the story
It was a cold winter day in Brooklyn, a flash of thick snowflakes fell from the sky as I curled up in my living room. My doorbell rang. A friend of mine had braved the snow to show up with a biscuit from Brown Butter, fries, and ice cream. It was like she knew I needed all the options if I was going to entice my appetite.
It had been a month of what felt like emotional hell. A sudden and painful change to my daily life, deep holiday depression, and a friend letting me down in a way I never expected. I was trying my best to recover when one more strong hit from the Universe sent me over the edge.
Doubling over, I wondered where it was that I’d gone wrong. Why God thought I could handle all of it at once. Why I was now faced with choices, difficult ones that could change my present day life. It felt so unfair.
“This is not on you, we’re not going to go there,” my friend told me as she hugged me tight. It sure felt like it was. The amount of tears I’d cried in the past month had drained me of any real motivation to crawl out of the hole I was in that seemingly kept getting deeper. I was defeated.
The next morning I decided to try again. I managed to robotically get myself up and out the door to a yoga class down the street. Instead of my usual spot in the first two rows I hid in a back corner, knowing that I might need the privacy. I wobbled through the flow, unable to find my usual confidence in the familiar practice I’d known for 20 years. I can’t remember the last time I cried in a yoga class but chile, it happened that day for sure.
After a hot shower I cuddled up in bed, left my phone in the other room, and read After the Rain by Alex Elle cover to cover. It was like a soothing balm to my aching chest. Each story reminded me of my humanity and those around me. The clouds began to part just a little as clarity and peace slowly made their way into my mind.
My heart had broken a good four times in the past thirty days. After asking, “why?” so many times, I’d finally found my answer.
the lesson
When everything hurts, choose to do something that will show you your strength. I was mentally and physically weak when I took that yoga class. I don’t even remember most of it. What I did know was that if there was one thing that would prove to me that I had more power to push through, it was yoga. I’ve turned to my practice in some of my darkest days to help me feel, process, and release energy. I probably wouldn’t have come to the answers that I did later that day had I not done it.
No one can shake your foundation unless you allow them to. Now I want to be clear, this doesn’t mean that your feelings can’t be hurt by someone else. It’s that their behavior is never a reflection of you and taking it personally will only lead to unnecessary pain. In the past, I may have taken some experiences I had as a direct indicator of my self-worth or how lovable I was. This time around, I know that no matter what, no one can take away the amount of love I feel internally unless I’m the one giving that power away.
Repair matters. Everyone makes hurtful mistakes. What I used to help me ultimately make decisions was the effort that was put in to repair the situation. Some fell short, others didn’t. Actions and effort are everything and whether you like it or not, make it crystal clear how important you really are to another person.
Your responsibilities can wait. Honestly, I’m behind on everything. By this time the plan was to have a vision board done, some clear steps I wanted to take for this newsletter and BEJ events, and for me to have reached out to some folks I want to partner with. None of that has happened. I’m not in the right head space nor do I have a ton of motivation right now. Sometimes we’re so focused on keeping up that we fail to acknowledge the time we need to heal our systems after dramatic things happen. So yeah, I’ll get to this shit when I’m ready.
the light
I don’t believe everything happens for a reason, but I do believe that sometimes shit has to hit the fan for me to realize the ways I’ve grown. For now, I’m taking that as my answer. I was shocked when I realized that for the first time I wasn’t taking people’s behavior towards me as a reflection of who I was. Through the pain of the past month, I was still able to tap into how much I loved myself, knowing I would always be my own rock. It’s a muscle of mine that has taken years to strengthen and I’ve finally gotten there.
Otherwise, I just know I won’t feel like this forever and that’s what I hold onto. It was a shitty way to end one year and start the next, but let’s be honest. I thrived last year and perhaps God needed me to go through a different kind of character development…but fr He can chill now.
When deciding whether or not to write this I faced the choice to either be truthful about how hard life has been or push off my break for another two weeks until I found the bright side somewhere. Then I remembered that the point of this platform IS to be real. My life isn’t perfect and sometimes I don’t have much to report other than the Universe’s insane plot twists for the sake of my character development.
Thanks for reading regardless ❤️
my matcha moment 🍵
My rec this week is yoga. Just go do some. You’ll be better for it.