I received the following email a few months ago. I'd privately written her back immediately at the time, because I knew she needed help. But I was feeling nearly incapable of helping because I was going through my own struggles processing my divorce. I've been doing a lot of personal work to deal with what I've got going on, and today I feel like I have the strength to open up, be vulnerable, and share what I've learned thus far about grief, loss and riding the wave.
Dearest Candace, I am writing to you because I don't know what to do. I cannot practice... I cannot find the strength to practice. My sister's husband passed away about a month ago... on the day he passed away I took a small break to practice. I was tired and overwhelmed and told her I would arrive at the hospital mid morning... I thought I needed to practice. I found my way from eagle pose to warrior three and I visualized him up in the sky soaring above us. I knew the end was near. My breath caught as my phone buzzed at that exact moment... that I needed to get to the hospital because he was moments away from passing away... I drove as calmly as I could, having made the same trips with my brother years before. {Edited to note she had lost her brother years prior to a traumatic brain injury.} Panicking to make it to him before I was too late. I watched as my sister and nephews, his mothers and brothers lost a literal piece of themselves. I have moved along and trucked along for an entire month. I have taken up running craving the sensation of running or working out the hurt. Yoga... I cannot touch. I am lost. How do I find my way back to heal if I cannot practice? It has become my church. Do you have any wisdom? This is an emotional message so please pardon that. It's been a very hard day. With love, C.
As humans we do this weird thing where we rank our loss. When I received this message, I thought, "There is no way I have any words of wisdom. I have never experienced the loss of a brother, nor a brother-in-law."
I'd experienced great loss, sure. But my own losses were not as valid as hers because hers were more profound. Right?
Wrong. That's just not the case.
We are all, in some form or another, dealing with something, and we have all likely dealt with a form of loss. Loss doesn't have to be death. Loss can be the dissolution of a marriage, the demise of a friendship, losing your job or your house. You can mourn the loss of your innocence after a violation. The loss of your independence after you lose your health. Grief and loss come in many forms. That's not to trivialize someone else's pain, but merely to point out that we all feel deep pain, grief and loss at some point.
In reading her message, I felt her anguish. I was immediately transported back to the place I was in college, after I'd lost an uncle in a motorcycle accident, another uncle to suicide, and my maternal grandmother - a true saint on earth - in a span of just a few months.
Then, the cherry on top, my boyfriend broke up with me. He started dating this girl with the most insanely exotic name who did charity work in some third world country, while I laid in bed drowning in a puddle of my own tears, unable to muster the strength to get up and face the outside world, surrounded by partying college kids, feeling very alone and isolated.
In my own recent experience in learning to come to terms with my divorce I feel a difference sense of loss. While it was amicable and my ex and I are friendly and happily moving forward in our lives, there is a part of me that mourns for the dream we'd had. Having been together for about ten years, we had so many great memories, and so many struggles as well. In the end, it just didn't pan out as imagined. As planned. As expected.
And while I know that's okay, it still hurts.
Grief has notoriously come in stages for me.
The initial stage feels like I'm drowning. Like I'm being held underwater and struggling to breathe and see and move. I tiptoe through the days feeling like I'm walking on eggshells of broken glass, my throat constricted, like I might burst into tears at any given moment. I feel vulnerable and fragile, like I've been broken and pieced back together with old glue that barely sticks. I feel alone, even when surrounded by people. It feels like no matter how hard try, how I suit up, put on my armor and face the outside world, I'll never, ever be repaired. Even though I know, deep within, that I will one day be okay.
There's a Rage Stage filled with seething anger and jealousy, where I look around at all the happy, smiling people with their perfectly curated Instaphony lives and picture perfect everything and I want to scream. I feel burning, stinging anger and intense, overwhelming jealously that they are going on and moving forward while I am stuck in what feels like perpetual pain, getting pummeled again and again. Even though I know, deep within, that we are all struggling in one way or another, and that Instagram is just a highlight reel at best.
There's a Why Me Stage, where I have an introspective pity party for one. What did I do to deserve this? With the deaths in my life: why do these things happen to me? With the divorce: Why am I such a failure? Me, me, me. It's a selfish little island I live on during that time, the waves of despair crashing over me again and again, even though I know, deep within, that the world doesn't work like that. That death is a natural part of life and nothing that I specifically caused. That I am not a failure, and that an ended marriage is not the defining moment in my life.
Then, miraculously, there's the Not Terrible Stage. The stage where maybe for a split second I am able to break the surface of the water and I come up, gasping for breath. Where the Poor Me's are less frequent, and the anger and jealousy melt away. It's a stage where I cry and feel broken during the times I least expect it, but it happens less and less, and it's often over before I know it. It's a stage in which I'm able to feel the beginnings of a smile, knowing in my heart I'll eventually be okay.
And then finally, there's the Moving Forward Stage, where I feel at peace. Where the sadness doesn't necessarily disappear, but it isn't as prominent in my life. Where it no longer anchors me down. It's a stage where I'm able to step back, look at the whole picture, and choose to actively swim forward, bringing along with me the lessons I've learned from the loss.
With grief and loss in general, I am in awe of the human experience. It's fascinating how I can be both simultaneously sad for what has transpired and yet tremendously hopeful for all the life I have left to live ahead, and the action I can take. Somehow, from the loss, gratitude buds, and I nurture it until it blooms, using it as fuel to carry on and swim forward. What I know now that I didn't know before the loss and grief, is that if you look at it in just the right light, you can learn and grow from the darkest moments. The good those people brought into your life, the things they taught you, the way their lived their own lives? You can apply those lessons to each day and live more purposefully, more deeply connected to something bigger than you. It's the best way, I've found, to honor that loss.
Back to the message. The question she asks: How do I heal if I cannot practice?
Moving through grief is painful. There are so many other cousin emotions of grief - fear, anxiety, vulnerability, uncertainty - so of course we want to move as quickly as we can to dodge that discomfort. We try everything. Run it out, work it out, flow it out, put it in a neat little box and lock it up and set it aside. We bury ourselves in work and try one thing after another to distract ourselves until we crash and burn and realize - oh.
The only way to get through it is to get through it. To ride the wave.
Spirituality for me shows up in my life in many ways. For me, spirituality is just taking a moment to reign in the chaos and try to connect my life to a deeper meaning than just going through the motions. Yoga and working out for me are ways in which I do that. They're devotional practices in which there can be no space for distraction. When I walk up to the barbell, I have no choice but to leave all my stuff a few steps behind me because if it gets in the way of the lift, any number of injuries might happen. When I step on the mat, I visualize a light switch. When the switch is on, my brain is on. When the switch is off, my thoughts go quiet. As I step on the mat to begin practicing, I visualize the switch flicking off.
But in the depths of grief, it's hard to turn the thoughts off and leave my stuff behind. If you watch a side by side of me practicing yoga when I am a wreck vs when I am okay, you'd easily be able to spot which is which. If I'm lucky, the wreck shows up in my practice as disjointed movement, imbalance and labored breathing. Other times it looks like me curled into child's pose, crying. But it doesn't make it any less of a practice. The yoga practice is just that - a practice. And you can always practice.
In my own yoga teacher training, someone mentioned a pose they do that always makes them burst into tears. "Why?!" she asked. "I dread it so much because I always feel such profound sadness when I do it."
"You don't need to analyze it," my teacher said. "Let it happen. Breathe. And move on."
We're taught, in yoga, to breathe through it all. To let whatever happens appear without overanalyzing it or freaking out. To keep trudging through with awareness and intention and attention to self and breath. And so that's what we've got to do in life to get through the tough times.
You're always doing the best you can - we all are - so let what you are able to do be enough. Don't hold yourself to standards you wouldn't hold others to.
My answer to the question is to take as much time away from your mat as you need, and then, when your mat is calling, quietly approach and step on with reverence. Whether you make it through the entire practice, or whether you curl up in the fetal position and cry the entire time, it doesn't matter. The point is that you tried. That you soldiered on, one foot in front of the other. The point is that you rode the wave of fear, uncertainty, and vulnerability, fueled by the life lessons you've gleaned from those you have loved and lost here on earth, but whose spirits are always in your heart.