Hi, I’m Nitika.
I’m a coach, consultant and creative living in New York. I’ve been freelancing for over ten years, and I love it. My creative joys are listening to music, dancing, writing, painting, photography and fashion.
I was at a dinner party recently at the home of a writer bestie whose community is full of writers of course. A get-to-know-you prompt that started going around was “How did you first start writing?” I was surprised and pleased to remember it was through journaling, and how simply it emerged out of necessity. I was going through my first divorce, and traveling to a place where I had no supportive friends or family in physical proximity. Every night, alone in my bed I would read a few pages from “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times” by Pema Chodron and then write. The first step of reading served the purpose of both therapy and spiritual study, and then writing to process that gave me a prompt to start from, flowing into deeper feelings and so on. The book was a spiritual friend and teacher, and writing accessed my innermost wisdom and divinity, whom I was newly getting acquainted with. That journal was also a friend, with whom I shared the depths of my heart and the stumbling messy parts of my becoming. Since then, I have known many books as friends and teachers and listeners.
I was in my late twenties then, and am in my fabulous forties now. Writing for myself evolved into poetry, channeling the voice of the soul, and a few blogs, the latest of which was a series of mokshletters. I wrote that series at the intersection of coaching, spirituality and social justice, and the year I turned forty, three things happened. First, I saw the most mesmerizing dance performance I have ever had the blessing to witness, and it sparked the decade of dance. Second, someone close to me died every month for 6 months. So third, I stopped writing.
These three strands are closely intertwined. All my unspeakable and unbearable emotions could only be expressed by movement, first surrendering to the deep stillness of sadness. I came back to life through a dance fellowship which gave me a container to metamorphose grief and loss into love and creation. Death has become a great teacher of living.
Nowadays, I often wake up to a song in my head. If I follow it, soon I’m listening to a message or tuning into a vibration for the day. That song is my soul setting the intention for the whole day. It’s a mystical yet practical process. All I have to do is press play, and go from there. The next move emerges from the next beat. This sound from within has been saying, it’s time. It’s Time to Write here, right here. So here I am. I don’t exactly know what I’ll be writing about all the time, but I do know that the next one is about Time, or what Norma Wong calls timeplace/placetime.
To folks who’ve been on Moksh’s email list since it started in 2021, thank you for being on this journey with me. I loved writing that newsletter, and I have been nurtured by your reflections and responses to it. I know you, and you know me. Everyone on that list is someone I have met.
I feel called to write now into an open space where I will meet the folks I have yet to know. I’m excited to connect and to explore together matters of spirit and vision and how to practice the ethics of our hearts in a time of unraveling.
with care, courage, and curiosity,
Nitika