Love and Care | How I Retreated After a Big Shift

Lying in bed, still feeling the dream world I had visited, I opened my eyes and read from Paramahansa Yogananda's "Scientific Healing Affirmations." With feeling, with conviction, I read the affirmation in that impressionable state just after waking. This affirmation is being sowed now, within my being, and I finally believe it, the one I doubted for so long, I finally feel it, I mused. An affirmation for an affirmation.

And so the day began—my usual morning ritual proceeded. But there was a shift.

I walked out with a hot Ayurvedic drink in hand, wagon handle in the other, and moseyed to the park close to home for Sunday morning Yoga. There was no rush today—rare.

Fifty degrees, sunlight, pine trees, the bluest sky I may have ever seen, gazing sideways in triangle posture. Everything that flowed from me felt different.

The most recent shift started yesterday. My siblings asked me to have my mother move in with me, suggested to me that I move. When they asked last year, I pushed back and said no. When they asked earlier this year, I pushed back and said no.

This time, I didn't push back. I stayed silent. I asked some deeper existence beyond my daughterly personality: Is this what I am to do? All that was being built, do I step aside from it? The way I live, do I let it go? Do I change directions, again? Must I? Was I deluded? On the wrong path? I can't keep saying no. I'm stronger than I was before. I have no excuse but selfishness.

"It's as though I only just had a rug pulled from underneath me, and I was in the middle of weaving another one and now that one is being pulled out." My heart hurt. "But, I won't say no right now. I'll meditate on it."

And so I arrived to my mother's house, immediately pulled out the rake and tarp I brought, and started raking the backyard. Cleaning up always helps me. I moved. And cried. I cleaned the yard. The cool air cleaned my wet face.

But it was clear I had something on my mind when I walked in. She saw it. So we had breakfast, and then I opened my heart to my mother. She listened. And she opened her heart to me. And I listened. I cried more. She cried too. And two women who would so often hide from each other, showed themselves, and no one resisted. No one argued. They only supported each other. And understood each other.

They understood each other.

And my life changed. I understood that I was holding out because I wasn't ready before. I wasn't ready to give up my life. Because my life was so small, so constricted. But now, in so many ways, I've give up that life. And for the better.

I realized that what I've been stretching towards my whole life has come to pass. I've traded in my little life for something greater. Wherever I was going before, whoever I was going with, it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to live for one relationship and to stop dancing in my home. It wasn't enough to contain my voice to one little space or another. It wasn't enough to cook for and clean after, to spend my energy nurturing physically and emotionally. I told myself it was enough and I learned to love that little life. And yet, I was holding myself back from being of greater use in the world.

Stepping into that greater use, my arms are wide open. My door is open. My heart is open. And no one can tell me that I cannot give all that I want to give. No one can tell me that I give too much. And to have my own mother recognize that propensity in me, and that great desire to be there for as many as I can, was one of the most unexpected moments of healing that I've received.

And it happened because I didn't say no this time. I didn't say yes either, not yet, but I would later. I didn't protect myself either. And I didn't hide. Suddenly, the story I was told when I was younger—that I was selfish—was now dead to us both.

That evening, I took it all to drum circle, and I let that joyful release dance all around and within me. I gave myself to the rhythm.

This morning, after Yoga, I sat in the sunlight as everyone was packing up to leave, and said I'd stay there for a while. I'd spend the day in retreat. There was something in me that suggested I needed tender care today.

And so I listened. I stayed a while, lying down in yoga nidra meditation. Eventually I came to seated, played the flute, sat in meditation. I walked home in joy while singing, cooked for myself, drank masala chai a few times in a very little adorable handmade cup. I danced. Sang. Drummed. I worked in the yard and garage for three hours and loved every minute of it. I donated old clothing and shoes. I cooked for myself again. I called family and told them I love them. I listened. I did laundry.

And that was my splendid retreat after a big shift.

I didn't need anything else. Just love and care.

Just love. And care.

Don't we all...