Dr Mayaa SH
Authoress, Motivational Speaker, Women’s Empowerment Advocate, Literary Theorist, Developmental Feminist , Mental Health Thought Leader, Cultural Commentator, Gender Equality Crusader, Suicide Prevention Expert ,Gender Based Violence Specialist, Disability Inclusion Campaigner , Inspirational Trailblazer and Champion of Human Rights..
Dr Mayaa SH is a multi-award-winning international and national authoress, literary theorist, and an avid campaigner examining feminine archetypes and modern womanhood; a motivational speaker, women’s empowerment advocate, and mental health thought leader working with survivors and grassroots communities; a developmental feminist and gender based violence specialist and a cultural commentator and a known name in contemporary literature dedicated to making healing, dignity, and authorship accessible through story, livelihood, and language. She is recognized in academic and empowerment spaces for her interdisciplinary work) and similar contemporary feminist scholars who bridge the gap between literary theory, mental health advocacy, and cultural critique.This specific combination of titles represents a modern, holistic approach to activism and academia, where literary analysis and developmental psychology intersect to address women’s mental health and societal empowerment.
On Gratitude, Healing, and Why They Matter…
What do you feel about gratitude and healing and why is it important in someone’s life?
Gratitude is not politeness. It is a discipline of vision. Most days we are trained to scan for what is missing, what is broken, what is late. Gratitude interrupts that scan. It asks the eye to rest on what already holds us up. A breath without pain. A friend who answers. A morning that arrived without asking for permission. When we practice that shift, the nervous system follows. The body softens. The mind stops bracing for impact.
Healing, to me, is not the erasure of a wound. It is the integration of it. We do not heal by pretending we were never hurt. We heal when we stop letting the hurt decide who we are allowed to become. Gratitude is the bridge between those two states. It does not deny grief, but it refuses to let grief be the only narrator. I have worked with women who survived abandonment, loss, and violence. The ones who rebuild fastest are not the ones who had the least pain. They are the ones who, in the middle of pain, found one thing still theirs. A child’s laugh. A skill in their hands. The fact that they woke up. That recognition becomes fuel.
Why is this important? Because a life without gratitude is a life of constant famine. You can be surrounded by abundance and still starve if you do not know how to taste it. And a life without healing is a life of repetition. Unhealed pain recycles itself into our choices, relationships, self worth. Gratitude and healing together return authorship to us. They say, “This happened to me, but it is not the end of my story.”
For me, the concept of healing was understood deeply when I saw the suffering of many women held captive by situations they did not choose and compulsions they could not name. It was in their silences, their postponed dreams, their quiet negotiations with survival that I learned healing is not private. It is collective. A wound carried alone hardens into fate, but a wound witnessed with dignity can soften into choice. Healing begins the moment we refuse to let circumstance be the final author of a life. That recognition did not make pain disappear. It made pain speakable. What can be spoken can be shared. What can be shared can be changed.
Advice to the Youth…
One piece of advice you would like to give to the youth :
Stop outsourcing your self worth. You are the first generation measured in public since childhood. Likes, ranks, scores, followers. The metric is always external, and always moving. If you build identity on numbers you do not control, you will live in permanent audition.
Build a private self stronger than your public profile. Develop a skill no one can take from you. Read deeply when no one is watching. Keep a promise to yourself when it would be easier to break it. Learn to sit with discomfort without numbing it with a screen. The world will tell you to brand yourself. I am telling you to know yourself. A brand can be cancelled. A self cannot.
Do not confuse movement with progress. You can be busy and still be lost. Ask once a week, “Is what I am doing aligned with who I want to become?” If the answer is no for too long, have courage to pivot. You do not have to have it all figured out. You only have to stay honest. Honesty is a compass. Perfection is a cage. Choose the compass.
Protect your attention. It is the last real estate you own. What you read, watch, who you listen to — that is who you are becoming. Curate it like your home. Let in what expands you. Walk away from what shrinks you. That is not selfish. That is stewardship.
On Literary Influence…
Your favourite author :
It is difficult to choose one, because different authors have mothered different parts of me. But if I must name the one who changed my DNA as a writer, it is Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore did not write to impress. He wrote to reveal. He had the courage to be tender in a world that rewarded hardness. His poetry understands the divine and the domestic are not separate. A woman sweeping a courtyard can be a spiritual act. A letter not sent can be a whole epic.
What I learn from him is restraint. He could say in four lines what others say in forty. He trusted the reader’s intelligence. He trusted silence. As a woman writing today, I also draw strength from how he wrote female characters. They are not symbols. Not sacrifices. They are full, conflicted, thinking beings. In Chokher Bali, in Ghare Baire, you see women who want, who doubt, who choose. That was radical then. It is still radical now.
Rabindranath Tagore taught me that literature is not escape. It is return. You read to come back to yourself more clearly. When I write about Jagannath Rath Yatra or about Red Bangles on Indian hands, I am trying to do what he did. Take something ordinary : a street, a wrist, a ritual and show the universe inside it. The highest art is not loud. It is true.
What’s in the Pipeline …
Any recent work you want to talk about in the pipeline :
Three projects occupy me now, each a different pilgrimage.
First is my latest book, “Sanyam”, is in pipeline being written in Hindi. The title means restraint, balance, the ability to hold steady when life pulls hard. It is about maintaining patience in spite of odds. Sanyam asks what happens if we wait, watch, respond instead of react. Through quotes, poems, and short stories from a farmer in the country to a single mother in your city the book intends to show that patience is not passivity. It is power held in reserve. I chose Hindi deliberately to encourage each one’s usage of their respective native language. Wisdom should not need a translator.
Second, I am building a framework to fund genuine causes of founders. Too many community leaders have vision but not means. A woman in Nashik wants to start a library for girls. A young man in Odisha wants to run theatre workshops for tribal youth. I intend looking at setting up a small grant and mentorship circle. It is not charity. It is capital for courage. We back founders in art, education, music, and livelihood with seed funds, legal help, and platforms to broadcast their work. A community rises when its storytellers and teachers do not have to starve. Recently,sponsorship was released for rendering support for a national level musical event for a founder in Jalandhar, where artists all across the country came together on one platform to project the universal theme of compassion and gratitude through music.Another set of perks are being looked at for all artists for an open mic event in Punjab and so on.
Third, closest to my heart, is a national and international campaign on cerebral palsy called “Project Sameepya”. The name means nearness, proximity, the refusal to keep anyone at a distance. This campaign is not about pity. It is about presence. We will run city-to-city sensitization drives for schools, workplaces, and hospitals to dismantle myths about capability. We will train parents in early intervention and connect them to therapists, inclusive educators, and assistive tech. We will push for accessible public spaces and employment pathways for young adults with CP. The symbol is a circle of interlocked hands ,different sizes, different strengths ; showing that support is not top-down. It is side by side. We pilot this winter across five states. If it works, we scale.
All three connect back to gratitude and healing. “Sanyam” is healing through perspective. The funding work for founders is healing through access. “Project Sameepya” is healing through nearness — bringing everyone into the mainstream with dignity, not as exceptions but as equals.
So that is where I am. Writing in the language I dreamed in first. Building bridges so others can cross. Trying to keep the chariot moving. And every morning, I still name three things I am grateful for. Today: I am alive, I am able to work, and someone out there is reading. That is enough to begin. Gratitude does not make fear vanish. It made fear useful. You do not have to be fearless to heal. You only have to be willing to see what is still whole in you.
-©®Dr Mayaa SH