Time to Move Forward

As a longtime professional journalist, I am trained to report and comment on news and issues, and I’m not so good at writing to express my feelings. I tend to keep my innermost opinions to myself -- if you can believe it -- because we live in a world where objectivity is as scarce as a Covid test.

But I think that needs to change.

I am in awe of my friend the writer Christina Sell who is able to express her innermost feelings with a clarity and consistency that is a true light for these murky times. It is a gift, and one I want to cultivate, not to be like her, but to find more of me on the page.

When you grow old, and older, time runs short. There are things I wish to say, even if nobody reads anymore.

This year has been rough, but nothing compares to the last few days where one yoga teacher was shot in a rampage in Denver, and two of my friends have lost their children. One of my closest friends lost her son to an accidental drug overdose. Every parent in the world lives in absolute terror of losing a child. This is the ultimate nightmare, and one in which there is no waking up, no moving on. Only a before, and after.

I could not sleep last night, and truthfully, my sleep has been shit all year. What is on my mind are the infinite qualities of a world we cannot control. We cannot keep our children safe. My family has Covid. My business -- the yoga business -- is barely hanging on. Studios have closed, teachers have become realtors and roofers, students have turned to Zoom. My unsold yoga books are piling up on inventory shelves.

And yet, we go on.

I love yoga. I found it nearly 30 years ago as a way to ease back pain, but of course, that’s not why anyone stays. Yoga restored my broken heart at a time when I was so unconscious, so unaware that I didn’t even know it was broken.

These days I know I’m suffering. Yoga raises our consciousness and in doing so, has wrecked me. I see things -- not dead people (although sometimes...) but I see a bigger picture. The last two years have eaten away at the light in all of us, but the hardest part is that it has eaten away at my purest, deepest love for the practice.

Any long-term relationship will have its bumps in the road. Every couple I know during the lockdown discovered something about each other that was annoying. I discovered that yoga cannot heal all wounds and worries, and worse, it inflicts some. The trolling and shaming of other yogis on social media is really, truly shocking. Who taught them, or should I ask, who hurt them?

A bright light for me is that I am currently leading a 300 yoga teacher training which has become all-consuming. I find that to prepare for each lecture and weekend, I must focus on the lessons, the philosophy, the teachings and the practice. In doing so, I am falling in love again, and it’s a deeper love, one that knows more and accepts the other with all the warts and such.

I am out of the business of predicting. I thought 2020 would be a great year, and then that 2021 would be better. Instead, I am moving sluggishly forward, with the tentacles of grief hanging on. I move with clarity and a little bit of hope that we will emerge someday stronger for having gone through it.

All love, Michelle

Michelle Marchildon is the Yogi Muse. She’s an award-winning writer and the author of four books on yoga. You can find her in Denver, Colorado, or on the internet at yogimuse.com