Raya Vira began
with a question.

For a long time I did not know how to say that out loud.

Around me I watched women do what women do. We run the house, the work, the plans and the feelings of everyone we love. We are called the Lakshmi of the house, and we are, in the old and beautiful sense. We bring in the light. But nobody asks about the lamp. A lamp that always gives light needs oil.

When I became a mother I noticed something I had not expected. The world’s eyes moved. People who used to ask about my work, my opinions and my plans began to ask about the baby, the feeding and the sleep. I was happy. I was also, quietly, looking around the room for myself.

I have noticed the same in every woman I have spoken to since. In pregnancy. In a new job. In a long marriage. After a very hard year. A woman slowly becomes useful to everyone, and then she cannot find herself on the list.

So I named this Raya Vira. Raya for Lakshmi, the woman who holds a home together. Vira for bravery, because I have come to believe that the bravest thing a woman can do is not to carry more. It is to choose herself.

Choosing yourself is not selfish. It is not something you earn once everything else is done. Nothing is ever fully done.

Raya Vira is the room I wished existed. A room where food is brought to you. Where nobody needs anything from you. Where you can laugh loudly or sit quietly, and are never asked to prove that you have changed by the end of the day.

We begin with Still You, for women who are expecting, because that is a season when the world looks past the woman. Other chapters will follow, because women need different things in different seasons. What stays the same is the care we give to the room, the pace, the people and the details.

If you are tired, if you are the strong one, if you are somewhere in your life looking around the room for yourself, I hope you will come.

You were never meant to disappear in order to be loved.