We are living through such strange and tender times. There is no right way to feel, there’s just however you feel from moment-to-moment on any given day, and the amount of patience, humor and grace you’re able to offer yourself (and others). One of the best things we can do is figure out what we’re saying YES to, and what we’re saying NO to. Everyone is struggling with something most of the time, pandemic or not. Read that again if you need to. No matter how stunning, smart, funny, kind or successful a person may seem to be from the outside, you have no idea what’s happening inside unless you’re very close friends or family, or they tell you. The most gorgeous person in your orbit could have grown up in the most abusive household and struggle every day to feel worthy or unbroken.
I know people who look like they’re killing it on social media, but inwardly and in their day-to-day life they feel like they’re not enough. Or maybe their life is falling apart but they’re keeping it together on the outside. I remember when I was going through my divorce and my kids were tiny. My son was four and my daughter was 18 months old and still nursing, and I owned a business with my soon-to-be ex husband and the only thing I could focus on was making sure my kids were okay and trying to take care of the yoga community that had sprung up around the studio and online. There were many, many days I sobbed in my car on my way to teach, but I always got it together before I walked into the studio, always did my best to show up for the people who’d driven and hunted for a parking spot or ridden their bikes to come practice with me, always tried to have an ear to lend to anyone who needed it. I didn’t always succeed at all that, but I always tried. And a lot of the time my soon-to-be ex husband was the one greeting people and checking in my class. From the outside, I have no doubt it looked very Modern Family, but from inside the experience, there were many chapters that were gutting. That isn’t the stuff you post on social media, though, because it’s deeply personal and it isn’t just your story to tell. I share this with you in case you feel deeply insecure a lot of the time, or you fall into the trap of comparing and contrasting. Just assume everyone has pain they’re dealing with on some level, because you’ll never go wrong if you move through the world with kindness.
Things feel particularly painful and raw out there right now. Some people are thrilled and relieved we are coming out of the strangest sci-fi year any of us has ever lived through, and others are anxious and scared we’re opening too fast, or they feel the pace of the world starting to infringe on the slower pace they’ve adopted. Many people are a combination of all those feelings, every day. We have people exhausted, heartbroken and enraged over systemic racism and continual fear of what might happen next, wondering if things are ever really going to change. We have people working tirelessly for that change in the face of massive polarization, and often a true lack of understanding. None of it is easy, so at the very least, could we have some compassion for ourselves and each other? Could we recognize on a good day, most of us are struggling with some legitimate fear and insecurity, and also some totally absurd and meaningless mind-stuff – and behave accordingly?
Lately I’ve been feeling more and more that the root of all anxiety is fear of death. That because we don’t often talk about the reality of how fragile it is to be human, how mind-bending it is that we don’t know how long we have or how long anyone else has and that we don’t know for sure what happens after this, we’re in a constant state of knowing all this and also not wanting to know all this. It’s like the root of an anxiety tree in your mind, whose branches grow in different directions. It’s there, and you know it’s there, but maybe if you Netflix-binge enough you can forget about it. I mean, you can’t do anything about the parameters, right? So why dwell on it? I really think when we don’t grapple with the temporary nature of our being, we don’t live with the gusto and abandon that opens us to joy, and those branches can start to overgrow the system and block out the sun. We don’t have to agree about what we’re doing here or what happens next, but I believe we do ourselves a real disservice when we don’t face those questions head on, and figure out what makes sense to us. Then we can get on with the business of living with some peace of mind, true excitement and gratitude for the days we have.
Because the parameters of being human are tough, and they are, you can expect that many people are going to struggle. Hurt people hurt people as the saying goes. You will be hurt, and you will also do the hurting along the way. Hopefully at a certain point – maybe even today – you realize life is short and painful and amazing and glorious and full of loss and hope and dreams and if you’re very lucky, tons and tons of love and laughter. Hugs. Deep feeling. Grief because you love with your whole heart and losing people is devastating. Sand between your toes and the ocean – the ocean with its waves and currents and salt and sea air all around you, seagulls flying over head. The feeling when you scrape your knee and someone tends to it, cleans it for you, puts a bandaid on your scrape and gives you a kiss. Sings you to sleep at night. Gives you reason to believe that people are, at heart, really, really good.
But if you’re going to live fully, and if you’re going to find peace, there are two essential things: what you say yes to, and what you say no to. If life is precious, and I hope we can agree on that, then our job is to show up for it and give everything we’ve got to this dance while we’re here. There are going to be people who can’t be kind, can’t feel empathy, can’t respect your boundaries, can’t be counted on to treat you with love and respect. You may have people like this in your life. I would say the best course of action is to forgive everyone you can, but to realize when we forgive people, we don’t have to have them over for dinner. We don’t have to have them in our lives. We don’t have to call and say, “I forgive you.” And forgiving doesn’t mean we’re saying whatever happened is okay. It just means we are removing that fish-hook of pain from our hearts, we are reserving our finite energy and attention for other things, we are recognizing that whatever has happened is probably a result of this person’s pain, and we are not going to keep our pain and heartache alive by feeding it. There’s what you say yes to, and there’s what you say no to, and both are equally important for your well-being. If your body is your home, and your peace of mind resides within your body, imagine you can open or close the door to people and situations…and choose wisely!
Sending you tons of love,
Ally Hamilton Hewitt
If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here, and my yoga classes and courses here. For private coaching, please email me: ally@yogisanonymous.com
Everything all at once seems to be a theme right now (and maybe always). The excitement of reopening along with the anxiety. The prospect of being out in the world together in a carefree way, and the heartache of two mass shootings the first week we’re semi-open. Taking my daughter to school for an in-person tour, but realizing on the way I haven’t dropped her off anywhere and then left…for a year! Watching her stand on line 6 feet from the person in front of her and behind her, double-masked so I can’t tell if she’s okay. Finding out later she had a great time.
Just a little reminder! Not every feeling or thought is desirable or welcome, but the more you try to push a feeling down or reject it, the more it will stick around! What we resist, persists.
A few years ago I was leading a weekend workshop and we were talking about clear communication. A woman in the group started talking about her mother-in-law and how she always needed to have this particular condiment when she would come for dinner. If the condiment wasn’t there, she would express her absolute disappointment and it would become the main topic of the night. The woman in the group said she had learned to be sure to have the condiment on hand, because it didn’t matter what else she might have done – it didn’t matter if she’d cooked dinner for twenty-five people, if she’d spent days cleaning the house in advance of the dinner, if she’d baked three different desserts – if she failed to have this condiment, that was it. It should be noted that this item was not easy to come by, and only one store in the area consistently carried it, a store forty-five minutes away from the woman in the group, but only fifteen minutes away from her mother-in-law, and along the route she needed to travel to come to the house.
Not one of us makes it through this life (or even most days) without making mistakes, occasionally saying or doing something thoughtless, taking people and things for granted when they’re truly gifts in our lives, or showing up as our best selves in every moment. Hopefully in those instances when we are all-too-human, we catch ourselves quickly, apologize from the heart when needed, and try to make better and different mistakes moving forward. If we are fortunate and wise, we both receive and extend forgiveness as a necessary means to have real intimacy with people and get through this life with open and fulfilling relationships to celebrate. There’s no intimacy without communication and forgiveness. That is not what this post is about.
It is so easy and so human to get twisted up with this idea, but the more you can stay in your own lane, the better. Any time I find myself thinking I know what someone else ought to feel, say or do, I realize I’m avoiding my own work. I have yet to meet another human being who has their own stuff so dialed in, they’re in a position to start weighing in on anyone else’s behavior, choices or way of being.
One of my least favorite things is the spiritual sound bite – that little saying with a bow on top that sounds deep and meaningful, but is really just something we say in the face of great loss or heartache that might actually make things worse, like “everything happens for a reason” or “you choose everything that happens to you” or “when the universe takes something away it’s making room for something better.”
We all make mistakes and say or do things that are thoughtless or careless sometimes. No one shows up as the best version of themselves in every situation on every single day. Hopefully, if you are a grown-up, you know how to give a grown-up apology. A grown-up apology is when you say you’re sorry without any other bells or whistles. It isn’t “I’m sorry you feel that way” or “I see what you’re saying, but you did X, Y or Z.” It’s a simple, “I hear you. I understand why you feel the way you do and I am so sorry I blew it. I will think about what happened and why I did what I did or said what I said so I make sure this doesn’t happen again in the future.” Something along those lines qualifies as a grown-up apology and it’s really good to know how to give one of those because we’re all human. Whether you’re forgiven or not is not up to you, you can only do your end of the equation. People who aren’t willing or able to accept a grownup apology may realize that’s a bad policy when they’re the ones looking for forgiveness, so do your best to give people time.
When you’re part of a culture that is always sending you messages that you aren’t good enough, and teaches you to base your feelings of self-worth on how you measure up compared to other people, it’s really easy to feel like you suck. The truth is, there are about 7.5 billion people on the planet, but there’s only one of you. There never has been and there never will be another you, isn’t that incredible? Your worth has nothing to do with how you’re stacking up compared to the person ahead of you or behind you, whether you’re in a socially-distanced line or you’re looking at your social media feed. Your worth is not the number in your bank account or the number on your scale or your breast-size or waist-size or bicep-size. It isn’t in an arm balance or inversion, it isn’t in how many “followers” you have, it isn’t in your hair or the beer you drink or don’t drink, it isn’t in your car or your job or your partner. Your worth is intrinsic to you. You are here and you are unique and you have something to offer this world only you can. That’s amazing to me. You might need to get out of your own way, or heal on a deep level, you might need to stop believing old stories that keep you stuck, but your worth is never at issue.
This is a simple reminder to myself and anyone else who might need it: When you are looking to make real and lasting change, it’s the effort you put in each day that makes the difference over time.
Uncertainty is the name of the game in life. This whole business of being human – arriving on a spinning planet in a vast galaxy with no idea how long we’ll have here, no clue how long anyone else will have, no idea what happens after this – none of these are easy parameters to deal with and integrate. We don’t know what kind of sudden loss we might face on a “normal” Wednesday or whether we’ll wake up in the morning. We don’t know if the person we adore will continue to adore us, we don’t know if our children will be okay when we drop them off at school (back when we used to do that), we don’t know if we’ll realize our dreams, no matter how hard we work. It’s a wonder any of us get out of bed in the morning and keep showing up, but that’s the very thing about human beings, we are a wonder.
You know about “shoulding” on yourself, right? When that nasty inner critic pipes up and says you should be further along than you are professionally or you should be married by now or you should make better choices with romantic partners or you should lose that ten pounds or you should be able to do it all and still look like a million bucks or you should be able to work and be an amazing parent, partner, friend, or you should not have said that stupid thing or lost your patience or made that hor
Most of us have been through heartbreak, loss, disappointment and pain. It’s very unlikely everything has turned out the way you thought it would or wish it had. Some people deal with more heartbreak and loss than others.
You always hear that trust is the foundation of any loving relationship, and you hear that for a reason – it’s true. I have never understood that more than I do at this point in my life. The question is how and whom do we trust in the face of constant uncertainty? Anytime we love anyone – a parent, child, partner, best friend or treasured family member (including our pets), we become enormously vulnerable, and we are asked to trust in the face of that. The fact is, none of us knows how long we have. The one thing we can count on in this life is change. Some change is wonderful – a new job or relationship that feels right, a move when we need more space, a different environment – and some change hurts like hell: the end of a relationship when we hoped for a different outcome, the loss of a job we needed, the end of a friendship we thought would last forever, or the biggest loss – the loss we endure when someone we love is taken from us due to age, or a million other heartbreaking reasons. There is no such thing as deep love without vulnerability. So how do we trust our hearts to anyone?
You can’t change other people, save them or make them see the light. If you’re like me, you might have to test that statement a million times before you get it, but that’s a fact. People change and grow in their own time in their own way and if they want to, just like you, just like me. If you’re talking about self-destructive patterns and/or addictions, that holds doubly true. If a person makes choices that continually lead her to pain, presumably she will get to a point where she says “enough!’ and decide to figure out what’s driving her, but that isn’t something you can do for anyone else. People get there in their own time, or they don’t. When you love people who hurt themselves it’s brutal. When you love people who hurt you that is also very difficult, but there’s room to shift an interaction like that.
The more you repress your feelings the harder they have to work to rise to the surface. “What you resist persists.” People make themselves sick this way. Some feelings are incredibly uncomfortable – ugly even – but to reject something you’re feeling is to deny yourself an opportunity to go deeper – to uncover what’s underneath a fleeting feeling of rage or shame, insecurity, fear, envy, doubt, loneliness or guilt. If something is bothering you, disappointing you, breaking your heart, making you anxious, or keeping you up at night, then by all means it’s going to affect you and it’s worth exploring and examining.
I had a really hard time getting pregnant with my son and tried everything. Literally. Acupuncture, peeing on sticks, boiling “tea” that stunk up the house and even allowing a giant Maori healer to “rolf” my uterus (from the outside, haha. Even at the height of my insanity I wasn’t that crazy :)). I couldn’t figure out a way to practice non-attachment at the time, I just found myself intensely missing a person I hadn’t even met, a person who existed only in my mind and in my heart. Eventually (after a year of needles, tea, sticks, tears and said rolfing session, I went to a fertility doctor who discovered my estrogen levels were a little low, and presto, the bigger kid in this picture started materializing. If you had told me during that year to try to relax and trust that the exact right human was going to show up at the exact right time, I wouldn’t have believed you or been able to do that. I really thought I had to keep “doing things” to “make it happen”, and maybe I did. Maybe he would not have shown up if I hadn’t tried everything known to woman to get there, or maybe he would have, or maybe everything was required. I don’t have any regrets because that kid seems to me to be the only kid who could ever have been my son (my sun), and that girl with him? She showed up with no help from tea or needles or giant Maori.
I just posted a new class on the site called Open Heart/Quiet Mind and it occurred to me that’s the way I try to live most of my days. That hasn’t always been easy for me, it took me years to learn how to quiet the racket in my head and trust in my ability to rise up and face life head-on.
I posted something on one of my Facebook pages the other day about why it is young women and girls who are sexually assaulted often do not tell their parents, file a police report, or go to the doctor. I don’t feel like re-posting here, but I’m speaking from my own personal experience. A woman commented with “Mothers, teach your daughters well,” and I believe she meant well, but this is a HUGE part of the problem. The onus should not be on women and girls to do whatever they can to keep themselves safe at all times; are we really consenting to living life on the defensive, in a constant state of hyper-alertness?! It is not just about mothers teaching their daughters well. Fathers need to model respectful behavior and think carefully about the things they say and do, and the way they treat the women in their lives, because children watch and absorb EVERYTHING. Both parents of both genders need to teach their daughters and their sons well. 
There’s no running from yourself. If you have pain, it’s going to surface and if you try to stop it, deny it, numb it out or run from it you’re just going to make yourself sick. People do it every day, all day long. They keep themselves so busy, so scheduled down to the minute, there isn’t any time to feel anything. Others try to feed the beast of their pain with stuff. I’ll just keep consuming until that horrible emptiness goes away. Some people numb it with drugs, alcohol, food, dieting, sex, relationships, shopping, television or video games. And weeks go by, and those weeks turn into years, and a whole life can go by that way.
Hey there! If you zoom in you can see I’ve had this really awesome stye on my right eye for the last few days. Pretty, huh? I got sick last week and I guess this was the parting gift! A stye is not a big deal, but I’ll tell you, this one was painful and tender, and at its worst I looked like I’d been on the wrong end of a prizefight. It’s on its way out now, and I’ve been thinking about the gratitude you feel when pain starts to subside. I know a lot of you will relate.
The first time I saw a man masturbating, I was eight years old. I was in Central Park with my third grade class, and we were there to sketch. I’d wandered a little away from the group and found a perfect tree and I was busily trying to sketch onto my pad what I was seeing in front of me. I’d study the tree, then draw on my pad. The third or fourth time I looked up, there was a man under the tree with his pants down, furiously moving his hand up and down his penis while staring at me. I had no idea why he was doing this, but I felt scared and knew immediately it wasn’t something I should be seeing. I looked up at him and we made eye contact for a second, and I went running to my teacher, crying. By the time she came back to where I’d been sitting, he was gone. I have no idea if she told anyone at school, if my parents were informed, or if anything else came of it, I only remember the man, the tree, and the sketch I never finished.
Last week in a class I was teaching, I was talking about how the focal points or “drishtis” in the yoga practice are really the difference between having some power over how you respond to what’s happening around you, or not so much. If you have a physical yoga practice, then you already know that there’s a place where you direct your gaze in each pose. It might be over your front fingertips and toward the horizon, as you would in Warrior 2. It might be toward your extended fingertips in side angle pose. The idea is that you’re taking in a little less information from the world around you, so you can spend some time focusing on the world that exists within you, and hopefully practice in a way that creates more peace, steadiness, compassion, patience and awareness, so that when you leave your mat, that’s what you have to offer up.
Yoga is a process of getting real with yourself, so you can be at 
Your past does not have to define your future, but sometimes, in order to overcome it, you’re going to have to work like hell. It’s not a level playing field; some people have come out of abuse, abandonment, or neglect. Children growing up in an unsafe environment often become adults who find it hard to trust and to open. You can only know what you know, after all. If the people who were meant to love you, nurture you and protect you were not able to do that due to their own limitations or history of abuse, you’re going to have some serious healing to do.
There’s a physical cue in the yoga practice, “root down to rise up”, and if you practice yoga, you’ve probably heard it. Whatever is touching the mat, whether it’s your feet, your forearms, your hands or your head, that is your foundation. You are asked to find the strength at your root, and rise up out of it.
Ah, vulnerability. Sometimes it stuns you and brings you into a state of gratitude for being able to love so deeply, and sometimes it makes you want to run screaming from the room. I am often stunned into gratitude by my children, and the way that I love them, and the way that I am humbled in the face of that love. If you’ve been on this planet for any length of time, then you know that you do not call the shots, you do not get to decide what life is going to put in your path, or the paths of those you cherish. You know that the parameters are outside of your domain, you get no insight into the number of days or years you have here, and the same holds true for everyone you hold dear, and my god, if that does not make you acknowledge your own fragility, I don’t know what will. I’m usually inspired by that. I really try to leave nothing in the tank on any given day, and by that I mean I try to make sure the people in my life know how I feel about them without any doubt by the time I put my head on the pillow. That’s a day well spent.
I’ll be honest, this week kicked my ass! Sunday, my son sprained his ankle, so Monday he stayed home from school and we went to the doctor. Monday afternoon, my daughter spiked a fever and vomited (good times), so Tuesday she stayed home, and we went back to the doctor. Wednesday, she had to have a (harmless) cyst removed from her neck, which meant a needle in her neck, screaming, and a total nervous system response for mom, even though I kept us both breathing deeply the whole time. Also, in case you’re counting, that was the third trip to the doctor in as many days. Also, teaching, making meals, packing lunches, doing laundry, playing chaffeur, trying to tend to my next (book) baby, and y’know, attempting to squeeze in a personal life, get my eyebrows waxed, find time for my yoga, meditation and rowing every day so I don’t lose my mind, and I think you get the picture. So a little crazier than usual, but every week is an attempt to show up with the best of myself for myself, and all the people in my life, which makes me no different than anyone else.
Culturally, we’ve had a conversation going on for quite awhile about the ill-effects of stress, but 
The last few days have been painful in our country, but in all fairness, for many people the pain has been real and heartbreaking for years. I needed a couple of days to process, because I was shocked by the result of our election on Tuesday, and in that shock, I needed time to recognize and think about my own ignorance. When half the country votes in a way you never saw coming, you understand you have been out of touch with a huge segment of the population.
Ah, heartache. No one invites you over and asks you to sit down for tea, and yet, we’ve all had times when you were our constant companion. One of the best things in life is shared connection, and many people seek to find that in their romantic relationships. Of course we have our family, our close friends, those people who truly know us and cherish us for who we are, and that is genuine intimacy. Those are the people who are gifts in our lives, and should never be taken for granted. It’s human to want to find that same connection in a special someone, and yet it’s not always easy.
Let me start by saying that before you get to 
At its core, yoga is a listening practice. You breathe, but not the way you breathe all day, you breathe with awareness and intention. Your intention is to use your breath as a means of becoming present because your inhales and exhales are always happening right now; if you’re aware that you’re breathing, you’re also engaged with the present moment. You’re breathing deeply, which draws your attention away from the cacophony of endless thoughts, and into that realm of feeling and intuition. When you breathe deeply, you calm your nervous system, and create a foundation of steadiness and ease.
The mind just loves to time travel, have you noticed? Left to its own devices, it will pull you into the past, or send you into the future, often with feelings of regret, longing, sadness, fear or anxiety. Sometimes the accompanying feeling is a good one, like recalling something wonderful that’s happened, or feeling excited about an event that’s about to happen, but more of the time we’re sad about something behind us, or scared about something that might or might not be in front of us.
The first way to find happiness when you’re feeling lost, is to stop looking for it! When we’re feeling hurt, scared, anxious, heartbroken, abandoned, rejected, insecure, envious or threatened, the trick is not to avoid the uncomfortable, painful and challenging feelings, it’s to embrace them. I know this might seem counter-intuitive. You might ask yourself, “How will 
So much of our struggle comes from our attachment to a picture of how things should be, or how life should look, or how we should feel, or what other people should want, say or do. So often, we should on ourselves and others, and end up carrying the weight of shame, or the feeling of alienation, both of which deplete us and make it hard to rise up. The truth is, there is no formula for life, no “one size fits all” for this thing, we just have to figure it out as we go along.
It’s been just over a week since my book came out, and I am having such fun. I appreciate all of your support and enthusiasm, I was so grateful to see so many of you at the event in L.A. at General Assembly, and at both events in NYC! SF is next, but in the meantime, I’m wondering if any of you who’ve read the book already might be willing to write an Amazon review? Apparently they are enormously important and helpf
If you’re human, (and I assume there are no zebras reading this post), then you can probably look in your rearview mirror and spot some choices you wish you could make over again, and differently. The truth is, most of us do the best we can as we go along, and that means most of us will probably fall short from time to time. Life does not unfold in a linear fashion, we do not get to hit the “pause button” until we’re ready, sometimes we think we’re ready for something only to find out we are wildly unprepared or had an unrealistic idea of what we were getting into in the first place. Also, sometimes we’re coming out of abuse or neglect, a dysfunctional family system, a crazy culture that expects us to edit out our difficult feelings, or we’ve developed coping mechanisms along the way that don’t serve our highest good at all. We may have stories we tell ourselves that are not true, ideas about other people that are based on our own misperceptions or lessons we learned that we have to unlearn, or a whole host of other difficulties that come along with being human. It’s an interesting and incredible gig, but no one would argue that it’s easy! You can lose a lot of time dwelling on the past, obsessing over decisions you cannot unmake, or feeling regret that won’t serve you or anyone else. 
Not long ago, I was in a parking garage walking to my car, and I saw a young mom, struggling with her daughter who was wailing. “I miss Daddy!” Her mom was yelling back, “It’s not a daddy day, you’ll see him this weekend!” My heart hurt. I felt badly for both of them. I went back and forth as a kid, three nights at my mom’s, four at my dad’s, switching that fourth night every other week. When I was at my mom’s I’d miss my dad. When I was at my dad’s, I’d miss my mom. I wanted to go over to the mom and say, “Hey, it’s so normal. She loves you, you’re her mom, but she misses her dad. Maybe a phone call to him would do the trick?” But I have found most people are not very receptive to suggestions when they’re in a heightened emotional state. So, I sent them love, and felt grateful, for maybe the millionth time, that when I had my kids, I’d already been practicing yoga and seated meditation for fifteen years. It helps so much in those moments when you want to pull your hair out, are feeling vulnerable, tired, or tested, or just aren’t sure what you should do. Parenthood asks us to be our best selves in every moment, twenty-four hours a day, but of course, that isn’t going to happen! For me, my practice has given me the tools to show up with the best of myself for the greatest percentage of time I can manage. If I’d had my kids before I had a long-standing practice, I have no doubt I’d have been screaming at them in parking garages.
When I started practicing yoga twenty-five years ago, I had a lot of misconceptions about what it was, and what it was not. Mostly, I thought yoga was stretching on the floor, or that it was something “hippies” did, or that I might have to buy a sitar and change my name to something spiritual.
Apparently, this is a popular search on Google, and as someone who’s been practicing yoga for twenty-five years, let me say, yes! Yoga is VERY boring if you are uninterested in who you are, what makes you tick, what’s blocking you, what you do when you feel afraid, confronted, or challenged, the quality of your inner voice, the state of the relationship you’re having with yourself which impacts all the relationships in your life, and whether you’re able to offer up your particular gifts in this lifetime, or not so much. If those things are not interesting to you, then yes, yoga is super boring!
fun ride! The ticket off that ride is free, simple, and available to you at all times, and 
coaching can be great, too, but there is no timetable for grief and loss. One definition of stress is being in one place, and wishing you were somewhere else. Some people feel very uncomfortable around grief, because it reminds them of their own fragility. The reality is, we never know how much time we have, and the same can be said for all the people we love. The loss of an entire person is shocking, and depending on the depth of the love you shared, and the way the person was lost to you, the grief can be intense. You are not obligated to rush yourself through anything. If you have friends who need you to do that, those are probably not the friends who are going to be sitting in the rocker next to you when you’re ninety. Take your time, be kind to yourself, and have patience with your feelings. I don’t believe “time heals all wounds”, but I do believe we get to a place where we integrate the loss and the grief, and are more able to focus on the gratitude for having loved so deeply, and the beautiful memories we have.
Recently, I was driving in my car when an unwanted memory took over my brain. I’d been having a perfectly wonderful afternoon with my kids, and had just dropped them off to have dinner with their dad while I went to teach a class. We were laughing as they got out of the car, and I still had their wet lip-prints drying on my cheeks from where they’d left their big kisses. In the two minutes from the time I dropped them off, to the time I drove three blocks to pull into the studio garage, I suddenly noticed my shoulders were up around my ears, my jaw was clenching and I had an overall feeling of dis-ease in my body, and emotionally. Why was I suddenly feeling crappy on such a nice day, when nothing unpleasant had occurred? I realized the song on the radio was about being stabbed in the back, and without my consent, my mind had taken me on a little journey down memory lane, to a place I’ll call Betrayal Alley.
So much of our ability to be at peace and to live life in a way that feels good, has to do with what we feed, and what we release. I have these two relatives, and I’ll call them uncles, although they aren’t uncles. One of them is the kindest, sweetest, most loving, joyful, affectionate, fun, generous person you’d ever want to meet. If you sit down next to him at a family function, he will share with you a list of all the amazing things you’ve ever done in your life from the time you were four, to the present. He will talk to you about the joy you’ve brought to his life, and how he knew you were special from the moment he laid eyes on you. You will tell him how much you love him, what an important person he is in your life, and how grateful you are that he is your uncle. You will want to make sure that he knows this. The family function will fly by, and you will leave feeling grateful and full and happy and inspired.