Name: A Radical Awakening
Rating: 4.1 (27 reviews)
Author: Shefali Tsabary

What’s in it for me? Shed the pain and patterns from your past to discover your true self.

She knows her mind and speaks it. She doesn’t fear failure or the opinion of others. She gives openly, not out of obligation. She is free.

And she can be you – if you’re willing to be honest about your pain. If you’re willing to face your fears and name them. If you can release your need for approval and your attachment to traditions and norms. If you can look inward, find your true self, and listen to that voice, you too can be free.

This Blink to A Radical Awakening traces Dr. Shefali Tsabary’s own story of awakening. She doesn’t hold back, discussing traumas like sexual assault. And she asks us to be just as honest about our own past, no matter how agonizing it might be. From there, we can understand how our difficult history has created patterns in our life that keep us suffering. Once we recognize those patterns, we can work on breaking them.

Dr. Shefali’s message is aimed at women, but she doesn’t exclude men. Yes, women have been more traumatized than men by the patriarchy – the system of male domination that subjugates women and children, and has infected cultures across the globe. But men have been scarred as well.

In the end, anyone can benefit from Dr. Shefali’s universal healing advice, which reveals how we’ve been conditioned, how we assume false identities for protection, and how we can move past these masks to find our authentic self – and all the power that comes with it.

The patriarchy

Shefali was born in India. She grew up in a culture steeped in tradition and patriarchy. The patriarchal tentacle that snared young Shefali was India’s infatuation with light-colored skin and eyes. Shefali had both, which meant she became the object of excessive and unwanted attention.

By age six, Shefali wanted to be a ninja so she could keep herself safe from men. The plan didn’t work. By age twelve, she had been groped by dozens of strangers, and molested by two male relatives.

She would tie her bed covers above her head and below her feet, as if she were a sausage, to keep away one of the molesting relatives when he spent the night at her childhood home. But he just undid the knots. Kicking him in the privates didn’t work either, and neither did threatening to tell her mother. He knew Shefali’s tender and generous nature. He guessed she would rather suffer abuse than burden her parents with a problem. And he was right.

Patriarchy and its toxic masculinity, which has scarred women and men across the globe for centuries, also infected Shefali’s young life in less overt ways than sexual assault. She has an early memory of her grandmother absently tying knots in her sari, haphazardly fixing her hair, and then explaining she didn’t need to worry about being beautiful since her husband was dead. This felt wrong to young Shefali, but her grandmother seemed to believe it, so Shefali didn’t question her.

Shefali’s grandmother had been conditioned to see her value only in relation to another person. This is one of the defining characteristics of the patriarchy. Most women aren’t aware of it, but they have been trained from girlhood to crave approval, validation, and praise. Not only do many women all over the world look to some external other for their sense of worth, they also place the needs of others over their own.

The patriarchy conditions people, especially women, to assume predetermined roles – subservient wife, obedient daughter, silent victim – or it scares them into false roles, like Shefali’s ninja, and prevents them from discovering their true nature on their own. Yes, many women are nurturing and generous by nature. But when those instincts are co-opted and abused, they stop being a reflection of the true self.

Institutions like religions and cultural traditions also prevent us from discovering our true natures. Like the patriarchy, these institutions want individuals to seek their identity through something external – church, marriage, an educational legacy, and so on – rather than internal. Your relationship with religion, or your marriage, may be healthy – but it probably isn’t if those institutions are your only source of self-worth.

Subjugation by the patriarchy and conditioning from its institutions leave us so desperate to be seen, and push us so far away from our true self, that we assume a false identity to get the attention we crave. That identity is the Ego, and it takes many shapes.

The Ego and its masks

Shefali bent over backward to be a nurturer as a child. She didn’t just “protect” her parents from the truth about her sexual abuse – she also went beyond healthy boundaries to care for her family, friends, and even strangers. As an adult, Shefali reenacted that role in her intimate relationships, including her marriage.

She constantly played the caregiver and fixer, to the point where her own needs went unmet. To avoid trouble, she meekly agreed with her husband, even when she wanted to scream in protest. She was so focused on pleasing him, she lost all connection with herself. She became fully attached to the identity of the Giver, one of the common Egos women wear as a mask.

Rock bottom

Shefali knew she was in trouble when she came to in a roadside ditch and had no clue how she’d gotten there. The near-fatal car accident startled her awake in more ways than one. It wasn’t just her car stuck in a ditch – her soul had also careened off its true path. She seemed competent, successful, and caring, but beneath that facade was inner turmoil. She had lost touch with her authentic self in the whirlwind of caring, and overcaring, for her husband and daughter, and working toward her PhD at the same time.

Shefali felt lost and scared. She wasn’t sure who she was. But she knew, without a doubt, that she couldn’t stay in her marriage as it was.

Awakening

As the realities of her conditioning dawned on Shefali, she confronted them and broke their hold on her one by one. When she grew tired of giving, she stopped – even though she felt guilty at first. She stopped waiting for her husband to change. She stopped clinging to the fantasy of being the good girl who would never divorce or break up her family. She worried what divorce would mean for her daughter, but Shefali knew she would be a better mother outside of her marriage than in it.

Still, Shefali had doubts. They cried out in shame and guilt and worry, “You should!” and “You should not!” But when they did this, she asked herself, “How is fear driving me? What do I really feel? Why do I feel like that?” Soon, she didn’t even need to ask the questions. Her inner compass guided the way on its own.

What is A Radical Awakening about?

A Radical Awakening (2021) shows you how to heal by connecting to your authentic self – the person you were meant to be before society’s lies and conditioning morphed you into something else. It speaks from a woman’s point of view, but it doesn’t exclude men. Instead, it seeks to lift everyone from the pain of their past and into a higher consciousness.