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I went for a walk with my cousin Lauren not too long ago. It was one of those beautiful spring-teaser days that Colorado is so infamous for – the kind where it is in the 70s and sunny but hear that it is supposed to snow the next day.
My cousin seems to see some of the most interesting things when she goes for a walk. She actually has a very impressive collection of photographs of lonely gloves that have been most unfortunately separated from their other half and discarded along sidewalks, on fence posts, etc. So going for walks with her always seem to be an unexpected scavenger hunt, where the list of things that are to be found is added to as we find interesting things.
I wanted to share some of the things I came across that day… as a reminder that if you really enjoy the view wherever you are in that exact moment, there’s so much more to see than just the destination to which you are headed.
“Inhale….two, three, four. Hold to sixteen… fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Exhale… five, six, seven, eight.”
Day three of the Anusara Immersion with Amy Ippoliti last November. We were practicing pranayama. I hated it.
Nothing was comfortable. I shifted from sitting bone to another and wiggling my shoulders around trying to find a spot in my lungs that did not hurt to pull air into. I was almost sure my throat was closing up with the Ujaayi I was employing. I started faking the breaths, lifting my chest when the instructor said to inhale and dropping it when she said to exhale – but in reality, had given up trying to keep up.
I could feel the beginnings of an anxiety attack creeping up in my veins; the sensation of losing control of the natural risings and fallings of my breath, the constant beatings of my heart. I had felt this a lot during my first few years in college, popping Xanax to keep my worry from spiraling out of control, and I was not keen on the idea of intentionally doing something to recreate that sensation. I don’t like not being in control.
Who, me? Yeah. Hard to believe, I know.
At the end of our pranayama practice, Amy interviewed the class to see what the general consensus of regarding the experience.
“That was great, I feel so relaxed!”
“Wow, that was beautiful the way my breath…” blah blah blah, yadda yadda.
Screw that, I kept thinking.
Finally, I could not believe that everyone was saying they had enjoyed it. It bothered me that I had apparently been the only one having a low-level panic attack instead of a spiritually enlightening experience. I raised my hand.
“Actually, I didn’t like that at all. Nor did I find it comforting. It hurt, and it was hard for me to sit still.” Amy asked me to show her how I sit for meditations. I scooted around, wiggling while I tried to find a comfortable way to sit. But I could not stop shifting. I closed my eyes and tried again. Shift, shift. Wiggle. Then I laughed, embarrassed that I could absolutely not sit still.
“Just show me how you sit, Elle…” Amy began, and I burst into tears.
That was it, I explained. I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t find any way to be comfortable. I felt like I was choking when I breathed, I felt like my breath was not going to run on its own if I stopped leading it from inhale to exhale. “It’s fugging scary,” I sobbed, finally letting go of whatever it was that was keeping me from crying hysterically in front of the twenty-five fellow immersion participants.
I am not naïve. I know that there is a reason why the things in life that scare us the most, scare us the most. And I had sat with that knowledge in my yoga practice numerous times, but with the decline of my panic attacks, I figured maybe it was all over. But having to face it once again, and without hiding behind asana or a multitude of other potential distractions, I had to confront my fears of sitting still and breathing.
(What that may be symbolic of, I won’t even start going into here. That is a whole other conversation, and if you really want to hear it, I am happy to talk your ear off about it over sushi.)
Amy told me that like with any yoga pose, if it does not feel comfortable, then don’t do it. Simple as that. With that, I gave myself permission to not try so hard that I scared myself. I felt the huge weight of shame lifted off of my shoulders with the confession of my fear. What kind of a yoga teacher would I be if I admitted I was scared of breathing?, I had always wondered.
The answer? A human one. A real one.
Even with the freedom granted to me by the voiced acknowledgement of my fear and embarrassment of it, I could not stop my crying. For the next hour of our practice, I cried openly, tears streaming down my face, even as I held coherent conversations and laughed with my friends. I eventually gave up trying to stop the tears, keeping a wad of tissues in my hands to swab my dribbling nose.
The end of the day wrap-up came and I thanked everyone for being so supportive as I worked through my unexpected breakdown. A handful of others shared their insight from the day and we were about to close our day when one more person spoke up.
I turned around to respectfully watch Caleb as he spoke, but he kept his eyes fixed straight ahead on Amy. “I heard someone share a fear today that I had never heard anyone else admit to. I’ve never even admitted to it before – to anyone – and I didn’t think anyone else felt that way.”
It took me a moment before I realized he was talking about me. I naturally began crying again, moving my gaze to the floor out of embarrassment for my continued display of sobs.
I left quickly that afternoon, wanting to get somewhere where I could cry openly and messily. I pulled out my trusty journal and started writing about my experience, and when I came to write about my friend who spoke up at the end of class, I got emotional once more.
Sometimes it is easier for me to choke down my fears, worries, concerns and opinions instead of dealing with the reaction they may incite. What I learned was that my unexpected admission granted someone else the courage to come face to face with their own fears – and feel safe enough to speak up.
The second Caleb and I caught a glimpse of each other the next morning, we hugged each other – hard. I held on him as if to the lifeline that I did not know I needed, like I had found myself in the middle of the ocean and suddenly realized I could no longer swim. We both had the courage to try again, and to find new life in the midst of our breath.
These days, I have developed a fairly regular meditation practice. As a matter of fact, I have even grown to prefer it to asana, finding sanctuary, stillness and balance in it. Although there are times I stumble across a pranayama practice that invokes the whispers of anxiety, I instead let the breath fall to normal and call upon the trusted face of my pal Caleb. Then I can rest, assured in the rise and fall of my breath and the magic it creates.
We lay on the grass in the park on a warm October afternoon, watching the colors of the sky change after the sun had set completely behind the mountains. As the pale blue turned into a deeper sapphire, a shining light seemed to come more and more alive against the dark sky. We watched its increasing brilliance with admiration and curiosity, resting amidst ripples of blowing leaves.
“How beautiful is that?” I asked rhetorically. “And that we can see it from so far away, light shining for gazillions of miles and years before it reaches us.”
My friend fixed his gaze on the star, winking wildly back at us. “I wonder,” he began, not shifting his line of vision, “what you would think if you knew that star was up there, looking back at you right now and thinking how bright and beautiful you are.”
I looked at him from the corner of my eye, pretending like I had kept my sight on the shimmer above us. Smiling, I rested back more fully into the grass.
“Well, we are quite a beautiful pair. It would be silly to think the admiration wasn’t mutual, wouldn’t you say?”
I had kept the box of letters in a shoebox for nearly three years at this point. They no longer brought me joy to read, nor did I find comfort in knowing they were nearby. We had written to each other almost everyday without fail for the weeks he was in boot camp, and I had always said that I would compile the letters into inspiration for a book about our romance. We both agreed ours was the kind of story worth telling.
And then, a couple years later, that story had changed into one much different than it had started as, and I was ready for the cyclical story of heartbreak and betrayal to no longer be mine. It just so happened that this feeling began to surface on Beltane.
Beltane is the point between the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice, when the earth becomes rich and ripe and pungent with the burst of full bloom. Giant bonfires were lit during ancient Beltane rituals, encouraging the participants to dance around it, throw things in it, and spiritually lighten their load by making sacrifices to the flames.
Naturally, I wanted to light something on fire. The time had come for svaha – offering it up to the divine fire so that I could make room for a new story to begin in my life.
I put my old pot roast pan on the back porch when I got home from teaching that night, filling in my roommate with my plan while I went to the freezer to retrieve a long abandoned bottle of Bacardi 151. I wasn’t messing around.
I pulled out all the letters from their envelopes and unfolded them. There were probably about one hundred pages of handwritten notes, song lyrics and doodles and not once did I stop to take one last peek at the words that I had once known by heart. Somewhere in the back of my head, this startled me and I realized I had just assumed this would be hard. I thought this story was such a part of my life that I would have to fight to release it. But it became very clear to me at that moment that I was already living a new story.
Armed with a box of matches and the bottle of flammable liquor, I marched outside to begin. The letters were heaping over the top of the pot roast pan and my roommate sat off to the side with a fully loaded SuperSoaker, just to keep things in check. I drizzled the 151 over the top of the pages and lit the first match, jumping back as blossomed with a whoosh into a blue flame. I threw another match, and another, until all the pages were glowing with fire. I danced around the makeshift fire pit, spinning in circles and feeling just as warm on the inside with a sense of release.
This was more than just a heart-broken teenager lighting an ex-boyfriend’s photograph on fire after a break-up; this was radical recognition that I was free of stories I had been telling myself for three years. Stories that I wasn’t good enough. That I would never be able to trust anyone again. That without him, I couldn’t be strong. That he owed me. That he was my inspiration. That I would never find anyone else.
The fire simmered out and I peered into the ashes at the barely distinguishable pages and giggled. I poked at the charred bits, only to discover that there was still another layer of perfectly unscathed pages beneath. I cursed. And I lit it on fire again.
This time, I used more 151. The blue flames leapt and flickered and I whooped and hollered. “Almost fooled me, didn’t you?” I shouted, drunk with the increasing freedom. “No more! I’m telling you, no more! I’m completely letting go this time.” I danced some more while the roommate shot little victory shots of water up into the air.
The flames died again. I knelt down. I poked and prodded, only to discover another layer of perfectly preserved pages.
The bottle of 151 had been well over three-fourths of the way full when I pulled it out of the freezer, and now I poured the last third into the dish. The papers were dowsed in the ignitable stuff and pooled in the corners of the pan. I threw in five lit matches, all at once, and barely came away with my eyebrows still intact. I resumed my dancing and hollering, although it was now interlaced with muttered curses about how of course there’s always another layer with him. Of course it’s never just been that easy to step away from someone I wanted so badly to love, and to love me back simply.
Fire died. I knelt. I cursed. I pushed unscathed bits back into corners where there were still glowing embers, frantically trying to get rid of every last handwritten word.
“Why won’t you let me go?” I asked the pages. “Why is it always like this with you? Why can’t I just be done with you and why won’t you let me? We haven’t even spoken in months and I want to be done.”
The roommate put down the glass of wine she had been sipping and laid the watergun across her lap. I was blowing on the embers, hoping for just one more drop of 151 that hadn’t been burned away yet, when she said quite possibly the most powerful, philosophical and inspirational thing she ever said to me.
“You know, Potter, it’s okay if there is still a little bit left. He’s been in your heart for a long time and he may never be completely gone. And that’s alright.” She slowly pulled her fixed gaze away from the smoldering pot roast pan and leaned back over the edge of the lawn chair for her wine glass, while the top foot of her crossed legs resumed wagging from side to side. I stared at her like she was an oracle that had appeared out of thin air to speak to me. A smile crept across my face, a movement of unexpected relief.
I slept well that night, finally unchained from the ghosts of a story I had once written for myself. I felt magical, as if I had finally granted myself permission to be independently powerful. Hadn’t I?
I knew the portals of Beltane were sacred and magical, but I had no idea just how true that was. Not only had I been granted the freedom and power of my own voice through my sacred fire, I was also given the chance to test my new boundaries. The next morning, after months of not speaking, he called me out of the blue from overseas.
Without mentioning one word about burning the letters, I told him exactly how I felt and stood firm on my decision to be released from the cycle of heartbreak and second (third, fourth, fifth) chances. After all, I didn’t burn the letters to be dramatic or to make a point or to hurt his feelings. I did it for me, and I did it with a deep symbolism that meant more to me than those letters ever could have hoped.
"You are not alone in this."
Me, she-who-analyzes-everything, I hadn’t even considered the symbolism of a kidney stone yet.
I of course immediately updated my friends and family via Facebook about my current kidney stone situation. And it sucked. A friend commented, quoting a book, defining kidney stones as things like lumps of undissolved anger. The affirmation being, “I dissolve all past problems with ease.”
I limped over to my own bookshelf to pull out Your Body Speaks Your Mind by Deb Shapiro. Doubled over, her thoughts echoed my friend’s.
“Unshed tears that have become solidified. They should be released and let go of, but instead they are held on to, enabling them to grow. Are you repressing or holding on to negative feelings, such as fear, anger, resentment or bitterness?”
Oh. Gosh. Welp, lookie here, I thought to myself, leafing back in my journal to an entry from two days before I began hurting.
6/27/2010 – I’m still so angry. I try to not be, but I am just still so angry. So hurt. So infuriated that I believed for so long. That I was fooled…. I’ve completely shut down and am totally disinterested in talking about it, yet still harbouring so much anger.
And even more than that, a half a dozen other mentionings of being hurt, still being angry, and feeling disempowered even in the midst of being simultaneously empowered in many other facets of my life. I began to realize through re-reading my ramblings that my reactions to the particular situation had become automatic. I immediately would acknowledge “I am angry” as my affirmation, yet I began to realize – am I really though? Or do I just refuse to pry that anger out of my obstinate fists for fear of admitting defeat?
Toxicity. Poison. Hazardous.
And so, I got PISSED that I had a kidney stone because I was mad about something else. I cursed in the face of what had hurt me most and hissed, “How dare you still upset me like this. Who do you think you are, still berating me? Let me let go of this, you a-hole!”
On the fifth morning of hurting, I awoke at 4am to the most horrific pain I had experienced yet. I hobbled to my sister’s room and begged her to go buy me a heating pad, it being the only thing I could think of that would perhaps alleviate the stabbing throb in my right kidney. As I curled back up into bed with the gentle heat, I began to pray.
At this point, there was no reason to feed into the anger. I began making a list of questions in my head and steadily asked each one breathlessly aloud.
Am I angry about where I am in life?
Am I angry that I am without that in my life right now?
Am I angry it was ever a part of my life?
Am I really hurt right now (other than my goddamn kidney)?
Am I unhappy with my life right now?
I kept answering, “No.”
Bitterness and resentment are emotions of clinging to the past. It thereby empowers long passed anger in the present.
Anger happens. Sometimes without warning. Heartbreak happens and can linger.
I am not actually angry anymore, I realized. I have no reason to be upset anymore. I really don’t. I realize how much I wanted to stay bitter and resentful, but it will really only hurt me. After all, I was the one with the kidney stones, no one else. (Although believe me, if I knew how to give someone else kidney stones, I might be tempted to do so in a few special outstanding cases)
Dignity means portraying behavior worthy of respect and high esteem. Why hold a grudge and carry that shadow everywhere I go? It will only darken my skies and damper someone else’s. I’ll be the one with the kidney stones and the exhausted heart.
I do not want to be the bitter old woman. I do not want to be a cynical twenty-six year old. I have seen those people before and I solemnly swear to consciously choose not to be that.
I am worthy of living my life without resentment and I choose to not live in the echo of my anger.
After that morning when I prayed, affirming that I was indeed no longer angry, the pain began to slowly retreat. I spent my time healing with the most incredible people in my life – my cousin, who had flown in from Boston and my best friend, who flew in from Milwaukee for a Fourth of July camping trip that never happened (thanks kidney stone) and of course my sister – and I realized that I really, truly had nothing to be mad about anymore.
My heart, in the form of my best friends.
Each time I went to the bathroom to pee, I’d wash my hands and return to my spot on the couch amidst my favorites. Even though I was still hurting a little bit, there was no reason to hold on to any of that hurt anymore. I let it pass, and it passed without drama.
Posted October 15th, 2010. Add a comment
Four years ago yesterday, my friend Matty very unexpectedly passed away.
I met Matty one summer, a friend of a friend’s brother who sat at the bar during happy hour of the restaurant I was working at. He was cute and fun to be around and thought I was, too – so obviously we were fast friends.
Sometimes Matty would ask to wear my thumb ring on his left ring finger, so we could pretend we were married. He was in love with my little sister and was always asking me if he could ask her out. I would pretend to get angry and slap his shoulder, saying “She’s sixteen, Matty!”
“Come on, Elle,” he’d say, twisting my thumb ring on his own finger. “I just want to take her out and hold her hand.”
Once, when Matty was having a bad day, I picked him up at his house after work. He got in my car, smelling of the best cologne. He always smelled so good. Anyway, we went to iHop or something like that and he drank coffee to sober up and I ate hashbrowns with Chalula. When the check came, he looked at me and told me he didn’t want to go home. Not yet.
We decided to get a hotel room, not for any sort of funny business, but just for a change of scenery. Matty pretended we were an out-of-town couple, on the road for a cross-country roadtrip to wherever-we-wanted. The hotel clerk raised his eyebrow at me when I stumbled at the question of Matty’s last name.
Up in the room, we watched movies and History Channel documentaries, jumped quietly on the beds, alternately singing Head Automatica and making animal noises at each other. We played Truth or Dare with all truths, laying upside down on the bed and confessing secrets to each other and the ceiling.
“What if I never find love?” Matty asked me.
“What do you mean, ‘what-if-I-never-find-love?’”
“What if I never get married or have a girlfriend or fall in love?” Matty was always worried about that. Maybe that’s why he loved pretending like my thumb ring was his wedding ring.
“That’s not all that love is, my sweets. Seriously, you know it’s not, right?” I readjusted the pillows so I could look at him. “What do you think this is right now? This is love, Matty. Look around you. Look at the people in your life – your friends, your family – you are surrounded by love. Don’t underestimate the power of love just because you don’t have a girlfriend. Don’t dismiss this love because it’s not the love you’re imagining.”
Matty looked steadily back at me, through his long eyelashes and quiet eyes. I can still remember each of the random freckles on his face, as if even they were listening intently to me.
“I love you, Matty. Please know that. And you can keep searching for love in a million different places, but never forget that I will always love you. The love that surrounds you now is always there – you’re never alone and you’re never not loved.” We fell asleep holding hands; not in a romantic way, rather as a reminder that we were there for each other.
The year or so before Matty passed away, we didn’t see much of each other. But in the middle of the night sometimes, I would get random text messages saying “I love you” and phone calls with long, silly voicemails telling me how much he missed my awesome hair. I like to think that it was the moments when he was worrying about finding love that he would remember me and be reminded…
The day after I heard the news, I was working at Bed Bath and my Butthole (I hated that place). My co-workers were completely unsupportive and my boss had even told me she may not be able to find coverage for me later that week so that I could go to the funeral. I was pissed, near-tears, and working at the ridiculously long-lined Customer Service desk, dealing with irritated customers and their busted blenders.
One man came to the counter for a refund. I fumbled around with the register, getting more and more frustrated at all the wrong buttons I was pushing.
“How’s your day?” he asked, completely aware that I was not in a good mood.
“Pretty awful, to tell you the truth,” I replied through my teeth, not looking up from the return receipts.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I could feel him looking at me, formulating his next thought. “Why’s that?”
Getting annoyed at both the register and this guy for asking me so many questions, I gritted my teeth and tried to be civil. I was surprised when I heard myself share. “Well, actually, my buddy died two days ago and no one here cares enough to cover my shift to go to the funeral.”
“Oh, shit…” I finally looked up from the receipts and the register and made eye contact with the fellow. He looked at me with genuine kindness and concern. “I am so sorry. How did it happen?”
I found myself sharing more of the story with this man, so thankful for someone who cared. The line began to grow behind him but I was in no rush. Dozens and dozens of customers had come to my counter already that day but no one had connected with me, no one had shown compassion to me, no one had genuinely wished me a nice afternoon – no one gave a shit. And so neither did I.
But this guy – this guy recognized I needed a little love and needed to be seen. He told me about losing his two-year-old daughter over the holidays the year before to Leukemia.
“It’s hard to lose someone you love,” he said, putting his refund receipt back into his wallet and standing there, in no hurry to leave me. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you so much for talking to me,” I sputtered, feeling my eyes fill up with tears. “It really means a lot.”
He reached across the counter and took my hand, like a half-handshake, half-embrace. “Thank you for talking to me.”
And then I remembered – love is all around. It shows up in different ways, across different faces and radiating from different eyes. When love leaves one place, it subsequently shows up in hundreds more, like refracted light bouncing off broken glass. And in the darkest of places, love shines even more brilliantly. I didn’t get any act of love or support from my co-workers like I had hoped for, but the random act of love and kindness that a stranger shared with me was much more powerful, potent and real than I could have asked for.
Matty inadvertently taught me the most important and undeniable quality of love – that it’s more than just finding a husband or wife and settling down and having babies. That love is truly an incredible feat, an unstoppable act and an undying connection to those around you who never really leave.
Still, to this exact breath, I very intentionally carry him in an unwavering piece of my heart. My thumb ring continues to be a sort of “wedding ring” in my mind – a remembrance that I am always connected by love and through love to the people I love most.
I love you Matty. Let’s dance party soon.
Posted July 9th, 2010. 2 comments
My first thought: “Would someone let that mouse out of the plastic bag?”
My second thought: “Wait, what the hell?”
I looked at my clock. 5:07am. Squinting into the pre-dawn lit space of my room, I searched for the origin of the scuttling sound. A blurry shadow came out from behind my window’s blinds and the pitter-patter momentarily ceased.
Stinkin’ miller moths, I thought, getting quietly out of bed so as not to wake my visiting cousin, passed out on the opposite side of the mattress. I stood at the foot of my bed and stared inquisitively at the ceiling above me. Without my glasses, I could barely make out the little moth’s shape.
I opened my bedroom door and visually invited the moth to exit stage left. He did not seem interested, so I assumed he had fallen asleep. I hoped that meant maybe I could, too, so I crawled back into bed and relaxed back under my comforter.
Moments later, the rat-a-tatting began again. Stifling an audible sigh, I cracked open my eyes and used my index fingers to pull the outer edges of my eyelids towards my temples to increase my vision. I finally got a visual confirmation on the location of the moth. He was no longer throwing himself into the glow of the window, rather into where the increasing light was reflecting off my glossy white ceiling.
Tap. F-f-f-flutter tap. Tap tap. Tap.
I rolled back out of bed and in a haze, grabbed one of my yoga bolsters. I stood on my tiptoes, trying unsuccessfully to herd the moth out of my room.
My cousin shifted in bed. “What are you dooooooooing??” she asked, peering at me in my favorite up-to-the-belly-button underwear and men’s tank top, waving a bolster over my head in silence at 5:21am.
“Moth,” I replied, giggling at my own absurdity. “He’s not even going for the source of light. He’s just throwing himself at the reflection on the ceiling.”
There are a million poetic references of leading a moth to the flame. This is not one of them: When I was in high school, we had one particularly moth-infested spring at my parents’ house. We would sit in darkness at night with candles lit near bowls of soapy water. The reflection of the flame on the bubbles would lure the moth near until it would splash down into the water and eventually drown in a mirage of its own desire.
What is it that tirelessly draws them to anything that exudes or reflects light? Just like a moth to the flame – or, better yet, one who bumps up against a window in search of the freedom to fly closer and closer to the light – we all desire that union with love.
We seek and search for love in all things, but you can only bump up against so many mirrors of divine love’s reflection until you realize that there’s something more. If you are finding love in so many different places – love that looks the same, makes you feel the same – then there must be a wellspring of that love. All light is reflective of the greatest light; the sun. The trip to the sun is not an easy one. It is dangerous, hot and far, far away, especially for a moth. But by not limiting itself to just a lightbulb, just a candle or just a reflection, look at the infinite freedom the moth gives itself. How by seeing the light on a more broad scope, it can see all the millions of different places light can possibly be reflected from.
And look at how much less irritating it would be for us all.
Look, just because I love love, I crave love, I desire love, doesn’t mean I should repeatedly throw myself into the closest thing that appears to be love. It limits my expression, my ability to see love elsewhere.
I bang my head against walls because one-upon-a-time I saw love in this relationship or in that friendship or in that one pair of really great jeans and all I want is to feel that way again within that relationship/friendship/pair of jeans. But what if instead, I recognized the ability of that relationship to have reflected love, that my friendship was of love and that I experienced love when I slid into those jeans – and yet those experiences were not Love itself??
The light from the sunrise poured light into my room and the moth saw it reflected on the ceiling. But I saw instead darkness fading.
Love moves through everything. Bathes everything within it, like the golden glow of a sunrise. Infuses everything. But love is not just one person. Not just one home. Not just one opportunity. Love is a million sunrises, over and over again. And when the sun sets at night, just because you don’t feel its warmth pouring over you doesn’t mean that its light has gone out.
I remember the day I realized I was empowered to make my own decisions about the friends I keep. Well, I remember roughly the age and the general place I was in my life, anyway. I had just completed my teens, was set for my twenties and was sick of chasing friends around. I had sufficiently exhausted myself in making excuses for the way they were, the hurtful things they said and their lack of presence when I needed them.
My soft-spot is the undying belief in someone I love – no matter how infuriating, hurtful or abandoning that friend might be on the outside, if I have seen the brilliant light of their heart and sparkle in their eye at one point or another, I will absolutely refuse to ignore it. I will fight and coax and pray and beg for it to come back when it fizzles – and it is utterly exhausting. It’s like when you’re camping and the fire begins to die so you curl up around the smoking embers to protect it with the wall of your body and feed it dried grass and twigs and rub sticks together and blow and blow and blow until you collapse in fatigue, light-headed and sick from the smoke, feeling like a fool for having tried so hard on a lost cause.
Yup.
With the light of this realization glowing in my belly, I quit apologizing for things I didn’t do wrong. I stopped trying to make plans with friends who always flaked out on me and I stopped calling the friends who were such Negative Nancies. ”It’s time to take care of mySELF first,” I sang. ”I won’t let anyone else ever bring me down.”
Boundaries are healthy. In fact, I highly suggest investing in some boundaries in life. It helps identify the things in your life that you cannot live without, the things about your general well-being that you refuse to compromise and allows you to recognize what you will and will not do for the sake of a friendship.
With the inspiration of the few incredibly hard-headed, strong-willed and some might even call “bitchy” women friends I had, I decided to start standing up for my Self and my Heart. And then I let those friendships fade.
It’s been going really well, if you ask me. These boundaries that I built have allowed me to let go of some incredibly unhealthy relationships, both romantic and not. I have learned to take care of myself first (which is imperative before I begin to take care of anyone else). It has rebuilt my self-esteem as now I don’t sit around and wonder why I’m not worthy enough of this friend calling me back or what I did to deserve that friend being nasty to me. And in time, a few of those “bitchy” friends came back into my life and continue to this day to be my best friends.
But now… now comes the yoga.
With the creation of all these boundaries, I became a little overzealous. I wrapped up around the little flame of my heart so tightly because I was afraid that anyone who came too close would smother my fire – and now all I want to do is let the bright light of love burst out, pour forth and envelop everyone around me.
But it is hard. I didn’t realize those walls had grown so thick.
What happens when an old friend comes back to apologize? Or when someone new comes into my life and wants to share in my heart? How do I learn to not approach every friendship with impending fear of being hurt or abused… but still keep the boundary of my own heart secure? How can I live in a way that I can have a conversation with a stranger and not immediately become defensive of my heart?
Just yet another step towards learning to love Love. And love is love sufficient unto love – and you can figure out the rest.
When I first was trying to decide on my website address, I struggled with “Little Bluebirds.” I was afraid that if I made bluebirds my schtick that I would be committing to it – and I didn’t know if I wanted to end up with dozens of knickknack bluebird kitsch.
A friend of mine from high school stopped by my house the other day to give me little birdcage with a handmade porcelain bluebird that she sat in a nest of grass. She saw the birdcage and thought of me – so she MADE the little bluebird.
Shannon walked into the studio the other day with a sweet little bluebird paperweight. I let it rest in my lap when I drive back and forth from Denver to Boulder.
My friend (and blossoming Anjali Restorative teacher) Elaine gifted me a sweet statue of a girl with bluebirds resting on her outreached arms. It sits on my altar.
My momma gave me a bluebird pin that had been hers for years upon the completion of my third teacher training. I’ve lost it a zillion times in the past year – but it always finds its way back to me.
Joyce taught the MOST beautiful Anjali Restorative class themed on bluebirds on the last day of our Anjali teacher training – and I bawled for hours.
I’ve learned that through these genuine expressions of friendship and love that they’ve shared with me, it reaffirms the original little bluebird that was placed so deeply in my heart to begin with. It’s not that they are giving me gifts that I know they love me – it’s that they’ve been listening to the things that I’ve said, and that it’s made a little impression on them. That I can express the love that was shared with me to others is an incredible accomplishment – one that I continue to practice, time and time again. It’s not always easy to share openly, to love freely and to have passionate faith in love – but sweet dammit, I’m going to keep trying.
I’ve had a couple of friends now pass to me this poem by Charles Bukowski. Perhaps it’s time to share on…
There’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?
my visit to Kyle in Oahu in 2005
I walked into the studio after teaching my 8:30 am class at om time Boulder this morning to this text message waiting for me on my Blackberry from my dear buddy Kyle.
“So I had this dream last night, you were in it. You asked me to get some hand sanitizer, so I got up out of bed. Then I realized it was just a dream and cursed… then I went back to bed and when I started to dream again, you were laughing hysterically at me.”
I like to think of myself as the kind of friend who endlessly laughs and lovingly teases those I care most about. But I had no idea that my friendship could transcend the boundaries of sleep!
My cousin seems to see some of the most interesting things when she goes for a walk. She actually has a very impressive collection of photographs of lonely gloves that have been most unfortunately separated from their other half and discarded along sidewalks, on fence posts, etc. So going for walks with her always seem to be an unexpected scavenger hunt, where the list of things that are to be found is added to as we find interesting things.
