Transitioning from being an elder sister to a friend...it is a tough journey

I used to feel jealous of her when my mom carried her in her arms, I used to throw tantrums and create a scene if my dad spent more time with her than me...I used to shy away from my parents and spend more time with my grandparents as I just used to desist her presence, we used fight all the time - I have pushed her from the stairs and she would go rolling down, only to be back crying aloud and my mom giving me a good spanking ...lol!

Till the time, life took a turn and I realized the responsibility I had as a elder sister...mom fell ill and stayed that way for long...very very long, and I stepped in take care of my sister. From taking care of her in school, to bringing her back home, to help her finish homework, to feed her lunch & dinner, to help her at every step - be it a fancy dress competition or a painting competition or anything under this sky... I had a say in it. She would come running to me for every small thing...

Things do not remain the same, you see...One fine day, I realize during a casual conversation with my sister how much things have changed - Yes, she has grown up, she can take care of herself, make her own decisions, wants to be left to herself in whatever she does...she has become an independent individual, which all of us do at some point in time in life. I need to understand this, take this in my stride and let her fly...be there only to help if she falls...but this goddamn heart does not understand this...it just refuses to accept the fact! I feel bad if she does not tell me even a small thing that happened, either something she bought or some place she went...They say its important for parents to be a friend to their kids when they grow up, I agree, but I can see how difficult it must be...if I, as a sister am finding it so difficult.

I know its gonna be a journey, a tough one, till I realize that all of us need that space to do our own things...The journey has just begun...

The Importance of Building Self-trustworthiness...

This is a topic that I have wanted to write about for quite sometime now...the importance of this fact struck me very hard when I heard to a guest lecture at my college by Alok Sharma - India Head, Apple Computers

This guy, with his simple but absolutely dignified demeanor left me convinced about a thought that I have always believed it - the importance of having a clean conscience and building respect for oneself in one's own eyes. How does one build trustworthiness - with oneself and others? I believe, it is by defining one’s values, principles and rules in life and living by it, come what may. Honoring a promise made to oneself. A person who can do this will automatically build trust about himself/herself with people around.

Mr. Sharma spoke about the emphasis he lays on the importance of living by his beliefs and values in life - that of righteousness. He quoted an example where he put his job at stake to avoid paying bribe in a business deal - this incident irked questions from the audience about how one can survive in this bad world if we were to follow such rules or stick to such principles. In response to this, he quoted an incident where he happened to meet Azim Premji who gave a simple answer to this so called difficult question - Azimji's answer -"One does not get profitable by paying bribes to middlemen, in fact the returns get reduced - because, once a set-up is created using middlemen to get work done, the expectation increases at each level,and at the end, though the number of projects got is more, the returns definitely get diminished, as so many people need to be satisfied in between" - So true, but this is beyond understanding of 99 percent of the people.

But one thing is certain- I believe, the moment you make your principles clear to people and set their expectations right, how much ever they might bad mouth you in front of you as well as behind your back - they will dare not try any tricks with you. All the blabbering they do in front of you about how foolish you are to follow Gandhism - if I can say so- they do it only because they do not have the guts to be like you or follow the path of righteousness. Of course, there are many people who respect such values and principles in life - otherwise, there would not be a Infy or a Wipro or a MindTree Consulting...am sure there are many more, which do not come to my mind now...

Once we have all this defined, building a personal & organizational value system becomes easier - even if we cannot change much of organizational values, we can surely change the organization -but for that we need to define and prioritize our values in life.

Among many things that he spoke about, something that I remember very well is the leadership attributes one should develop - Beliefs,Values,Character,and Knowledge. To quote him -" As a good manager, hire people who can perform at least one function better that you can do"- In this world of insecurity, managers could probably take a cue from these lines.

Last but not the least, he spoke about how simple day-to-day things in our life can help us build self trustworthiness - something which I regularly follow - I could relate to it so much...I'm sure most of us can relate to it...take for example -practicing a fitness regime - it is so common for all of us to plan with great passion to run 5 km or go to gym for 30 mins daily or cut down on all our favorite food - only to end up doing 1/10th or none of what we planned and feeling terribly depressed about not being able to follow what we set out to do.

Believe me, these small promises made to oneself and not being able to fulfill them can bring one's morale down to a large extent. At least to me, fulfilling any commitment made by me to myself or to anyone is of utmost importance, else something inside my heart troubles me endlessly. Alok gave a simple suggestion of how it is better to set small goals and fulfill them, instead of making big plans only to see them fail. Taking the same fitness example - set short-term goals, probably going to gym 2 -3 times in a week or running 2 km daily or 3 days a week or whatever is comfortable for one -but, keep up the promise made and achieve those goals. This is what builds self-trustworthiness.

This thing about building self-trustworthiness is so satisfying, especially the act of following a short but regular fitness regime is so fulfilling to me...that I came back from my jog today and immediately decide to write this blog.

The run...the sweat...the satisfaction of doing what I promised myself...the pride of bettering myself everyday...its an amazing feeling!

There are so many instances which we can use to practice this and enrich our lives – be it at work (setting short internal deadlines for activities at work) or at home (following a well planned regime for day-to-day chores, cooking, cleaning etc…) or with our social life(control over spending or over indulging)…once we start doing it for one or two activities, automatically we search for fulfillment and meaning in everything that we do…I’m trying, failing at times, learning, nevertheless -getting back on my feet and trying harder…I want it to be a continuing journey, though it is tough and slow...it is better than quickly achieving something and losing it much before we realize what we achieved.

"Relationships" - for a change, its about the love between siblings....

I happened to read this moving article on WSJ. It provoked me beyond words and brought me back to think about something that I have always believed in - westerners value feelings and relationships more than we Indians boast about ourselves...the media has painted a very wrong picture about them -that they lack patience, they have no family values...believe me, having lived in the US for considerable amount of time and having been friends with more Americans than Indians settled there..these people value family and relationships as much as or more than we do. They give it everything it takes to make a relationship succeed and really struggle hard to maintain it for long. But, yes..they are not hypocrites like most Indians are to drag on with a relationship if things are just not the same...they just move on...is that wrong?? If dragging on with something gone sour is patience, then I personally would not like to have that kind of a patient attitude. Each one's life is precious enough to be wasted on someone who does not value it...

Anyways, without divulging too much from the topic, I urge you guys to read on the following article. In a world where day in and day out we see brothers fighting over property, over whose gonna look after their parents, bragging about how money they spent on their sister's wedding...etc..etc.. here's a truly inspriring article about two brothers.


After a Brain Injury, a Business Plan

When an accident damaged his brother, Rob Groeschen built a company to help himBy THOMAS M. BURTONJune 6, 2007;

One evening in 2003, Rob Groeschen received a disturbing phone call. An irate man in Cincinnati had found Mr. Groeschen's older brother Tom, then 39 years old, wandering in his backyard. Mr. Groeschen got in his car and finally found his brother hours later across the Ohio River in Kentucky.

WSJ's Thomas Burton visits a company that aims to provide disabled workers with useful, rewarding work. Cincinnati-based In Return was founded by Rob Groeschen after his brother, Tom, suffered a traumatic brain injury. "I screwed up again," Tom said. Then he promptly forgot what had happened.

Not long after that, Rob Groeschen decided he had to do something about his brother. As children, they had been best friends. But since Tom suffered severe brain damage in a 1983 car crash, he had struggled to resume a normal life, while Rob watched in an agony of guilt and frustration. "I ran away from Tom's accident for years," Rob says. "But it always haunted me."

An estimated nine million people in the U.S. are disabled from stroke, traumatic brain injury or brain hemorrhage. While rehabilitation helps some, many remain like Tom Groeschen, unable to function at anywhere near their former capacity. People with brain injury vary widely in their abilities, from day to day. Often their memory and thought processes are damaged by their injury. Sometimes their accidents batter their judgment and their actions occasionally can veer wildly into the inappropriate.

Yet, with few options for additional help, most have nowhere else to go but back to an unwelcoming world. Some must depend heavily on their families, most of whom are ill-prepared to deal with a family member who has changed profoundly. Even the most attentive families are forced to simply watch as loved ones degenerate.

To Rob Groeschen, 42, standing by finally became unacceptable. As a bashful kid, he had idolized Tom, a high-school football hero. More than 20 years later, Rob, who had become a wealthy businessman, decided to complete the reversal of roles: He created an unusual new business to help Tom, and gave himself a new mid-career mission.

* * *Applause washed over Tom Groeschen, then 18, as he rose to accept a trophy naming him one of the top 22 high-school football players in Kentucky. One of those clapping was his younger brother Rob, then 16.

Tom and Rob, the youngest of the six children of Jack and LaVern Groeschen (pronounced GRESH-en), grew up in Fort Thomas, Ky., a hilly suburb across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. Their father died when they were still in grade school.

Tom was athletic and gregarious, Rob scrawny and shy. When they played pickup baseball, Tom always chose his brother first, saving Rob the embarrassment of being chosen last. In high school, blond, good-looking Tom was homecoming king, prom king and the star running back for Highlands High School's 1981 state championship team. Rob was basically unnoticed, lacking motivation for classes or sports. An old friend of Rob's, John Bankemper, recalls, "Rob was the one no one ever had any expectations of."

But Tom let Rob hang out with his older friends and, if anyone picked on Rob, Tom intervened. The night of the football banquet, Tom insisted that Rob attend and sit next to him. "Tom was the coolest," Rob says. "I was proud just to be his brother."

Around midnight on Aug. 10, 1983, two police officers knocked on the Groeschens' door. They told Mrs. Groeschen that Tom, who was about to start his sophomore year at Eastern Kentucky University, had been in an auto crash. Assuming it was minor, she and Rob drove to a nearby hospital where they learned, to their shock, that Tom actually was at the nearest trauma center, the University Hospital in Cincinnati.

Earlier that night, Tom and a friend had been partying on an Ohio River houseboat. Around 9 p.m., they went for something to eat. Police later found Tom's green Dodge Charger smashed into a guardrail off Interstate 471 in northern Kentucky. His friend was lying outside the car with a broken nose and multiple cuts. Tom was unconscious in the rear of the car, with only a faint pulse. It's not clear who had been driving; both Tom and his friend say they don't remember, and police say no records remain.

Tom had suffered severe head trauma and a collapsed lung and, for a few moments, his heart had stopped. Three days passed before his family knew he would even live. Mrs. Groeschen recalls a social worker speaking to her in a hushed tone: "You'll have to bury the person you knew, and accept the person you have now."

Tom Groeschen lingered in a coma for more than three months, withering away to 135 pounds, down from his playing weight of 195 on his 5-foot-11 frame. One day Rob picked up his brother's leg and was horrified to see how spindly it was.

That fall, Rob started school at Eastern Kentucky, where he had planned to join Tom. His mind was elsewhere. "I felt I should come home," Rob says. "I was feeling that the light was on me now. It was, 'Now what are you going to do?' "

In November, Mrs. Groeschen moved Tom to the Cardinal Hill Rehabilitation Hospital in Lexington, Ky. Rob visited most days, watching Tom struggle as therapists tried to teach him how to speak, walk and hold a fork. Tom's determination made a big impression on Rob, almost the way Tom's football stardom had.

Sometimes friends accompanied Rob on visits. They noticed he was uncharacteristically silent afterward. After one visit, he told his friend Brad Kisker, "One day I know I'm going to be Tom's caretaker."

Tom left the rehab center in February 1984 after officials told the Groeschens there wasn't much more to do for him. By then, he could walk mostly on his own, pushing his wheelchair. He could speak somewhat intelligibly, though his voice often trailed off.
Many families at this point place their loved ones in a nursing home. But Mrs. Groeschen rejected that idea, believing that Tom would return to normal.

Mrs. Groeschen had Tom audit classes at Northern Kentucky University. He dropped out after a month when professors concluded he couldn't retain information. Nor could Tom handle plumbing and painting classes at a vocational school. He took a job in a kitchen, but got fired after cutting himself chopping radishes and bleeding on food. He lost a grocery-store job because he couldn't control the floor-polisher. He flunked a tryout at a bakery when he couldn't work the cake-icing applicator.

Eventually, over many months, the Groeschens came to realize the old Tom might never truly return. "It was, 'We can do this, we can do that,' " says LaVern Groeschen. "Well, we couldn't."

Home from college in the summer of 1984, Rob took Tom out for beers at a local pub. Friends wanted to reminisce about high school and football. Tom grinned, but couldn't remember any of his glory days. A wandering eye at times made him look strange. Rob's friends sympathized, but that just made him relive the accident. "I would think, why not me?" he says now. "Why didn't it happen to an underachiever?"

Seven years later, Rob was succeeding professionally in Orlando, Fla. He had moved there after graduating from college in 1987, and taken a job driving a hazardous-waste truck for Safety-Kleen, an environmental-services company. His easy manner appealed to customers. Safety-Kleen put him through several leadership programs and in 1990 named him a sales manager.

He called Tom weekly but left his brother's care largely to his mother. During visits home, "being around Tom would drive me crazy," Rob recalls. When Tom set a drinking glass down, he often put it precariously on the edge of a table. Outside, Tom skipped down the street, careful not to step on sidewalk cracks. Rob often felt relieved upon returning to Florida.
For a while he dated a physical therapist. Rob already was feeling he should be doing more for Tom, and she encouraged him to do it. He liked his carefree life in Orlando, but worried that if he didn't act soon, he might never.

In 1991, he asked Safety-Kleen for a transfer. The company gave him a bigger managerial job in Ohio. "I was more confident that I could make a difference in his life just by my presence," Rob says. "He was one of my programs, one of the things I needed to do."

* * *Tom was living with his mother in Fort Thomas, a short drive away. He and Rob saw each other every few days. When Rob started dating Brenda Hatton, a schoolteacher, he had Tom tag along with them to Cincinnati Reds baseball and Cincinnati Bengals football games.
At times, it was awkward. Like many people with traumatic brain injury, Tom had lost some ability to recognize inappropriate behavior. Seeing a pretty woman, he'd make the lewd sort of remark an adolescent might make. Sometimes he'd go to the restroom and disappear, and Rob would have to search the stadium for him.

Brenda took it mostly in stride. She thought she knew how much Tom meant to Rob. But she was especially moved by what happened the night Rob took her to a Safety-Kleen awards banquet in 1993. After accepting a plaque for his sales performance, Rob returned to his table in tears. He was remembering the football banquet he'd attended with Tom all those years ago, and he was thinking about how Tom's achievements since the accident had inspired him to succeed for both of them.

"This is for Tom," he told Brenda. "I couldn't have done this without Tom."
At the same time, Rob was learning that what he could do for his brother was limited. He and their mother tried to find Tom jobs, but again he wasn't up to most of them. For years, they tried to get him into an assisted-living apartment, but Tom performed too well on reading and other tests to qualify.

Many people in Tom's condition face similar obstacles. Tom isn't retarded -- he's brain-injured. And many brain-injured people vary widely in their abilities. The assisted-living apartments have limited capacity and are intended for the profoundly impaired. When tested, Tom, ever the competitor, rose to the challenge -- and ruled himself out by doing too well.
Tom finally found a job he was able to hold onto, cleaning bathrooms at a truck stop on Interstate 75 in northern Kentucky near Cincinnati. Each morning, he woke at 5 a.m. to take buses two hours to work. After work, he took the bus back home to his mother's house, then usually fell asleep watching television. He no longer had any friends. When asked what he did for a living, he responded disparagingly, "I clean up s- after people." He held the job for a decade, eventually earning $7 an hour. He frequently told his mother and brother that he regretted the night of his accident. "I screwed up again," was a constant refrain.

Like many brain-injured people, Tom developed self-destructive habits. He started smoking. He shoplifted dozens of cigarette lighters. When Rob explained that stealing was wrong, Tom couldn't understand, arguing that the stores had plenty of lighters, Rob says.

Some nights Tom got lost coming home. He missed transfers, fell asleep in bus stations and sometimes just wandered off for no apparent reason. Each time, Rob spent hours looking for him.

That's what happened in 2003 when Tom wound up in a strange backyard in a rough Cincinnati neighborhood. A resident thought Tom was drunk, Rob says. Tom gave the man a phone number for Mrs. Groeschen, who called Rob. Rob told Tom to stay put. But by the time Rob arrived, Tom was on a bus heading in the wrong direction. Rob finally tracked him down at 11 p.m. at the bus station in Covington, Ky.

By then, Rob had started his own business, a recycling and hazardous-waste-handling company called Resource One. With such big customers as Sherwin-Williams Co. and the Honda America unit of Honda Motor Co., Rob built it into a $12 million a year business, growing at 30% and more annually. He and Brenda, now his wife, lived with three daughters in a hilltop home overlooking woods and a creek.

But for all of his success, his "program" for Tom wasn't working. His hope was to find a job for Tom that was rewarding and a semi-independent place for him to live. He began to think of potential environmental-services businesses that could employ people like Tom. The jobs had to be simple and safe, yet challenging enough to be rewarding. If such a company could turn a profit, it could become that last link in the chain to help brain-injured people re-enter society, Rob thought.

In 2004, Rob began discussing the idea with his business manager and accountant, Kathy O'Brien. To learn about options for the brain-injured, they visited rehab centers and workplaces for the impaired in Arkansas, Tennessee and Illinois.

Nationally, there are few working situations well-suited to people with brain injuries. "The difficulty with traumatic brain injury is that a person once had a higher level of function," says Gregory O'Shanick, national medical director of the Brain Injury Association of America. In general, "a person with brain injury will experience depression in an environment like a sheltered workshop," he says.

The ideal workplace would strike a balance between simple tasks and encouragement of growth, while offering sufficient break time and honing of social skills. For example, workers would be given chances to master simple tasks like assembling products but also the chance to gradually expand their responsibilities; many brain-injured people once had greater abilities and can get frustrated if they're not challenged. At the same time, the ideal workplace would integrate the teaching of "life skills" like appropriate conversation and behavior -- activities normally done with specialized therapists.

* * *As he considered the options, Rob tapped thoughts about his motivations into a home computer. "I personally have not recovered from Tom's accident but continue to look for reasons and answers," Rob wrote in the fall of 2004. One night soon after that, he announced to Brenda, "I can't wait for something to open up for Tom. I have to do it myself."
On Jan. 2, 2005, Rob opened a warehouse-and-office facility in Blue Ash, Ohio, a Cincinnati suburb. It housed his thriving original business, plus a new nonprofit company he called In Return. His plan was that the new company would hire people with special needs, especially those with brain injuries. With its nonprofit tax advantage, he thought the company could make money by selling products used in industrial maintenance to absorb spills, among other items.

Rob says the company's name signifies both a return to normal life for the brain-injured, and his personal payback to Tom. Rob, Tom and other employees marked the occasion with a small champagne party in the front office. Tom drank nonalcoholic champagne.
Many mornings, Tom and the five other brain-injured workers recite a pledge of self-esteem written by author and therapist Virginia Satir. "There is no one else exactly like me," they recite. "I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me...I can discard that which is unfitting, keep the rest and invent something new for that which I discarded."
Then they go to work stuffing ground-up rags and defective diaper fabric into 4-foot-long pieces of blue cloth to make industrial "socks." The socks are used by In Return customers, like Honda, to soak up manufacturing oil and grease. Each worker stamps each sock he makes with his own stamp. They take 10-minute breaks every hour.

There are pool and ping-pong tables, and general manager Charlie Parris, who isn't brain-injured, brings in outside instructors to teach writing, art, exercises and other skills. Some workers put together gift baskets, another product that the company sells.
In Return is losing money so far, but Rob is convinced that he simply needs to market his products better.

In Return was 18 months old when Rob's friend and financial adviser, Monte Hazelbaker, grilled him about its finances at a Cincinnati Reds game. Rob confessed he already had lost $200,000 on the venture.

"Wouldn't it be easier to hire Tom at Resource One and shut down In Return?" Mr. Hazelbaker recalls asking. "You could give money to charity. You could lease out part of the building."
"I'm well aware of that," Rob said. "But no one's going to do what I'm doing." He felt there were few other places that offered employment intended to support people with brain injuries.
Running both In Return and his other company has put a strain on Rob's marriage. Brenda says she initially wasn't disturbed three years ago when Rob announced his plans for In Return. "It was definitely just dropped on me," she says. "Had I looked into a crystal ball and seen the tons of extra stress this would cause, well, frustration is getting the upper hand now."

She says Rob sometimes seems emotionally absent around her and their three daughters. "I have these feelings like, 'Listen buddy, you've got to slow down.' And yet I feel bad about saying that because he's doing such good."

Last Christmas morning, Brenda tearfully confronted Rob. "I miss you," she said. "You're putting yourself on an island." He promised to do better.

Recently, though, he says he was surprised when he realized his daughter Jackie was about to celebrate her 5th birthday; he had been so busy, he simply didn't focus on how fast she was growing up. That especially disappointed Brenda because Rob usually makes a big deal out of birthdays. She says she thinks she knows where "his crazy need to go-go-go" may come from. "It's as if he's trying to be two people."

Rob acknowledges that his efforts to make In Return a success have distracted him from his family, and says he's trying to remedy that. "I don't want to be a workaholic," he says. "But I am."

People who have seen Tom lately say they hardly recognize him. He used to sit alone, eyes downcast, trying to be invisible. He slurred his words if he talked at all; now he generally speaks more clearly.

On the job, he smiles. He smokes less and has quit shoplifting. He works out on a stair machine daily. Jennifer Cavitt, a University of Cincinnati neurologist who sees Tom occasionally, says, "He has a more positive attitude, and part of this no doubt is from his enjoyment of the new job situation."

The job provides structure for Tom, but offers room to develop: He has begun managing other workers some, and works on various product lines. At In Return, most of the manufacturing is simple -- such as stuffing absorbent material into cloth and the like. But Tom gets a chance to train new workers and to be in charge of one product line, recycling defective shock absorbers. And all the workers get the chance to socialize during breaks and work on physical development and skills like writing and artwork. Rob believes that, if he can make the business sustainable, it can be replicated elsewhere to return the brain-injured to society.

Tom even shows flashes of humor. After learning how to send email at work, Tom sent one to Rob, who was out of town: "We're making some changes around here."
Tom, now 43 years old, recently was approved for an assisted-living apartment. He proudly calls it "my one-bedroom mansion." But, asked about his youth, he says, "I don't remember growing up."

Outside his warehouse, the sign for In Return sits above the one for Resource One, Rob's for-profit company. Rob says he wants to hire more workers at In Return and start a van service to shuttle them to and from work. He'd love to train future greenhouse workers if he can find money to build a greenhouse. "Within our walls we can help 30 people," Rob says. "I want to help 300."

More than anything, Rob wants to broaden the possibilities for his brother. He thinks Tom might someday be able to manage others like himself, maybe even get married and have children. "I'm not sure there is a ceiling," Rob says.

As for Rob, In Return "certainly has given me a purpose in life," he says. He still looks up to his brother, saying, "I can't imagine moving on from this earth not knowing what will happen to Tom."