WTF, TCB, IKR, TSAFP, and ILY: the Alphabet Soup of My Life

I have been thinking about writing here for a while, but just haven’t been able to make myself do it since November.  It’s been an interesting couple of months.  Life is surprising and wonderful things pop up where you least expect them that can turn your life around most profoundly, but regardless of how wonderful these things might be, change takes time to process and there’s a whole lot of “what the fuck” that goes along with it.  Life moves forward and you gotta roll with it.  You have to take care of business.  Sometimes it’s exciting, sometimes it’s frustrating, and sometimes it’s just so mind-numbingly stupid all you can do is look around and the closest equally bewildered person and say, “I know, right?”  It gets overwhelming, this thing called life.  It’s not always easy.  Sometimes it’s ice-pick through your pupil painful.  It can be wildly unfair.  It can hurt.  It can be depressing as often as it’s wonderful.  Here’s the thing: this shit ain’t for pussies.  Figuring it out can be the hardest thing until you realize that there really is nothing to figure out at all because the minute you figure it out, things change.  Everything is in constant flux.  Just when you think that you’ve found your solid footing, guess what?  That damn rug gets pulled out from under you again.  Better to just learn to float.  And that is when the only real thing that matters are 3 words: I love you.  Saying them to someone.  Hearing them from someone.  Saying them to yourself.  Whatever. I love you is the same as Thank you, but kind of squishier and fuzzier and, well, you know.

My life has fallen into these 5 categories.  I know it’s been a long long time since I’ve been here, so here’s a run down of some of what has been filling the categories of my days.

WTF

When we bought this house 11 years ago and started packing up our stuff to move, I came across a box of my hold high school stuff. I was ready to throw the whole thing out unopened, but Brian insisted we go through it.  Inside I found programs from operettas, old notes, pictures, the publications that had my poetry in them, senior pictures of my friends, my diploma, a high school memory book and assorted other flotsam and jetsam.  The memory book was barely filled out – even then I wasn’t the type of person to get too sentimental about that kind of stuff – but there were a few things written in it from friends.  I found it funny that probably 60% of the people mentioned my “funky style.”  I thought back.  While I certainly didn’t think it as particularly odd at the time, I suppose I did have my own flair.  I was almost always in jeans, white v-neck tshirt, flannel, and combat boots like most of my friends.  The only difference is that I would wear that outfit with pearls and with my long hair in a french twist.  Or I would wear a fancy dress with an army jacket, little black dresses with neon tights, flowered shorts with actual bowling shoes I stole from the local bowling alley.  Okay, my boyfriend stole them, but whatever.  I was also one of the first people in my crowd to have a tattoo.  In 1993, kids didn’t have tattoos.  I felt very comfortable in my skin and my clothes, but I got lots of “what the fuck” back then and now, 21 years later, I’m getting it again.  While my youngest son now wears my Doc Marten boots and I no longer wear an army jacket, I am still expressing myself visually.  I got my tongue pierced.  I got my septum pierced.  I got a full chest piece tattoo.  (You can see all this stuff on my Instagram.) They all mean something very important to me and I love each one of these new pieces, but it seems that folks wonder WTF has happened to me.  The answer is simple: Everything and nothing.  I am still the same person I always was.  And I change every day.  It makes me do my own version of wtf: what the fuck does it matter to you?  Maybe I’m a little sensitive.

I wrote not too long ago about an event that shook my little family of three to the core.  While that event got squared away, it spawned some other WTF moments.  One of the people who perpetrated the original awfulness decided to sue me.  It was the most outlandish, egregious, poorly thought out decisions I have ever experienced first hand.  There are a few people who know the details, which I will not expound upon here, and all of us collectively shouted to the world, “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK???”  This time, my sweet kiddos got in on the act and actually contacted and shook some sense into this person and the lawsuit was dropped rather quickly, but let this be a lesson to you all: crazy is as crazy does.

My girl dog, Audrey, has decided that she gets to get on the furniture now.  We’ve had her 2.5 years and she never got on the furniture before, but now she does.  WTF?

My main tv remote no longer controls the volume nor the power.  WTF?

I bought a new vacuum and love it more than any other appliance.  WTF?  (okay, maybe I have changed.  A little.)

TCB

I have been feeling the need to make some professional changes in my life for a few years.  Yes, it’s been a long long long time coming, but today I took the final step.  I am no longer involved in any of the managerial or secretarial duties at Yoga Sol.  I just teach and I have to say that, while it was a wonderful run and I’m grateful for the experience, I’m relieved to have scaled back.  The person who replaced me is doing a much better job than I did. It’s better for the studio, and it’s most assuredly better for me, as well.  Teaching will always feed my soul and I couldn’t function without it.  I’m grateful to be able to focus on that fully.

While I haven’t been writing here, I have been writing.  I am spending quite a bit of time on my other love: live music.  I’ve been blessed to fall into ranks with a community that supports, creates, and promotes real musicians doing genius stuff independently from huge labels.  I have been attending shows, interviewing artists, laughing and dancing and writing and living and … wow, it’s so much fun!  You can find interviews I’ve done over at MoonRunners Country and I look forward to more experiences coming up.  These people I have met have become my family and I couldn’t be happier nor prouder of my association with them.

IKR

It’s fucking cold and I fear Spring will never arrive. I could go on about other things, but that particular item has me so depressed that everything else doesn’t matter.

TSAFP (in which I violate the TSAFP code.)

A few years ago, two of my best girlfriends and I sat down at a coffee shop to discuss a rather unpleasant happening in one of their lives.  “Rather unpleasant” is putting it mildly, but discretion being the better part of valor and all, I’ll leave it at that.  While there wasn’t a solution then (and there isn’t a solution now,) we pretty much summed up the whole experience by saying This Shit Ain’t For Pussies.  Sorry ladies, I just released the code out into the world.

While I have learned over the years to not take on the troubles of others, I am a very compassionate and empathetic person.  Some of the people I feel closest to in the whole world are dealing with some serious stuff right now: addiction, domestic abuse, mental illness, divorce, declining health of elderly parents, poverty, serious physical injury, abandonment… it’s all really heavy stuff.  There isn’t much I can do but care, and oh, how I care!  Having been to the bottom and having pulled myself part of the way up, I relate to how hard things can be.  This Shit Ain’t For Pussies, but I’m with you.  I care.  I’m here.

ILY

Every single morning, when I walk out of my bedroom, I am greeted before I even make it to the bathroom by love.  Zeus, the puppy, stands up on his hind legs, puts his paws on my shoulders, and hugs me.  That’s 89 lbs of puppy love.  At least he has learned to jump higher than my bladder.  A few minutes later (after I’ve taken care of pressing matters,) my oldest child puts a cup of coffee into my hand (coffee that he doesn’t drink, but makes for me every single day,)  and kisses my forehead.  He’s taller than me now, and it’s funny how the role has been reversed.  “Good morning, Mom!  How were your sleeps? (a throwback to our conversations when he was a tiny one.) Did you have good dreams?”  I ask him what he has been reading that morning and tell him what our plan for the day is.  A little while later, the youngest comes out.  He sleeps a lot these days – growing so fast is tiring work.  Some days I’m lucky – some days he will still curl on my lap for a snuggle.  Other days, he kisses my cheek and stumbles, bleary eyed, into the kitchen to get his own breakfast.  He’ll usually bring me a glass of juice.  We talk a bit as they eat and eat and eat (teenagers!) About the time I pour my 2nd or 3rd cup of coffee, I either send or receive a “Good Morning” text to or from a person who fills many of my thoughts.  The last text of the day and the first text of the morning is usually interacting with this person and it’s a heartwarming feeling.

I go about my day, working on the kids homeschooling projects, making meals, making plans, making the most out of every minute.  I look at the calendar and see who is coming into town, which concert is next, what article is due.  Emails, Facebook, Instagram, each one filled with something that makes me smile.  Dog kisses, fresh warm laundry, the perfect cup of chai tea, lunch with a friend, memories flashing like shooting stars, music so raw and so pure it makes me have to remember to breathe.  Old friends and new friends texting, calling, checking in or asking me if I want or need to check out for awhile with them.  Asking “how are you?” and really meaning it and knowing that the people who ask me the same really mean it, too.  Impromptu dance parties with my littles who are far from little anymore.

I cannot count the number of times a day I say or I hear “I love you.”

When it all boils down to it, those are the only letters of the alphabet that matter.

Hangover

We’ve all been there at one point in time or another.  Waking up and peeling your eyelids open and wondering at what point during the previous night did you eat a cat.  The light hurts, your stomach spins, and you pray to whatever you believe in that, if you could just hold onto the bed long enough to keep the world from spinning, you’ll never ever have another night like the one before. Until you do.

We often think of hangovers just in terms of alcohol consumption, but the reality is that we more often that not have hangovers that have nothing at all to do with booze.  We have mental hangovers, emotional hangovers, anxiety hangovers, trauma hangovers.  Those hangovers, believe me, are just as much of a bitch as the happy juice kind, maybe even more so because alka seltzer, a nap, and a greasy cheeseburger don’t do a damn thing to help them.

They say “hair of the dog” is what will cure you when you’ve had too much booze.  You know, the whole concept of “what got you in will get you out.”  Not so with the other kinds of hangovers.  While we might do things that feel or sound good or appropriate at the time, eventually the moment of reckoning comes and all we’re left with is doubt, guilt, shame, anger, anxiety, fear, or any combination of those.  In those circumstances, doing what got you there most certainly will NOT get you out, it will only get you in deeper.  It can be a horrible cycle of trying to explain things and that only makes things worse.  Kind of like when someone doesn’t understand what you’re saying, it does no good to clear up the situation by simply repeating yourself over and over again or, my personal favorite, saying the same things LOUDER.

For years, I have taught “hangover yoga” the day after traditional days of celebration: New Year’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick’s Day, Homecoming, Halloween, etc.  Those classes were centered around asana that would cleanse the body of toxins, lots of twists, pranayama, forward folds, gentle inversions.  About 6 weeks ago, I realized that we all need to detox from our emotional and mental hangovers as well.  We need to learn to stop beating ourselves up over and over again.  We need to let go of the shame or anger we feel for ourselves or for others.  We need to let go of the poison.  We need, in other words, to get the toxic shit out of us so that we can forgive and move on.  I can’t speak for anyone else, but forgiving myself is the hardest thing in the world to do.  I often do things in the heat of the moment that cause me to feel shame or regret the next day or next week or next whatever.  It sucks.  It REALLY sucks and I have long moments of absolutely hating myself for it, but you know what?  We all do that.  We all do that because we are human.

Oddly, it’s not the original act that hurts us the most, it’s the squirrel cage circular thinking that does the most damage. There is a basic tenet of yoga called Ahimsa which essential means Do No Harm.  Listen, like I said, we’re human.  We’re going to fuck up.  The sooner we accept that, the better we’ll all be.  BUT here’s the thing, we don’t have to keep harming ourselves over our fuck ups.  We don’t have to make the situation worse on ourselves by reliving our mistakes over and over again.  We don’t need to keep beating ourselves up.  If we keep ourselves filled with shame, there is no room for acceptance.  And if there is no room for acceptance, there is no room for love.  We have to learn to let it go.  We might never ever be able to remedy what we have done.  Somethings just can’t be fixed, sadly, but we can keep the experience from hurting more than it already does.  Sadly, there is no AA for emotional / mental hangovers.  They are going to happen.  We have no choice over that matter.  What we DO have control over, however, is how we deal with them.  Feel the pain.  Feel the shame.  Feel the embarrassment or anger or anxiety or whatever it is, because if you don’t feel it, it will come back to haunt you.  Feel it, and then step away.  Ahimsa – don’t pour salt on the wound. Salt is for margaritas.

Are You Talking to Me? Obviously Not.

 

I have debated writing about this for several days.  I have tried to gradually move this blog back into more of a yoga / mindfulness blog and less of a grief processing blog, but as I stated in my first Brian post, I just can’t separate the two.  Ultimately, this is a blog about my life and how I see it and what I learn from it.  Lotta strands in old Duder’s head. – and they are all tangled together.

While I wouldn’t say that this past week has been the hardest of my life (not by a long shot,) I can with certainty say that it was a fucking nightmare created entirely from the twisted minds of other people.  Yes, I know, I should be able to stop this post and my squirrel cage thinking with that sentence.  NOT MY DOING.  The end.  Easier said than done. While I have espoused for years the mantra of “what other people think of me is none of my business,” and I believe it, the fact of the matter is that when people take actions based upon their erroneous beliefs, the results can be devastating.

While my kids and I came out smelling like roses, there were about 36 hours of complete and utter terror in my house last week.  No one needs that in their lives, but it was especially traumatizing to us since we are all still trying to recover from the trauma of Brian’s death.  I won’t get into the specifics about it because to lend power to the events would be to lend  power to the instigators, but the details don’t matter so much to the lesson.  I will say this – one of the most painful parts of the whole thing is knowing that this egregious assault on character and lifestyle came from people who could have and most certainly should have spoken to me first, rather than making asinine, unfounded assumptions and acting out of misconstrued truths.

At any given point, the instigators of this horrible week could have spoken to me about their concerns, asked questions, voiced their opinions (not that their opinion would have swayed me one iota,) and asked for clarity and / or more information.  These people chose not to do that.  They chose instead to gossip amongst each other, gathering hearsay data and mixing it with their own judgements, and jump to ghastly inaccurate conclusions.  The result?  My children and I were hurt and traumatized and have taken the actions necessary to prevent ourselves from further injury.  The result for them?  They don’t get to be a part of our lives.  Honestly, I think we got the better end of the deal.  When someone shows you who they truly are, believe them.

Satya and Ahimsa.  Speak the truth and do no harm.  We need to talk to one another instead of talking about one another.  In this situation, everyone hurts.  Had there been open and honest communication, we could have all been saved some pain.  Sadly, the other parties involved chose to hide behind other people and sneak around like thieves in the night to fulfill their agenda.  I won’t lie – there were days when I wanted to lash out and retaliate against these people for the agony they caused and the fearful distrust they have created in me and my children.  I’m human.  I wanted them to hurt as badly as they hurt me, I wanted them to feel the slap of betrayal as clearly as we have.  I wanted them to suffer, but (gratefully) I have learned to give things time and space so that I can act instead of react.  As I write this, my feelings at this moment are those of pity for them (and, admittedly, righteous indignation,)  but also pride in myself and my children, in our ability to see through the fog, in our ability to stop playing the dreaded “Telephone Game” of our youth and go straight to the source, and in our ability to make the choices that are best for us and the lives we want to lead.

Talk to each other.  Speak the truth.  Do no harm.

It’s really that easy.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

It’s been a long time since I have written.  I have been struggling with getting my thoughts together. Hell, I have been struggling to get myself together! Sometimes life just gets away from me and I get lost in the shuffle.  Lately I have been running 90 to nothing and feeling like I haven’t been getting anything done.  Is that a grief thing?  A life thing?  An ADD thing? A depression thing?  An age thing?  I don’t know for sure, but I’m certain that it’s definitely a thing.

The 9 months since Brian died has been a total roller coaster.  Just when things seem to get easier, something comes up and knocks us all back down.  Not as far down as we have been, of course, but it’s still a fall. I can say with all honesty and without a doubt that this experience has been the most powerful and educational experience of my life.  I have learned so much about life, about death, about other people, but mostly about myself.  The biggest lesson I have learned is this: I am not Superwoman.

I have been fiercely independent my entire adult life.  I still am.  I am the woman who will fix her own plumbing, carry in all the groceries in one trip, work on my own household projects, open my own doors, pay my own way, etc.  Asking for help is almost impossible for me – it’s just not in my makeup.  My parents tell the story of taking me out on a boat with friends when I was three years old.  The adults were waterskiing and, at one point, I attempted to jump into the water screaming, “MY TURN!” When I was 8 months pregnant with my oldest child, my husband came home to find that I had not only assembled all of the nursery furniture, but had also rearranged our bedroom by myself.  I have painted houses, built fences, moved furniture, held a breastfeeding baby with one hand while plunging a clogged toilet with the other, and superglued my finger back together after I cut it to the bone, but I’ve learned that, as much as I wish I could, there are some things I cannot do.

I cannot process grief or love by myself.

I cannot heal my depression, anxiety, panic, or lack of focus by myself.

I cannot be both mother and father by myself.

I cannot pretend that I’m not a nervous wreck every moment of the day by myself.

I cannot pretend.  Period.

I cannot take care of my children and myself 24/7/365 completely by myself.

I need help.  I hate that I need help.  I mean, I really hate it.  It goes against everything I have ever believed about myself, but it’s my truth now.  I need friends and family to help me with the kids.  I need therapy and medication and meditation to help with my emotional and mental health.  I need to be heard and understood as I process this new life I’m trying to create.  I don’t want any of these things, but I need them and I have learned how to ask for them. Okay, it’s more accurate to say that I am learning how to ask for them.   When I do ask, I am given what I need.  It’s a whole new kind of DIY lesson, but I’m trying. 

Who is this bitch, anyway?

Circle

When I was 18, I fell in love with a guy who was 21.  We spent a wonderful summer together and it was brilliant.  Things happened that summer, however, that changed who we both were.  Towards the end of that “committed relationship,” he wrote me a letter as I was visiting my father out of state.  The end of the letter said, “If you ever wonder how I feel about you, listen to Edie.  She says it all.”  (sidebar: it’s been nearly 20 years since that summer and he and I are still friends.)

Ahhhh, the Circle.  Nothing’s good enough for anybody else, it seems.  We notice you don’t come around.

To say that my life has changed in the past year is a wild understatement.  EVERYTHING has changed.  Recently, my older brother came to visit and he was here for a couple of weeks.  He told me (and others) that he had to get to know his new sister.  I had to chew on that awhile.  Am I a new person?  Or is it possible that I am the same person I have always been, but *I* am  now visible again after all these years because, well, because “BrianandSarah” is no more?

I have discovered that I am either one of two things to almost everyone I know: I am either exactly the same as I have always been, or I am totally different.  The fact of the matter is that neither of those statements are true.  There was a time in my life where I only listened to punk music.  There was a time in my life where I only listened to country.  Okay, that’s a total lie – I have never ONLY listened to country, but certainly listened mainly to country (always classic stuff or underground stuff – never radio stuff.)   There was also a time in which I wouldn’t do anything if it wasn’t totally organic, natural, hippie-dippie stuff.  And, yes, there was a time when I disavowed television and all screen time.  All of those times were just that: times.  Times pass.

The truth of the matter is that, in the wee dark hours of the morning, I would occasionally find myself missing the gal who didn’t go fishing, who would have rather blasted death metal than listen to crickets, who took care of her business and, once that was taken care of, took a ride.  I have always wanted adventure and excitement and to live out loud.  Now that I’m doing it, however, I’m seeing that some folks don’t recognize me.   I get it.  I am just learning to recognize myself again.  It’s a process.  It’s a circle.  And, honestly, there was a part of me that didn’t come around anymore.  She’s starting to show up again.  She has to.  SHE HAS TO.  And she’d like to be welcomed back by someone other than herself.

I think this is the part of yoga that is so wonderful and so difficult.  When you’re on your mat, there is NO WHERE TO HIDE.  All of you comes up and slaps you right in the face.  You have to see it.  You have to acknowledge it.  You might be sweating because you’ve done 17 Surya Namaskar B’s in a row, but what you’re sweating out isn’t just salt water – it’s the salty truth.  We can either choose to notice our circle and spin around and around, or …. well, we’re going to spin whether we acknowledge it or not, but it’s our choice to take the ride with eyes open or eyes closed, and it’s our choice to step off the ride and not come around here anymore.

I’m still here.  I might be on a different arc of the circle than you’re used to seeing, but I promise you – it’s my circle, and I’m coming back around again.

 

The Power of White

When I was a kid in school, I was in special classes for “gifted” kids.  I always have hated that term.  Aren’t we all gifted?  Anyway, in these courses, I was given the opportunity to do incredible things.  I wrote two “books” before I was in Jr High School, attended court cases, took trips to botanical gardens, got out of regular classes to do hands on learning, and was able to meet some wonderful professionals.  When I was in 7th grade, I had an experienced that changed my life.  At the time, I had no idea how powerful it would be (who knows these things when they are 13?) but I have never forgotten it.  One spring Saturday, my “gifted” group and the similar groups from other schools piled into the auditorium and listened to an author speak about the writing process.  He spoke at length and answered questions and, honestly, I don’t remember very much except the one thing that has guided my life: “You must conquer the power of white.”

Before you go getting all steamed in your bloomers, this has nothing to do with race or color or anything other than writing.  You have to remember, I’m older than dirt.  When this event happened, people didn’t write on computers.  Most folks wrote on a word processor or even, gasp, on paper with a pencil or pen!  What the author was talking about was the terror, the complete and total block that comes when you sit down in front of a white sheet of paper and suddenly cannot think of a single word to write.  The whiteness, the purity, the blank sheet is too overwhelming and everything that you might think about writing starts to seem wildly inane and insignificant, so you sit there drooling on yourself like an idiot and get nothing done.  The white has won.

His suggestion? Get the paper dirty.  Scribble on it.  Spill something on it.  Smudge it.  Do anything – ANYTHING – to destroy the power of white.  When it’s not so blank, things start to happen.  It’s the same as waking up in the morning to a blanket of pure white thick fresh fallen snow.  You want to go out and play in it (okay, I never do, but I hear that most people want to,) and yet you don’t want to ruin the perfectness of it.  A perfectly frosted cake.  A pristinely made bed. A perfectly wonderful life, a perfectly profound grief.  They all can become all you see and the fear of changing it, even a tiny bit, is horrifying.  Adding humanity to it, adding life to it, adding (or subtracting)  ANYTHING to it risks fucking it up irreparably.

It’s been quite awhile since I have written and I couldn’t find out why I was struggling to get words onto the page.  I stated something along those lines on my FB status and got some insightful responses.  The one that struck me most profoundly, however, came in the form of a private message from a friend who suggested that maybe I am not sure what to write about now, how much of my own life to include in the story, is because I have been so very bold and open with my grief and my process and, now that it is taking on a different color, I’m feeling the need to protect it.  My life now has it’s own power of white.

Last time I wrote, I mentioned that I am now in a relationship with a wonderful man.  The feedback from that has been interesting, to say the least.  Most people who say anything at all to me about it are INCREDIBLY supportive and excited.  Many of my friends and family members have met him and it’s clear to them that this is a good thing.  It’s very clear to us that this is a good thing.  That said, there are several people out there (quite likely more than I know,) who are not so thrilled with this turn of events, who feel that it is disrespectful of Brian or of our marriage or whatever.  I realize that, for a long time, I was more terrified of what other people would say or think than how I would feel.  That, my dears, is utter bullshit.   Their feelings are their story.  My feelings are mine.  I’m the one who gets to scribble on my page so I can overcome the fear of writing a new story.  I took a breath, took a chance, and scribbled like mad and, guess what?  My story has a new plot, a wonderful, exciting, sincere, honest, compassionate plot that doesn’t dismiss my story with Brian, but has added onto it.  My story is still being written.  Had I not taken the chance, had I not scribbled, I’d still be dying daily while sitting on my couch.  I did that for months and months and months.  Brian wouldn’t have wanted that.  My kids didn’t want that.  *I* didn’t want that, but it was happening.  I messed up that perfectly blank sheet of grief and somehow, a story of life started to unfold.  I stopped dying on the couch and started, slowly, to live again.

I have been picking up additional yoga classes as the other teachers at Yoga Sol are vacationing.  Getting back into a more active teaching role has helped me scribble on my yoga page as well.  After Brian died, everything I did was colored by my loss.  It is absolutely impossible to avoid that.  Fortunately, it worked well for me and it made my teaching more … profound?  Intense? Real?  I don’t know what to call it, but for a long time it was even more of an extension of me as it has always been.  As I began to heal (and I’ll be healing for the rest of my life,) however, it started to feel like I was stuck.  Again, the power of white was blocking me.  I was too comfortable with the blanket of grief teaching and it became all I could see, even though it didn’t fit anymore.  One day, I did something I hadn’t done since Brian died: I ended the class with the singing bowl and a chant.  I scribbled on my class and, oh how the story started to pour out!  I have been doing yoga for more than half of my life and I have taken just about every kind of class you can imagine, but it was suddenly like I was a beginner again.  Beginner’s mind, yo.  Everything was new and wonderful and exciting and vibrant.  The grief hadn’t gone away, but suddenly there was the opportunity for much more than grief!  I think the same thing applies to all yoga students.  It might not be grief they are experiencing, it might just be complacency, or even incredible bliss, but if nothing ever changes, nothing ever changes.  I have had the pleasure of having new students in my class recently.  Yesterday, a lovely yogini arrived to my Flying Friday class and confessed that she had attempted to come the week prior, but got scared before she walked in and left without taking the class.  White white white white white.  Yesterday, she stayed, she took the class, scribbled al over her mat, and started to bloom into a million colors.

We can get blinded and paralyzed by extreme joy, extreme grief, extreme pain, extreme ambivalence.  It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks – it’s their story they are writing, not yours.  Only you can write your story, but you have to write it.  You have to take a chance, mess up the page, conquer the power of white, and get it out there. You never know how wonderful it will be unless you start letting it pour out onto your own page. Let it have colors.  Let it have adventure.  Let it have flavor and texture. Let it have music (I’m fond of the mandolin.) Let it be bold or timid, but let it be.  Don’t hide behind the power of white, get out there and start scribbling and be amazed at your own brilliance!

The Night the Rice Went Out in CoMO: How yoga taught me to wake up and get some freaking sleep.

Okay, so I was going to embed a video of the song “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,” but all that popped up at first was Reba McIntyre’s version with her lovely but weird jaw thing and then a bunch of losers saying it is a Tanya Tucker song and then way down at the bottom was Vicki Lawrence and I swear, if you don’t know it’s actually  Vicki Lawrence who did it originally and who deserves to be at the very top, well, I just don’t know what to think.  So, when in doubt, trust Julia Sugarbaker to bring it on home. 

Moving on…

Like most Americans, I had a love affair with sleep when I was younger.  I was in my early to mid teens when I finally dragged my sorry behind out of bed one day and declared that “Sleep is my friend and I like to visit it as often as I possibly can.” Little did I know that my visits would be fewer and further between until one day they would almost disappear all together.

A lot of things changed in my life as I aged and matured.  My hair and my waist grew thicker, my arms and my beliefs grew stronger, I became kinder and less rigid, and I stopped smoking, screaming, and I stopped sleeping.  Yep, I stopped sleeping.  What was once easy and assumed in my life became my biggest trauma – I developed a severe crippling case of insomnia in my mid-twenties. It started mildly enough: I’d fall asleep easily and wake a couple of times in the middle of the night for 15 or 20 minutes.  Then the spaces between waking up and going back to sleep got longer and longer.  There would be days when I would sleep fine and others where I wouldn’t sleep at all, but there was always an issue. For years and years.  I tried everything – yes, everything: no caffein, no sugar, walks, baths, melatonin, teas, yoga (!!!!!,) meditation, accupressure, Benadryl, NyQuil, sleep aids, Valium, Ambien, chanting, hynosis, massage, the works.  Things would work for a week or so, but even then they didn’t work completely.  It was awful.  Imagine it – we’re talking about 10 years of not having a good night’s sleep. Zombie bitch, that’s me!   For most of these years, there was something nagging at the back of mind telling me that there was a better way to fix this.  Something was telling me that if I made a change, everything else would change, too, but I ignored it.

Sometimes I can be really dense.

About a month ago things got to a point where I wasn’t functioning.  I was struggling to teach.  I was struggling to parent.  I was struggling to do anything.  I would be driving around and feel stoned out of my mind.  I’d end up in places I had no intention of driving.  Just … out of it.  I was a mess, but life goes on, you know?  I kept on keeping on and trusted that something would happen.  And then, one day, something really fucked up happened and it changed everything.

I was in Savasana after my home practice one day and I truly heard something say, “It’s not what you do, it’s what you eat.”  I’m telling you, sleep deprivation does some crazy shit to a person.  I dismissed it until a couple of days later when the exact same thing happened. “It’s not what you do, it’s what you eat.”  I desperately looked around for Shoeless Joe Jackson.

No baseball players arrived on my mat.  sigh.

It happened one more time and, as daft as I can be, even I don’t ignore the power of three.  I started paying attention.  On the nights I had the worst time sleeping, I could look back on the day prior and notice what I ate.  I’d like to say it was clear to me what the problem was, but I can’t.  The log wasn’t perfectly clear, but something kept telling me to cut the grains from my diet.  ALL grains, not just gluten. All of them – rice, oats, barley, wheat, EVERYTHING.  No pasta, no crackers, no chips, no rice, no breads, nothing.  I don’t know why this made sense to me, I don’t know why I was getting this message, I don’t know why it was so urgent and clear and insistent, but it was.  My yoga practice has taught me to listen to myself.  To trust myself.  That greater, higher things speak to me through myself, so I better listen up.  And I did. Finally.

Almost 2 weeks ago, I cut ALL grains from my diet.  Cold turkey.  Gone.  I have replaced rice and even pizza crusts with cauliflower (gross, right? I thought so, too, but you can do AMAZING things with cauli.) I do eat quinoa because it is a seed and I have even ground that to make “flour” for binding bean burgers, etc.  Eggplant and zucchini make incredible “pasta.” Lettuce or Kale leaves make the perfect “bread” for sandwiches.  Anything you’d put in a wrap can be put on a fork. It has been easy for me to do this, which makes me think it’s the right path.  What makes me KNOW it’s the right path for me is that I haven’t used a sleep aid in 2 weeks and I have been sleeping deeply, soundly, uninterruptedly, for at least 6 hours straight a night for the last 10 days.  6 hours might not seem like enough to you, but remember, I was going on 2!  Not only that, but I feel like I’m going to soon be able to sleep longer.  My dreams are vivid and reassuring, empowering, healing, entertaining. They are fun!

There has been another benefit from all of this.  If I can’t eat grains, I also can’t eat 99.9% of all convenience or fast foods.  I am eating almost exclusively whole foods made in my kitchen.  No cans or boxes.  It’s fresh.  It’s healthy.  It’s real and it shows.  My skin is clearer, my hair is even longer and thicker (sorry,) and the ridges are starting to leave my fingernails.  I didn’t realize this side effect until yesterday. My family went camping Tuesday night and I ate a bratwurst that we had grilled over the fire.  Tasted great, no problem.  Yesterday, however, I had the most blinding headache I’ve had in a long time – it was because of the processed bratwurst!  Eye opening, for sure.  When I put it all together, I laughed and laughed and laughed.  It’s hilarious to me that I was eating all that junk all those years and not only did they make me crazy, they made me sick and I didn’t even know it.

While yoga alone wasn’t enough to cure my insomnia, it was a key point in it.  Yoga brought me to the place where I could see the way out, just like it always does.  Yoga isn’t the light, y’all.  Yoga is the road that LEADS to the light.  Had it not been for my practice, I’d be sitting here drooling on myself in exhaustion.  Because of my practice, I am awake, alert, and aware.  Oh I am aware!  Yoga built it and awareness came and you can bet that tonight, when the lights go out, I’ll be just fine.

Namaste

IMPORTANT: This is just my experience.  I don’t know if you need to stop eating grains.  I don’t even know why it works for me!  Please please please don’t change anything you’re doing just because some wingnut (me) on a blog said that she stopped eating spaghetti and can now sleep.  And also insert all that other stuff that medical disclaimers state.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall, You Are a Dirty F*ing Liar …

…and other truths yoga taught me about my body dysmorphic disorder.

I was talking with a very good friend of mine today.  I haven’t known this person very long – maybe 18 months or so, but we got very close very quickly and I adore her.  Several months ago, she moved out of the country and we speak mostly via Facebook Chat now, but we’re in contact nearly every day.  While we were very close when I saw her in person several times a week, the distance between us has somehow opened the door for us to be really truthful with each other about all kinds of things.  Today we talked about the big one that we share: we both have Body Dysmorphic Disorder.  Now, okay, she might not classify her self with that, so I don’t want to put words in her mouth, but I *do* have this disorder and have been diagnosed with it and have lived with it forever, so yeah, I can talk about myself. And her words and experiences sound an awful lot like mine, so you do the math.  Anyway, the interesting thing is that our stories are almost identical.  The tapes that play repeatedly in our heads are vile, evil, cruel, and vicious.  They say the same things : you’re ugly, you’re fat, you’re worthless, you’re a failure, you’re not good enough, you’ll never be good enough, etc. Word for word, same exact tape.  We could be the same person… except, check this out:

I’m short and curvy (meaning, I have hips and big breasts and curves,) and she is very tall and very thin.  Our stories and our tapes are the same, our experiences are the same, but our bodies could not be more different. How does that happen, you ask?  It’s easy: our tapes and our experiences and our mirrors are dirty fucking liars.

Before Yoga Sol opened in our permanent location, we sublet space in a belly dance studio.  The walls were covered with mirrors.  This makes sense for a dance studio, but was crippling for a yoga studio.  As a student, I was always distracted by what i looked like in certain poses.  Did my belly stick out in Vira II?  Did I look fat in Navasana?  Was I skinnier than at least one other person in the room?  Please note, this had NOTHING to do with alignment.  Occasionally mirror can be helpful for alignment (if you’re practicing by yourself or if your teacher is an idiot,) but that’s not what this was about. This was about vanity and competition and finding a thousand different ways to love and / or hate myself.  As a teacher, I noticed that I wasn’t alone in this.  I would teach a class and watch people catch sight of themselves only to then suck in their stomachs or to arch their backs seductively (and dangerously,) or to catch a glimpse of a person behind them doing a more advanced variation of an asana and then push themselves beyond where their body was ready to go leading to injury.

Clearly, I was thrilled to see no mirrors in the design plans for Yoga Sol’s forever home.

Now before those of you who know me go getting all up in arms about how I’m the perfect size or shape or how strong I am or any of that stuff, let me be very clear: I know this already.  I know intellectually that I am not fat nor am I unhealthy nor am I unattractive.  I know I’m stronger than your average person, I know I am healthier than I have ever been, I know, I know I know. This isn’t about that.  Not at all.  And this also isn’t a blog post about loving yourself as you are, regardless of weight or shape or size or health (although, I do think that those are very valid and important lessons to be learned.)  This post is about the lies we tell ourselves.  Well, okay, it’s about the lies I told (tell) myself and how yoga helped (helps) me see them for the dirty futher muckers that they are (contemplate that maybe they aren’t exactly true.)

The mirror lies.  Want proof?  Go to a store.  Try on a piece of clothing.  Not socks or a scarf, people.  Try on jeans. Ohhhhh yes, jeans.  Try them on in the fitting room and really study your reflection. Buy them.  Then come home and put them on and look at them in your mirror at home. Look the same?  I’ll bet not.  If they do, congratulate yourself for having the exact same mirror and exact same lighting conditions as the store. More than likely, however, it will look different. YOU will look different.  And, if I were a betting gal, I’d bet diamonds to dollars that these wretched lying mirrors will change the way you feel about yourself because suddenly, you don’t look the same.

I ask you, what kind of creepy destructive bullshit is that?

Yoga can be like trying on jeans if you’re not careful.  You can have a great practice and feel exceptional and light and free and expressive and wonderful and powerful and glorious and radiant and like a rock star …. and then you look at the person next to you and realize that you look as though you ate the other half of that person for lunch and your hand is no where near the floor and what exactly do you mean that not everyone chokes to death on their mammaries in Salamba Sarvangasana?  Goddamn it! Suddenly now that radiant glorious exceptional light and expressive person is replaced with a troll who really doesn’t belong on the freaking mat and can’t we please just go out and hide under the covers already?  Guess what?  It might not look like a piece of shiny glass, but looking at other people in class is exactly the same as looking at mirrors and what have we learned about mirrors?  They are dirty fucking liars.

We ARE beautiful and light and expressive and exceptional and wonderful and powerful and glorious and radiant and rock stars and we DO belong on the mat (and in jeans and, apparently, in string bikinis,) but the mirrors are broken.  They are liars.  They are untrustworthy and misleading.  All of them — all of them, that is, except one.  Only one mirror tells the truth.  Only one mirror shows us the way things really and truly are and, here’s the kicker: this mirror is not one you see with your eyes.  Nope.  You can’t hang it on a wall or put it in your purse.  You won’t have 7 years of bad luck if you break it nor will tell you if someone is a vampire or not.  No, this mirror cannot be broken, cannot be sold or damaged, cannot be dirtied or stained or cracked.  The only  bad thing that can be done to it is that it can be ignored because this mirror, the one and only truthful honest dependable mirror there is is the one that lives inside of you.  It is the one that always shows your goodness, your worth, your loveliness, your inherent beauty and grace.  It is the one you see when you close your eyes and just move.  It is the one that tells you to stay in pigeon just a little longer, the one that says it’s okay to take a few more breaths in Savasana, the one that shines like a diamond when you breathe deeply and bend gently.  It is the one that says, “Right there, that feels perfect,” the one that says, “You are strong,” the one that says, “look at all the progress you have made!”  That mirror is the ONLY mirror that isn’t a dirty fucking liar.  That mirror doesn’t show shapes or sizes.  That mirror shows light and love and grace and worth.  That mirror shows the truth – and it is the only mirror you need.

I still hear the nasty tapes.  I probably always will.  It’s a disorder and not one that will likely ever go away, but I can learn to ignore them. I can learn to recognize that they, like mirrors, are not telling nor showing me the truth.  I can choose to look inside instead of at other mirrors and other people.  I can learn to let all the other mirrors break (at least in my mind,) and focus on the one inside.  I can breathe.  I can bend.  I can practice – and all things, even acceptance, is coming.

Namaste

The Day My Past Kicked Me in the Ass … and I Liked It.

I’m a lucky gal.  My husband and I have a date night almost every single week, sometimes two a week.  While what we do and where we go on these nights varies, I almost always meet him at the bar / restaurant / night club / pool hall / city block sized watering hole for happy hour.  Since he’s worked there since little tiny 6lb Jesus was a baby and I meet him there at least once a week, we’ve built a little family of employees and regulars. I know that on any given day, I’ll find the guy who owns the auto shop / vintage pinball machine arcade, the guy who owns his own roll your own cigarette shop, the guy who works in advertising but specializes in smart ass remarks, the couple who are king and queen of WHO DAT nation, the banker and her husband who is at least 17 feet tall, the martial arts trainer, and a random assortment of employees and other regulars who get their mail at the corner of the bar.  While they might not all be there at once, some of them are always there and there are very, very rarely any new additions and when new people join this ragtag bunch of merry pranksters, it’s never been anyone I have known prior.

Until last week, that is.

Last week, I dropped my kiddos off with my mother for an overnight visit and made my way to the gathering place.  I walked across the floor and out the door to the patio and stopped dead in my tracks.  There, sitting at the table with the regulars, was a face I hadn’t seen in close to 20 years.  Shit.  This was not going to be pretty.  This girl – woman (hell, we’re both in our 30s) – was sitting there looking happy and confident (ish – confidence was never her strong suit,) and talking to my buddies and, at first, I wasn’t sure how to handle this situation. This was a blast from the past that I wasn’t quite prepared for, but here it was so I just took a deep breath, walked on out, and sat down.  Then I saw it: her face fell into her lap.  Her shoulders slumped.  She visibly withdrew. And, once more, she was the girl she was 20 years ago and I was faced once again with the truth of who I once was.

Mean Girl

I was a strange duck in high school.  Weren’t we all?  To some extent, I felt like I didn’t have a “group,” and to another extent, I felt like every group was my group.  I was a fairly attractive, thin but curvy girl who was in student council, the highest level performance choir, AP classes, and was a part of a peer support group, and I was the daughter of a prominent minister at a high class church.  I was also hanging out in cars with friends, chain smoking before class, running around with outsiders and dropouts, and  anyone who could and would get me a bottle of something at least 80 proof and a bag of something I could roll and smoke.  I was fairly well known in many circles, but that doesn’t mean that everyone liked me.  I’m sure there were a lot of people who hated me and, honestly I can’t blame them.  I could be mean.  I could be really vicious with my words and my eyes.  I was often highly judgemental and quite vocal about my judgement.  I was egotistical and spoiled and self righteous and … if I was your friend, I was your very good friend, but if I wasn’t, watch out.  This woman who was sitting at my table with my friends wasn’t my friend all those years ago.

While I don’t remember any specific moments of me being cruel to her, I know that I had to have been in some fashion or another.  I remember what I thought of her at the time and all those feelings came rushing right back when I saw her.  I had to stop and take a breath and remember that  a lot of time had passed and maybe she wasn’t the same person she was then.  I certainly don’t think I’m the same person I was back then.  The fact that I’m writing this and putting it out there is proof of that (I would have never admitted fault or failings all those years ago.)  Suddenly, I was awash with so many feelings and emotions all at once.

• Damn, why am I running into people from my past now?
• Hrm.  She looks almost exactly the same as she used to (unfortunately for her.)
• Wow, that was snarky!
• How do I look?
• Wow, that was vain!
• Shit, I was really mean to her.
• Dammit, I was really unfair to her back then.
• I’m probably being unfair to her right now.
• I’m scum.
• I aged better than she did.
• WHAT THE HELL IS SHE DOING HERE?
• I wasn’t a good person then.
• Am I a good person now?
• Guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt
• Shame shame shame shame
• Ego ego ego ego ego ego
• Fuck, I have to do this (see the disclaimer page – I cuss. A  lot.)
• How could I have been so horrible then?
• Can I be different now?
• Again, FUCK!!!

I waited a couple of minutes before I said anything to her.  I wanted to pretend that she didn’t know who I was, and she certainly pretended that she didn’t know who I was. I sat there at the table, hiding behind my mirrored aviators, and observed her wither.  I just sat and observed my own feelings.  I was panicking.  I will admit that it was SO VERY TEMPTING to return to my state of behavior from 20 years ago.  It was, in fact, my first instinct to do the wrong thing.  Have I changed at all???  Ugh.  I sat in discomfort for seemed like 45 minutes but was probably closer to 2 minutes and then it hit me: Feelings aren’t facts and, even though those feelings came rushing to me, I don’t have to act on them.  Yes, I felt the same way that I felt then, but I didn’t have to act the way I acted then.  LIGHTBULB MOMENT!

I took my sunglasses off, called her name, and rose to shake her hand saying, “Hi! It’s Sarah Wells, well, Sarah Kohl now.  I haven’t seen you in so many years!  How are you?”  And then I sat back down and proceeded to mentally pat myself on the back. She opened her mouth and, after saying Hi, proceeded to pull out her only weapon – she mentioned my ex in front of my husband and the entire table of my friends, most of whom don’t even know I have an ex.  I believe she mentioned him in an attempt to hurt me, to undermine me, to throw me off my game.  Once upon a time, it would have worked.  Once upon a time, I would have taken the bait and I would have behaved the way I used to and shown my evil side, but I didn’t.  I didn’t do anything at all like what she was hoping for.  I smiled, said I saw him very recently and he seemed to be doing well.  I mentioned that we are Facebook friends and we have no animosity between us.  I stated that my husband and I have been together over 13 years now and that relationship is ancient history and we have both moved on.  I smiled.  I breathed.  I moved on.  I realized that I *have* changed.  I have matured and grown up and found compassion and empathy and the true understand that we’re all just humans and we’re all just trying to walk each other home.  I have learned to live my yoga – most of the time. Hey, what can I say?  I’m human!

The “reunion” fizzled slowly after that and she left.  I was very proud of myself.  I didn’t succumb to my initial reaction.  I did fall into a bit of self-loathing when I thought about what I did all those years ago and who I was, but that makes perfect sense because all of those heinous traits of mine were born of self-loathing even back then.  I was able to look at the situation and choose a better course of action.  I was able to breathe and realize that the past is the past and the future has limitless possibilities.  I was able to see that I get to choose who I am and what I do and that I am capable of making the right choices.  I was able to do all those things and do them sincerely, and if I could do it in that situation, I can do it in other situations, too.

I have since run into her again.  Same location, same people.  This time she wasn’t hiding her head, she was able to be around me without visible qualms.  She was still kind of standoffish, but it was better.  I noticed something, though.  Not much about her has changed.  She still does all the annoying things that she did all those years ago.  She is still kind of a social nightmare.  She is unkempt and unhealthy and unattractive.  She is also human.  She is curious.  She is a survivor.  She is a mother.  She is doing the very best she can with what she has.  She is being true to herself.  She is a part of my human family and she is worthy of love and respect.  This, my friends, is huge progress for me.  This is living visible proof that yoga has changed my life inside and out.

We talked for a bit.  She asked me a few questions about yoga and what she could do to relieve an issue with her neck.  It was still awkward, but we made it through and, when she left, I gave her a hug.  I HUGGED HER.  I think it blew both of our minds.  LIFE MOMENT RIGHT THERE.

You cannot have a yoga practice without it changing your entire being.  While you might start out practicing because you want Madonna arms or Mick Jagger’s ass (hmmmmmmm Mick Jagger’s ass……,) eventually you cannot help but having an internal makeover, as well.  It opens your heart.  It opens your mind.  It opens your eyes. It opens your soul right up.  It changes the way you see things, other people, and the way you see yourself.  Eventually, you can start to face even the ugliest truths with acceptance, compassion, and love.  Even if it takes a kick in the ass to realize it.

Namaste

#365yoga Day 90: The Wheel

At 11:27 am CST, I locked the door to 300 Saint James Street for the last time.  I had just finished teaching my last yoga class at our temporary studio and it was a lovely class filled with committed yoga students and beautiful energy.  I got into my car and had to sit there for a little while and reflect.  

It was about 2 years ago that I decided to become a yoga teacher.  2 short years.  It’s something I always thought about, of course.  I wanted to do it for a long time, but certain things (read: feeling like I didn’t deserve to do it, wasn’t worth it, etc.) kept me from pushing through and doing it.  I’ll never forget the moments that got me to the other side of that: several yoga teachers at the gym I attended kept asking me to “finally get” my “yoga training in so” I “could sub already, dammit!”

What can I say, they were persuasive.

20 months ago, I did what I could with what I had (very tiny budget and very little time,) and took a very little basic yoga teacher training.  Within 3 days I was able to teach at my gym.  And teach I did!  It was only a few weeks later that I had my own regular class and was subbing frequently in multiple locations all over town.  My goodness, when I think back on some of those classes, well, let’s just say that most yoga students are benevolent, patient, good humored folk!  I kept teaching, though, and I kept learning and growing and asking questions.  I kept searching and trying and trusting in the process.  Yoga Sol was born and I moved my mat from the gym to a studio.

Yoga Sol lived at that studio for 14 months.  My classes grew from one student (or, at times, none) to wall to wall mats.  I met amazing people and felt amazing energy and got to witness the transformation that comes when you commit to a regular yoga practice both in my students and in myself.  I met mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters, artists and actors, poets and photographers, teachers and students, and Michael Franti and his gang.

The wheel keeps on rolling down the road, for sure!

Somewhere along that road, I realized that I DO deserve to follow my bliss, I DO deserve to have a bright future, I DO deserve a real and proper training, so in October I packed up my bags and headed out west to The White Lotus Foundation.  For many of you, this might not seem like a big deal. For me and my family, however, it was revolutionary.  I left my homeschooled children and husband (who works in an industry that is fueled by college sports,) alone for 16 days during the 3 busiest weekends of the year: homecoming and games against the 2 top rivals.  Used to be that I wouldn’t even think about scheduling lunch during those weekends, much less a trip across the country!  Yoga transforms, eh?

I sent in my final paperwork for my 200RYT last Saturday.  I DID IT!

Today I locked the door at the temporary location of Yoga Sol.  I taught the last class there and I will be teaching the first class at the new location, 210 Saint James Street, which just happens to fall on my 35th birthday.  I think it’s highly significant.  I feel it’s a rebirth, of sorts.  I will be opening the studio not just as a teacher, but as the manager, working very closely with one of the greatest gifts I have ever received, my mentor, friend, and Yoga Sol owner, Polly.  What started out as just the two of  us in a dance studio has now grown into the first indoor / outdoor yoga studio in Mid-MO, if not the entire state of Missouri.  We have a teaching staff of  8 other teachers on board now as well as our own classes filled with students who have followed us both through the trenches and into the light.

And the wheel is still rolling!

Yoga is very much like a wheel.  The more momentum it has, the further it goes, and will usually take you further than you could ever imagine if you just let it go.  I cannot wait to see where this leads, but I’ll tell you this – I hope I never stop the wheel from turning.  I will watch it with amazement and awe and joy because it is bound to be an awesome ride.