Thingification

Jam session with ukulele at Chat-n-Chill
beach in Exuma, Bahamas.
PC: Alison Buchanan

I used to spend a lot of time being what I thought others wanted. This strained my interaction with my body, soul and relationships. I hated my body and hid it, or minimized its importance, becoming unhealthy. In dissolving my connection to physical well-being, my energy was patchy and I could not give to some of my efforts. I had little sense of myself, reacting to stimuli and not taking charge of my own feelings and actions. In my career I often bent to the will of my employer over my own inclinations and as a result, I knew frustration and strife. Although I was often proud of my workplace achievements and even earned some notoriety, there was an emptiness because I perceived myself directed by outsiders. I didn't have a language to communicate my values, or a heart for speaking truth to power effectively. I continue to dislike conflict and find many situations cringe-worthy, causing me to perseverate and lax at letting go of the opinions of others. This takes work.

I harnessed as much of my energy as I could to mothering, even through considerable adversity. With the divorce of their father, I found more ways to have better conversations with my kids who were nearly grown by that time. My son and daughter are my great gifts to the universe and I am so happy about their worlds and wilds. Being their mom was a role that came naturally to me and I have no regrets about giving mothering my best shot, sometimes even declining others' ideas and opinions because I knew what was right. I am sad being so far from them, which I think about all the time.

Reflecting upon the poem I wrote when I was 20, "Thingification" seems like advice that I wish I could have taken earlier. As I have established a practice of non-attachment through my yoga training and considerable personal opportunities to "let go and let be," I enjoy reminiscing about my 20-something voice. I often cue yoga participants to contemplate a timeline in Warrior 2 pose, reaching with compassion into the past during gentle warrior, and then with curiosity into the future in side angle. Returning to Virabhadrasa II, I encourage being in this moment, now that we have addressed past and future. This layer has made me more mindful of my time on my yoga mat, and less attached to what is not now. It is very liberating.

The poem, written when I was 20, word-processed

Thingification

Moonlight spares the building's 
corner from being lost in
the darkness.
the mitered squareness of
the edge more distinct
at night.
Inside a young woman clad
in underwear
curls her hair
and plans
to act more demurely 
than she did
the night before.
She had been outspoken,
hand-on-hip in
disagreement,
head stronger than
the mouth that
quickly lent
secrets and the tip
of a champagne glass.
And then she had been
hurried home,
Ladybug, Ladybug,
a plane hanging in
the dark air above
her like a blinking flashbulb.
Tonight she would try again,
smooth, neat and curled,
feigning the reserve
of one of Henry the VIII's 
wives for a man who
liked her better 
the night before.

I giggle inwardly at the stilted voice in the poem, describing the "mitered squareness" and name-dropping King Henry VIII. The plane that hangs in the sky "like a blinking flashbulb" seems so accusatory. One of the things I enjoy most about my life now is that I feel completely supported in being myself at all times, which is as much my growth as it is finding a beautiful partner who nourishes this. He would have liked me better the night before, too.

Photo credit: Dreamy Dale 

I hadn't expected that I would find love and acceptance at my age, (58 at the time of this writing, if you're curious.) I sometimes lead ecstatic dance groups and I find myself consistently announcing that "magic happens right outside your comfort zone," a vaguely Vygotsky axiom that might be more for my edification than anyone else's. I always claimed I wanted to be loved for who I am, not so much for what I do. I am new to living for myself, following my own curiosities and discovering love and beauty with a gorgeous man on a vintage sailboat far away from my beloved Vermont. Magic indeed happens out here.