No sooner did we arrive home from Scotland than everything feels like it is falling apart. What started as a little traveling head cold sunk it’s claws in to becoming a full blown chest infection. And of course, we arrive home with lots to catch up on. We are busy reminding ourselves that we are homeschoolers and this ramp up coincides right with the big seasonal ramp up of yoga workshops and events… it is suddenly cold fall and yoga season in Wisconsin. I have various deadlines scattered around my calendar, much of them self imposed writing ones, and so of course I have found 10 other things to help me procrastinate until the add ons feel like imperatives too. It’s busy. Which is tiresome to even say, but not bad. Not bad. It is life. Even coming home to my kids loosing their health care coverage this week, not bad. Life. Complicated, sure. Requiring my immediate attention, absolutely. And all within the reasonable scope of adulthood.
But then on Wednesday we found out that we had unexpectedly and tragically lost a dear friend. One of Chris’ closest. And all of the other shit feel just like that, other shit. We are sad and confused and reeling inside the matrix of sudden loss. We are holding space for each other and our kids as they navigate the first really real death in their lives. We are gathering ourselves up to travel out east tomorrow to hold space for family and friends and let our love be bright inside the space of our grief. I think that I have much more to say about this, but it needs time and it needs tenderness, and it needs for me to spend more time with my people and time within the consideration and conversation of mental illness. We are each of us so fragile. And the expectation that we can ever use our mind to heal our mind seems unrealistic and somewhat absurd to me at best.
So this weekend, once I was done with my teaching commitments, I cancelled my only private and allowed all of the wheels to fall off of my functionality. I skipped the medicine making collective meet-up in favor of staying in bed and the tub and back in the bed again. I knit a bit. I read. I held my people. We went on a walk in the rain in the woods, all 4 of us and the dogs, and did our best to let it all go and just be. Just breathe. Get muddy. Laugh a little.
And now it’s Monday and here we go. I wanted to drop in here just briefly in the spirit of keeping it real. And this is most likely my only open window of the week. I wanted to say that I am looking forward to teaching Monday night yoga in the big room downtown and bearing witness as people come together with themselves and with one another and breath and movement like a prayer. It is healing for me. To gather up my pieces, hold them all with love, and begin again. Then, I’ll be gone for much of the week with Chris but back for the weekend. Group practice is this Saturday and I am really looking forward to sharing space with folks then. Right now that feels like what is important, as much as I need time alone, I also know the power of community to lift us up, hold us well, and love us deep. Soon.