Rakhi Kapoor is the recipient of the Prestigious Golden Book Awards 2023 for her 25th book Now You Breathe – overcoming toxic relationships and abuse in the category power relationship guide A Bengali by birth, she is a renowned physiotherapist, entrepreneur and author. Hindustan Saga recently interviewed her related to her popular book Mums, Mental Health, and Milestones.
1. What inspired you to write this book?
My professional background as a physiotherapist led me to become one of the pioneers of Prenatal Counselling in India. The concept of expecting moms along with their spouses taking a guided course on their diet, fitness, preparing for strenuous hours of labour and recovery after childbirth was foreign in this country. The purpose was the young couples could enjoy the pregnancy instead of just letting the ten months pass by with difficulties aches and pain. Initially when I started my practice, the older generations and people around would be curious about this concept. “ In our days, we delivered so many children and never took classes for delivering babies ? What is this new thing? they would ask”.
With the advent of time and evolution of the women’s revolution, women began to work outside their homes, rub shoulders with their men, earning a living for their family too. The large size complex joint family system began to fall apart giving rise to nuclear families. Hence a woman was single handily taking care of her house hold and professional responsibilities; pregnancy, childbirth along with taking care of infants was an immense workload that fell upon an already overworked woman.
Hence better planning, guidance on physical fitness, sensitising their spouses about their needs and getting extra support was the only way forward for nuclear families to be able to pursue a healthy and safe pregnancy. My sessions became popular with celebrities, doctors, home makers, working women from all spheres enrolling for my classes. For over two decades I have been conducting such programs for thousands of couples through my centre Dwi Maternity Studio in Chennai.
I began to notice that in spite of taking care of the diet and fitness of the expecting women complications like life style disorders afflicted the young moms to be. The young moms reached out to me during my spare time or after the sessions about their personal issues and fears.
Relationship and marital issues, fear and anxiety of the pregnancy and childbirth, work life stress and balance, apprehensions about their professional future post child birth, the fear of the demands of parenting were the common fears of expecting women. These fears would affect their blood sugar levels, blood pressure, weight gain and cause various other hormonal imbalances. I would have to dedicate extra time to teach women to handle their mood swings and also counselled women through post-natal depression after childbirth.
So I began to notice that if along with their physical needs if the emotional needs of the women were taken care of the outcome was better. The pregnancies went smoother without any complications, the couples were strongly bonded in to their marriage and the most beautiful outcome was happy, smiling infants from the start.
That coaxed me to write a book focussing on the mental health of women during pregnancy and post-partum phase and write my book titled Mums Mental health and Milestones.
2. What challenges did you face while researching and writing it?
I had ample real life case studies and being an expert in this field acted as a bonus for me while writing this book. The challenge was that taking extra hours spending time with the expecting women and new moms counselling them took a lot of my time. I had a young son to raise and a family to take care off. I worked mostly on weekends and had a Tuesday off which also meant a chunk of my crucial time away from my family on weekends.
Thankfully I had immense support from my family especially my husband who never complained, my son who patiently waited for his mother to get back home to spend time with him. Maintaining this balance of my personal and professional life was taxing on me physically and mentally but each time I met the new born babies of my clients, I heard that the couples were happy families, I got a surge of strength to push myself against all the challenges.
3. What part of the book fascinated you the most as the author?
The part of the book which fascinated me as an author was gathering and writing the case studies and adding them as small stories and instances in the book. As I went researching and reading through the case files I experienced a plethora of emotions. Some of the examples made me smile and feel proud. It was immensely challenging to help the expecting women and new moms with their mental health. You see it is not possible to fall back on any kind of medications to improve a women’s mental health and alleviate their moods as these medications would be absorbed by the foetus or the infants through breast milk. Counselling, sensitising the family, gathering support and innovation was the key to help these women, which was quite a lot of work for me.
Jotting it down and finding tailor made solutions for the upkeep of the mental health of women in these stages of their life was challenging and fascinating.
4. What message do you want to convey from this book?
The message that I want to convey through this book is that we cannot have a healthy baby if we don’t take care of the mother’s mental health. The mental health of expecting moms and new mothers is extremely crucial to maintain the physical health of the mother. What I want to retariate through this book is that the mental health of the mother also affects their physical health and in turn the development and healthy growth of the foetus in the mother’s womb and the initial bonding between a new mom and her infant.
It is very important that the initial bonding between the mother and her infant be smooth and start as soon as possible after childbirth. Research has shown that babies who do not get to bond with their mothers immediately after childbirth or have delayed bonding experiences with their mother had significant psychological impact affecting their mental health and personality development in the future.
I also want to educate people, expecting moms, and new moms that their mental health is important during all these phases. It is OK to have certain disturbances in their moods and not make this issue a social taboo. This book Mum’s Mental Health and Milestone aims at generating awareness about the importance of mental health of expecting women young moms and its impact on the future generation families and the society.
5. What is the most challenging part for an author in general?
For me the most challenging part about being an author is a about balancing my professional life as prenatal counsellor, a writer, a mother and taking care of my personal needs. It is extremely difficult to keep rigid timeline with creative work. Ideas of books come at random hours and distract me. Hence I’m a writer 24/7 now that really interferes with my other duties and responsibilities.
Writing for hours not getting enough rest is also exhausting physically and mentally draining. Hence writers need a lot of alone time to recover which again affects their social life,discharging their other personal duties towards their family and taking care of their own needs.
Most often one can find the writer being aloof and distant hence writers are also considered to be anti-social and impolite in social gatherings. Which is actually not the case because the poor writer is constantly having a chat with his or her own ideas and unable to pay attention to the person speaking across them.
6. What are you working on next?
After completing this book I started extensive work on writing about mental health. One of the outcomes of writing a book on mental health for expecting women and young moms was that I wrote a revolutionary book called Now You Breathe which has won the golden book award 2023 in the category Powerful Relationship Guide. This book definitely deserves a sequel. I have identified the red flags and coping mechanisms of abusive toxic relationships in this book. But they issue of healing from abusive and toxic relationship has to be dealt with more detail. I am in the initial stages of working on its sequel to focus on helping people heal and recover from toxic and abusive relationship.
7. What keeps you going as a writer?
Writing is my passion. No matter how exhausted or drained I am, just a few sentences of writing or working on a blog energises me. So yes the basic act of writing itself keeps me going. The next thing that keeps me going as a writer is the difference that I make to peoples lives and the impact that I
leave in the society as a writer. Hence I’m endlessly inspired. So I continue writing and churning out meaningful and impactful books.
8. If you had to suggest two books for Indian Youth, which would they be and why?
I recommend Indian youth to read Epics, Indian mythology and works on Indian history. The Indian heritage and culture is extremely rich and diverse. The West seek this and are thirsty for the knowledge from our Vedas, Hatha yoga,the Krishna consciousness and the Shiva and the Shakti energy fusion.
Everyone has different reading preference. I only request readers to try various authors and pick a genre close to their heart. Having said that I urge readers to never shun away from experimenting with different genres and authors.
The only thing I recommend readers to do is to transform themselves after reading a book. Every book whether it is fiction or the obvious non-fiction subject can be delved upon and the message imbibed in their hearts and mind to transform themselves.
So Why Ram :beyond the Lakshman Rekha and Flourish infinitely life lessons from Lord Krishna are two of my books that I would recommend to the youth, both men and women to read.
Mums, Mental Health and Milestones https://amzn.eu/d/dhac1pI
More about Author Rakhi Kapoor
Rakhi published her first book, “The Girl Who Was Left Behind” in 2017 – a story that was transcribed from her personal experience having failed to complete her first trek in Nepal.
Nicknamed serial author by her publishing team, Rakhi has published twenty five books on various topics providing simple solutions for several issues relating to child birth, relationships, mental health issues and several complicated and often neglected aspects of life. Four of her books topped the best seller chart in its category on Amazon India.
Her book Expecting Daddy Delivers is the first of its kind written for Indian men and has been translated in to Hindi titled Behtar Pati Behatareen Pita.
Rakhi is the pioneer in the concept of prenatal counselling in India. With over two decades of experiences, she has reached out to thousands of couples through her centre called Dwi Maternity Studio in Chennai which focuses on prenatal care for young expecting couples.
Rakhi is an avid trekker, as much as Rakhi loves staying indoors engrossed in writing she also loves to explore nature travelling extensively and trekking mountains in various parts of the world. Some of the iconic treks she has completed are Mt Fuji, The Everest base camp, Annapurna Circuit, and Mount Kilimanjaro. Rakhi believes that challenges and difficult circumstances are opportunities in disguise to grow in life.
