pneumonia.  They recovered after treatment but needed care at home for that period of time.  I was constantly worried about their well-being and whether their daily needs were being met.  My workload in my job was heavy with escalation issues that did not allow me to take sufficient rest.  Prior to that, I already suffered from several months of intermittent diarrhea and uncomfortable gastro-health.  At around that same time, I discovered that my pap smear was abnormal.  I gave up a supposedly beneficial business training trip because I felt like I had to deal with many personal and health issues.  The enormous self-inflicted anxiety, physical and emotional strain took a toll on me and I suffered from a clinical depression.  For almost 2 months, I was struggling to work and conduct daily activities, plagued by the physical exhaustion and worrisome thoughts that I could not control.  As I used to have a strong enthusiasm and vitality in work and hobbies, this was an extremely discouraging downturn for me.  Not knowing that my problem was a depression, I visited my family, company doctors, gastro-specialist and even tried alternative medicine which did not diagnose my problem correctly; in fact, my blood pressure increased due to anxiety and I started taking some medications that made me very tired and even more depressed.  Finally in August 2008, with a recommendation from a friend working in the hospital, I consulted a psychiatrist who prescribed me relaxants, minor tranquilizers and anti-depressants which stabilized my condition.  However, knowing that I may be dependant on these medications for executing my daily activities significantly reduced my self-confidence in the networking activities in my job and also my hobbies.

While trying to brighten up my life again, I linked up with an old friend in Sept 2008, she suggested that I go on the Lord Muruga trip in Oct 2008 with her and be her roommate.  I was also introduced by this friend to the Gracelight meditation which I carried out subsequently every night.  Somehow, the Muruga trip motivated me to keep healthy by jogging and eating a healthy diet.  Eventually, I got physically well enough to go on the 1-week Muruga and Gracelight Immersion program in Chennai.  Just before the trip, I was still on the tranquilizers for sleep-enhancement every night and relaxants occasionally to calm my nerves.  When I was in India on the Muruga trip, I felt the peace and tranquility naturally within me that I did not take the relaxants.  When I returned home, I fell asleep naturally without the need for tranquilizers.  Whenever I felt the first signs of anxiety, I chanted the Om Saravanabava, Om Murugan Kumuran Guhan Mantra.  I lost all dependency on relaxants and tranquilizers within a week from return of the Lord Muruga trip.  It also was a very good coincidence that Dattatreya Siva Baba visited Singapore for a weekend of seminars in early Nov 2008 that my husband and I attended together and benefited from developing faith in the divine and renewing our loving understanding for each other.  I gathered sufficient faith and courage to undergo a colposcopy which verified that my cervix showed a tiny region of minor inflammation that was on the recovery stage and required no treatment.  This result gave me a huge sigh of relief and belief in myself.

I continued to do the Gracelight meditations, chanted the mantras I learnt in the Muruga trip and regulated the stress level at work and my personal life.  After 3 weeks of return from the Muruga trip, I began to let go my worries to focus on being active in my job and relaxing activities with my husband, my colleagues and my friends.  I was able to carry out my job challenges with a more comfortable ease and renewed wit.  My husband was pleasantly surprised to see my renewed enthusiasm in our weekend outings.  My manager’s performance evaluation of my job for the year indicated that I was still highly valued in the rank in my company despite the training-trip opportunities I missed!  This is a true miracle!  The biggest recognition I received was that I together with a team of engineers identified the cause and solution of a problem in a project in Sept-Nov 2008 that enabled a large sum of money to be saved.  This achievement reminds me that I can still be a very useful and motivational person to the people around me despite having stumbled upon other areas of my life and learning through my issues.

My latest visit to my psychiatrist in late Nov 2008 – he noticed so much improvement in me that he asked me to write him a testimonial that they can display in the hospital’s appreciation bulletin.  Although the appropriate medical examinations and treatments were eventful to my recovery, it was the Gracelight and Dattatreya Siva Baba who gave me the faith to be more conscious of my thoughts, regain self-confidence and move ahead positively in my life.  I am truly very thankful for the miracles.  Thank You!