Car­ol Quash

It is said that hind­sight is al­ways 20/20, and in ret­ro­spect, Natasha Bhall-Di­als­ingh has a clear­er view of why, 11 years ago, she found her­self mak­ing a ca­reer change.

The for­mer project as­sis­tant, now a guid­ance coun­sel­lor in the Ca­roni ed­u­ca­tion­al dis­trict, pro­vides aca­d­e­m­ic, ca­reer and so­cial sup­port for stu­dents on a dai­ly ba­sis. So when her hus­band, Har­ry Di­als­ingh, died sud­den­ly on Oc­to­ber 23, 2019, she was able to give her two young daugh­ters just the type of sup­port they need­ed to get through the dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od.

“The girls were sev­en and eight years old at the time he passed,” Bhall-Di­als­ingh told WE. “Look­ing back, I can see God’s favour and trace His hand … He had equipped me with the ex­act skill set that would be es­sen­tial to sup­port my chil­dren. This job and God, and even my hus­band, would have prepped me in a cer­tain way for this curve­ball, al­though I didn’t see it that way be­fore.”

Bhall-Di­als­ingh said that be­cause her chil­dren’s cog­ni­tive skills and emo­tions were still evolv­ing, she un­der­stood that they would grieve in a dif­fer­ent man­ner than she would as an adult, and she was able to em­ploy the use of age-ap­pro­pri­ate cop­ing mech­a­nisms.

“We en­gaged in open and hon­est com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and I en­cour­aged them to ex­press their emo­tions in healthy ways, such as talk­ing, jour­nalling, and art.”

Mean­while, she re­lied on her faith and the strength of fam­i­ly and friends, de­spite not un­der­stand­ing why her hus­band was tak­en away with­out warn­ing.

“Dai­ly, I prac­tised grat­i­tude, lean­ing on my sup­port sys­tem while con­tin­u­ing to help oth­ers.”

And hav­ing been un­ex­pect­ed­ly thrust in­to sin­gle par­ent­hood, work and fam­i­ly-life bal­ance now have to be con­tin­u­ous­ly eval­u­at­ed and man­aged with care, es­pe­cial­ly as she has two teenagers on her hands.

“They are cop­ing much bet­ter now, func­tion­ing like nor­mal teenagers. But you know, there are cer­tain mile­stones and sig­nif­i­cant dates that stir up those emo­tions.

“For me, tak­ing care of my phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al and spir­i­tu­al needs is im­por­tant be­cause you can’t pour from an emp­ty cup,” Bhall-Di­als­ingh stressed.

The el­dest of five chil­dren and the first grand­child on both her ma­ter­nal and pa­ter­nal sides, she has al­ways been a nur­tur­er, with­out even notic­ing it ini­tial­ly.

“My hus­band was a school so­cial work­er, and he was the one who recog­nised cer­tain in­her­ent skills and abil­i­ties, and he sug­gest­ed to me, more than once, that I should get in­to guid­ance coun­selling be­cause every­thing that was nec­es­sary for the job, I was al­ready do­ing it.”

And even her qual­i­fi­ca­tions were point­ing her in that di­rec­tion. Bhall-Di­als­ingh has a first de­gree in man­age­ment and psy­chol­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, a mas­ter’s de­gree in hu­man re­source man­age­ment from the Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness, and had start­ed a course in guid­ance and coun­selling when she saw an ad for a guid­ance coun­sel­lor in the news­pa­per, ap­plied, and got the job.

“I am grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have an in­put in shap­ing the lives of young per­sons,” she said. Her days in­volve con­sult­ing with par­ents, staff, and ad­min­is­tra­tors, of­fer­ing guid­ance to stu­dents, hold­ing in­di­vid­ual and group coun­selling ses­sions, and prepar­ing re­fer­rals.

“While it is sup­posed to be an eight-to-four job, I am con­tact­ed out of work­ing hours by stu­dents and par­ents.”

And as a life­long learn­ing ad­vo­cate, she is con­tin­u­ous­ly up­grad­ing her skills and find­ing ways to use her skills and ex­pe­ri­ence to make a pos­i­tive im­pact. She makes good use of the work­shops and sem­i­nars that her line min­istry fa­cil­i­tates for peo­ple in her pro­fes­sion, but she doesn’t stop there.

“If I see a need to delve deep­er in cer­tain ar­eas, I’d do my own re­search. But what I find ex­treme­ly help­ful is ac­tu­al­ly speak­ing with the stu­dents, be­cause the lin­go changes dai­ly,” she chuck­led.

“I have found pro­found sat­is­fac­tion see­ing stu­dents gain con­fi­dence, make bet­ter de­ci­sions, and over­come hard­ships.”

But her car­ing and nur­tur­ing spir­it is not ex­clu­sive to her job. She vol­un­teers her ser­vices at the church she at­tends–a place that plays an im­por­tant role in the way in which she wants her girls to be raised.

“I am grate­ful for that con­nec­tion to my faith when my hus­band died, be­cause I don’t know how I would have man­aged with­out it.”

Her church at­ten­dance and com­mit­ment to liv­ing in a man­ner to which her daugh­ters can as­pire mod­el what she wants for them.

“Teenagers don’t re­al­ly lis­ten to every­thing we’re say­ing, but they ob­serve what we do and are quick to call us out on that. I am try­ing to in­stil in them that we can’t be pre­pared for every even­tu­al­i­ty in life, but if we have a strong con­nec­tion to God, we will get through it.”

Bhall-Di­als­ingh be­lieves that by keep­ing open com­mu­ni­ca­tion with their chil­dren, par­ents can mod­el the be­hav­iours and val­ues they want to see in their chil­dren.

“This gen­er­a­tion is not like oth­er gen­er­a­tions, where par­ents told their chil­dren, ‘Don’t drink and smoke’ while they them­selves were do­ing it. This gen­er­a­tion will ob­serve and call you out.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she said, it is so im­por­tant for par­ents to take the time to teach chil­dren pos­i­tive cop­ing skills in or­der for them to be able to deal with the un­ex­pect­ed things in life.

“Most of us, as par­ents, don’t take the time to teach them be­cause we are busy work­ing, tak­ing care of the home, etc. But we need to make the time. Teach them, from ear­ly, to com­mu­ni­cate what they are feel­ing and how to deal with those feel­ings so they can deal with what­ev­er curve­ball life throws at them.”