Shikha Katare

Shikha Katare is the Chief Operating Officer of a management consulting firm and an IICA-certified Independent Director, which means she has spent her career inside rooms where holding it together is the whole job. By most measures she was thriving for years: capable, driven, the person everyone could rely on. She was also, quietly, not okay, and had gotten very good at not saying so.

She writes for people who recognise themselves in that. Her work is about high-functioning burnout, the version of yourself you build to be loved, and the slow, unglamorous work of putting it down.

She is the founder of NIRVAANA, a mental health community and imprint built for exactly this conversation: honest, unperformed, and free of the pressure to arrive already healed. It's a space built by showing up exactly as she is: embracing vulnerability, celebrating growth, and reminding us that healing is rarely linear.

She wrote The Slow Undoing, as she puts it, "not healed and finished, just far enough along to hand you the map I wish someone had handed me."

She lives in Bangalore with her husband and her dog, Eva, where she is at work on her next book.

Come as you are.