From Grief to Release
One night in August I was surfing Instagram and I saw Liz’s post about a 6am community virtual yoga that was starting up. It said it would include community and other things that intrigued me and I knew I needed in my life. I recently experienced the passing of my mother, putting my dad in memory care and my firstborn leaving the nest and losing a job. So a lot going on in my life. I was struggling to get out bed daily and knew that a 6am commitment twice a week was a good idea to help me get out bed. I’ll be real honest here… on the first Tuesday doing the virtual yoga it was not what I was expected at all. We began with pranayama and I just wanted jump right into a Chaturanga Dandasana and Updog, but I did the Set Aside prayer and stayed with the class teacher, Liz Meeker.
I continued the sessions until we got to the day we were scheduled to meet in the mountains at Dawn Retreat Center. I had in mind that I was going to nicely tell the teacher that she should consider doing the yoga and retreat the way I suggested and it would be much better then I began the caravan to the Dawn Retreat Center. A divine spirit stirred inside of me sparked by the rain that was falling around Greenville that slowly turned to sunshine on the journey to the Center. I noticed the beautiful yellow flowers in the field to my right and the stream and was reminded how close I live to all this beauty and it’s always been here but I had been choosing to stay in bed to pass the day away overcome by hot flashes from hormone changes in my life (menopause), depression and grief. I got to the Center and began to meet the ladies that had just been still images on a virtual yoga class on my computer. They came to life for me and I discovered they are real and really cool.
I realized the class format was just what I needed and began to embrace it. The seated meditation we did at the Dawn Retreat Center was magical and helped me shift my grief over my mother from a being sad and focusing on missing her and the memories I had of her, to being grateful that she lived as long as she did. I got the gift of the memories and I was going to get more gifts as I would be able to be present for my sons like she had been present for me through my 30s, 40s and the beginnings of my 50s. The meditation leader also had us write something down that was no longer serving us and that we were going to COMPOST it where it would turn into the ground organically and evolve into something that would nourish us - like compost does for flowers and vegetables. This I could connect with because I had been trying to just STOP thinking of this thing that burdened and scared me, but I couldn’t do that. It kept coming back and I’d pick it up in my mind and turn it over and over. Composting allows me to think of it as God and the Earth are doing something divine that I cannot completely understand nor fathom but it is being worked on. It will be designed to nourish and help me and I need to leave it alone and do its process. I ripped up that paper and that felt so freeing and I put into the container the teacher would use to compost it. Those fears and burdens just crumbled away like that paper that turned into pieces of paper and fell out of my hands. I plan to return to the retreat center because it truly was life giving and Liz Meeker and Liz Delaney have connected me to this experience. Now I don’t miss a Tuesday or Thursday with Liz Meeker and my other friends. I turn on my video and love my 1 hour time from 6-7am. Thank you for reading my experience. May it serve to help and strengthen you wherever you are on your path.
