First, I’ll be teaching a four week session of Kundalini Yoga at ABC’s of Building Better Lives located at 5934 Old French Road on Tuesdays at 5:30, starting November 3rd. I am hoping the cost is inclusive, but if you need any help with that, please just contact me.
Details to the right obviously.
Second, a piece I wrote lately is one of my favorites. You can read the whole thing over on my stack but here’s a bit of it:
The other night I had a serious meltdown. If you want to call it that.
Let’s be more honest: I had a moment (and I have many of these) where my defenses melted down. The wall of calm could not hold and the truth of my anger and grief came spilling out. It’s powerful. Sometimes it does harm because holding all of that back creates so much pressure.
I had witnessed another woman’s pressure valve not working earlier in the day, and through her symptoms, I could see her truth and the truth of so many women who have lived before us:
We hold the pain of the people who cannot face it themselves.
We hold the fear of our younger selves.
And sometimes it’s too much. It should always be too much.
It made me think of one of my ancestors who was told to never have a baby again because her depression after a stillbirth almost took her. Instead of helping her, they told her to just stop and be calm.
They couldn’t tolerate her pain so they asked her to numb it.
I think of another ancestor who lived with so many layers of grief, starting when she was only two, that it would erupt like a volcano and it eventually landed in one of her daughters who landed in a hospital because of the pain of the holding.
And that is just a couple of examples from my own line.
I think of all of the women, one after another, back and back through time.
All the genius lost to just holding and staying calm.
All the genius lost to treatment and drugs — electro shock and laudanum and white rooms and eventual walks into water with rocks in our pockets or heads laid in gas ovens in pretty little kitchens.