It’s Day 1 of 2025, and I’m out of bed down on my yoga mat, in yet another new place, my sixth bed in the last to two ridiculous nomad weeks. But I’m where I need to be, flowing through my scoli spine vinyasa, chanting my healing mantra…
Clear mind, Open heart, Long tall spine, Smoooth breath
When, suddenly, despite my mindful efforts, I notice – at least I notice – the movie reel of tumultuous 2024 rewinds and plays-back in flash frames as a familiar soundtrack blares in my head: “How could you have…” and “If you had only…”
My heart sink as, eyes squeezed shut, as I lift my body into Upward Dog. It was a year full of loss, one I want to turn from, and just move on. But the images of devastation come at me – a hurricane, a heartbreak, a harrowing election – as the sun shines through the window onto my face.
Just notice, say my teachers, Tara Brach and Michele McDonald, in their mindfulness lessons on RAIN. Please, don’t push the thoughts away.
R=Recognize.
Recognize the suffering, the regret.
Amidst images of flooded rivers, fallen trees, buckled roads, lost homes, people, animals, a memory of beauty appears: an outing to Paradise Falls with friends, a glimpse of my agile self scaling the side of a cliff, grasping tree roots as we descend into the emerald green pool.
Recognize the gift of mother nature, and her curse, the two together, the paradox.
Then, another flash: me reading the Sweet Sixteen chapter of my memoir at Story Parlor, to a packed house, on my Sweet Sixtieth birthday, and meeting man, who takes the stage and serenades me on his guitar. The lyrics sing in my head, in the present: Darling, I ask you only this…a kiss to build a dream on.
After the party, in the parking lot, beneath the streetlamp light, his brown creased eyes smiling, lips pressed to mine, I’m giddy, butterflies swirling, 60 going on 16.
Recognize the joy. I hadn’t allowed myself to fall in love for 15 years.
A=Acknowledge
Acknowledge the triumphs.
Though, now, as I push back into Downward Dog, arm bones strong, fingers spread, spine long, tears fill my eyes and drop onto the mat.
The surprise birthday love lasted six sweet, sultry months – and ended with a heart-arresting thud – followed just days later by Cat 4 Hurricane Helene that tore through my beloved, adopted city and left 200 dead, the land and humans scarred.
My relationships to the mountains I’d climbed, the rivers I’d swum, the communities I’d cultivated – yoga, writing, dance, cycling – were over, too.
It was time for me – once a road out of town opened – to pack-up my life and go.
Acknowledge the loss, grief, landslides of pain, as I collapse down onto the mat into Child’s Pose.
Forehead pressed to the ground, chest constricted, I hear an old harsh voice in my head: “When are you going to get one of these right?” It’s my tough-love mother, whose fear for me, though my growing up years, came out as admonishment. By now, her voice has become my own - one I'm trying to let go.
I=Inquire
Beneath the regular, horrible external losses, the shadowy shame lurks. It tells me tells me I screwed up, didn’t do enough. It’s never enough and I’m not enough. I should have been nicer, more patient with the guitar man, asked less, given more, stayed to help with the hurricane recovery effort.
Inquire. I know this old scratchy tune. As a child, willful eldest, I was determined to do more more more to earn the love and care that was elusive in our manic-depressive alcoholic household.
Of course, I had no power, back then, to fix the problems of our family. No amount of contorting myself would get me what I wanted and needed from them – or anyone.
I couldn’t know then what I know now, at 60:
“You can search the world far and wide and discover no one more deserving of your love than you.” (The Buddha)
N=Nurture
I rise up onto my haunches into Hero’s Pose. My mother used to say: “This family needs a hero.” It was something she’d heard Oprah say. I wanted to tell her, then, “Mom, I’m that hero.” In her floaty, spirt state, smiling down on me, now, from the afterlife, she knows this.
I know it too, as I place my palm to my heart.
In the wake of the hurricane, I’d taken (ironic) sanctuary on the coast of North Carolina, a place called Oak Island, where I could watch the sun rise and set in angles over the ocean each and every day. Okay, I never made it up for sunrise; but every late afternoon, through the fall and into December, I marched myself out to the beach, bare feet in sand, and dove in. Swimming straight into the sun’s golden setting rays, I let my salty tears merge into the vast salty sea. I listened to what my body wanted – to be lolled and consoled by the waves.
There there, I console myself, now, even if more tears come, even as my diaphragm contracts and chest heaves. No mother or father or boyfriend or savior – I’m learning to become my own lover, caretaker, hero.
I rub my heartspace in circles, stroke my mending collar bone, the one I broke in half in a bicycle accident over the summer. I think of redhead Bill, the Samaritan that rescued me off the trail and rushed me to the emergency room, and smile wryly: huh, sometimes there are saviors.
Breath calming, tears subsiding, gulls laughing out my window, the plain truth appears like a wispy passing cloud across my mind:
Yes, it was a roller-coaster year! Name it, own it, even celebrate it. Wasn’t it just a thrill? All the ups and downs meant I was living life to the fullest, hands up in the air, screaming with glee (and maybe a teeny bit of terror.)
Exhaling, I rise to my feet and bow to the sun, which has risen, by now, over the house, when I realize: it’s late. Time to suit up and get to the beach.
The New Years Day Polar Plunge starts in an hour. The ocean’s an icy 45 degrees; the maritime winds are blowing at 25 mph. All the better to invigorate my energy for the new exciting, tumultuous year to come – fighting for freedom – inside this body and out in the world!
~~~
EXERCISE: Try this year-end review RAIN exercise yourself. What challenges and losses might you see in a new way? How might you nurture and celebrate yourself? How might you make this a regular practice in the new year?
NEXT POST: Now that we have a clean(ish) slate, let’s look at our aspirations – inside ourselves and out in the world - for the new year.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: @Tarabrach and @MicheleMcdonald for their wise teaching.
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