Month: December 2018

The military is really amazing at a lot of things, but perhaps nothing outshines their ability to prepare. They meet to brainstorm for meetings about assembling material for a meeting that is one hundred percent about preparation for some event, project, training, or deployment. Thoroughly and overly prepared is a gross understatement, and the levels to which they went were sometimes dizzying. Our men and women in uniform spend their entire careers getting ready, running through every possible scenario or outcome, acting some of them out, practicing for days or weeks on end for situations they may never see, and then they wait.

There was perhaps no better example of this than the work-up for deployment. Months of preparation  for drills and live fire exercises, so much gear issued that basically came home with tags on it, dusty but still brand new, some of which still takes up space in foot lockers in my laundry room, and mounds and mounds of paperwork. This period of equipping for the worst duty of all, the attendance of war, eventually touches the homefront beyond the frayed nerves and the sheer loneliness of knowing your loved one is here and safe, but is not here as he or she gets ready to leave, preparing to travel a world away into a place that is inherently unsafe. In the midst of the readying we have a meeting, a gathering time in which someone explains the ins and outs of Power of Attorney documents, how to mail a care package, and most importantly The Protocol. It was in December 2005 that I heard the run down of  how I would learn if or when something happened to my husband in the theater known as combat. A phone call, a call and visit, and worst of all was a visit without warning. No less than two people in dress uniform, one will be a chaplain, the car will be plain, they will come at any time, no one else will know before you do.

I had been prepared twelve years earlier, almost exactly to the day, seeing as they left after Christmas that year, and in my gut I knew what was happening when I saw them. Two people, a detective in a suit and the victim ‘s assistance advocate I had met with on more than one occasion, in a plain government vehicle, unannounced, walking up my sidewalk as I stood in the sun on the front porch. I remember being on the porch because a Santa on a motorcycle had driven by, I stepped outside to catch another glimpse, a ray of light before the dark would set in, it would at least provide a moment of warning as I watched them somberly walking towards me, an opportunity to collect my wits as I began to understand before the words even came.

There weren’t a lot of details, apparently, it was clear he had done something to hurt himself, here is a number to call, they are expecting to hear from you, and it is not good. We are so sorry, if there is something we can do, please take your time. It took a minute for me to react to the shock and the disappointment of it all, to begin sucking in the words instead of speaking them aloud, and then the hot angry tears came. It may have taken me minutes or hours, I have no way of knowing for sure, to pick up that phone while I prepared for all the scenarios I might hear. ICU, no vitals, revived, seizures, loss of oxygen, these were the words used during that phone call. I would fill in his history. I would develop a blinding headache as I cried wondering how I would tell anyone and I would feel sick as I began to make calls no one wants to make. The calls I prepared for a dozen years prior.

He was already four days into his stay at the ICU that day, the day I was approached by everyone with a strange combination of delicacy and bluntness. There would be approximately three and a half more weeks from that day until the final breath; one week of secret phone calls so the kids would have a Merry Christmas without incident for the first time in years; days of preparing how to talk to them, who would be there, when it would be time for them to see him “one last time;” many days of heartache, break, and sickness, always followed by anger; hallway meetings and phone calls with doctors, a small room filled with tissues and grief resources, one conference table with his team, and decisions that I wish I did not have to make.

The brain is plastic, as we are learning more and more, it is so amazing and capable of tremendous healing, but there is a razors edge when it comes to how long is too long for it to survive without oxygen. After six minutes the brain begins to die and increments of seconds begin to matter after that, a subtle and yet significant difference when it comes to predicting recovery and functionality. No one knew how long he had gone without and considering his history of brain trauma there was no way to know if he had any chance of meaningful recovery. They kept Jeromye heavily sedated to keep his seizure activity at bay, a telltale sign of the hypoxic brain injury he had suffered, slowly walking it back as the inflammation eased, until we could be sure that the flat lines on the EEG indicating all but brain stem function had ceased were accurate.

My trauma was officially gift wrapped and topped with a bow. Christmas was solemn, punctuated with moments of joy thanks to our dear friends and family. But I knew and the kids did not, and I held those cards desperately close, waiting for the right moment to change their world. The weight was crushing, they will never be the same after this and how you handle their responses, the way you answer their questions, will determine the path they will walk from here on. I held the keys to all the doors, like a cosmic janitor, the weight drawing me down causing a limp to one side, as I prepared to mop up the tears and collect up whatever pieces scattered onto the floors.

None of the men in camo that night had prepared me for this, but luckily, the pool of resources had become as vast and deep as the ocean over the course of those twelve years. I had been blessed to be born into a loving and supportive family, I had the good fortune of collecting up the fiercest and most amazing tribe of people that would ever rally around anyone, and I had the practice of yoga; breathe, acknowledge, honor, release, repeat, repeat, repeat.

And that is exactly what we did, over and over again. Sometimes it looked like falling to our knees, oftentimes it included scooping up our pieces, and mostly it was tightening up our hold on one another and retreating into our own safe space without apology. And all at once, in that space, we began to fall apart and rebuild from the years of hurting.

It was a Monday, unremarkable in every way until she stopped me on my way in to teach Power Yoga.

“This is maybe going to sound crazy, but I promise I’m not crazy…” and as a teacher and practitioner of yoga, I believed her wholeheartedly. The amount of things I have heard over the last two plus years of teaching and learning in the more traditional setting that a former version of myself may have thought wacky, is astonishing. The amount of phrases and spoken wandering thoughts I have come up with in that time that a former version of myself would think is absolutely bonkers, is astonishing. And yet, I do not believe myself to be crazy, just learning, yearning to see what’s beneath the surface in anyone and everyone that will allow me too look deeply, including myself.

It was one word, she said, that I used during the only yoga class she had ever attended with me, one word that changed her. It had been a hard year, many of the things she had set as goals went unreached, there was struggle, and yet there was a word, set as an intention for an hour and encouraged to hold space for the year to come that kept her going.

Awareness. You don’t even know how much I needed that, how much your words that day encouraged me, how many times I have seen you going about your day wanting to say so. She was right, I did not know, and yet I did, because at the end of the day I am on this path because of one word, when I needed it most.

And incidentally, it wasn’t until today, when she publicly declared that this next year would be met with courage, that she found the words to say so. She repeated, again and again, you just don’t know the impact that you have had on me, but I just needed to try to tell you.

Do you know the impact you have on others? Do you meet them with kindness and compassion or fierceness and cruelty. Do you know that one word can change the trajectory of life for good or bad? Can you even believe how powerful we are?

Most importantly, as we creep into 2019, how do you want to live, how do you want to impact others, what is your word?

As I recently thumbed through the notebooks of classes I have taught over the course of the last year and a half, I find a pretty common theme. Love, kindness, compassion. These characteristics are at the heart of our finding a sense of freedom, of lightness of step as we walk through this sometimes cruel world.

There is no time greater and maybe more important to exercise kindness and compassion than through the season of holidays and transition that takes us headlong into another new year. Whether it’s Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, or any other celebration that ends the year with gift giving and family gatherings, I imagine that the scenes are awfully familiar; fear and anxiety percolating in the room as we unintentionally remind one another of what we have or have not achieved this year or ever; agitation or anger held onto like a hot stone and carried for years at some hurt we were dished out like auntie’s famous green salad; the tremendous weight of a loss of a loved one who’s presence is sorely missed; the pressure to be “merry and bright” when we feel anything but.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, unless it isn’t. That is how I started my Friday morning Bhakti Flow and Gentle classes last week, because for many this is the most joyous time, but for many it is a time of struggle, of wrestling with old demons, and staring into the eyes of ancient pain that look like the ones belonging to your family members.

We see the strugglers, the stranglers of joy, and we call them names like Scrooge and the Grinch. We roll our eyes or outright scoff at them in line as they create scenes of chaos straight out of those stories. We say things like how can they be so angry, with all these sparkling lights, with all the gifts, with all this merriment?? But no amount of silver glitter wrapping paper, sprinkled sugar cookies, or carols touting the beauty of the season can do anything but be a reminder of the invisible, still festering wounds.

What we learn from both Scrooge and The Grinch is that pain in their past, love that either was not shown or received, joy that was robbed at their own hands or those of others is at the root of their suffering, their lack of holiday cheer as it were. And that love given, even in the face of their lacking ability to return it, becomes the antidote.

In her book A Return to Love Marianne Williamson spends exactly 300 pages making the case for love, for kindness, for compassion, in all areas of our lives and relationships. There are a few things she says in an early chapter that I shared last Friday and I will share with you now that reminded and encouraged me to see our Grinches with fresh eyes:

“Love does not conquer all things, but it does set all things right.”

Love taken seriously is a radical outlook, a major departure from the psychological orientation that rules the world. It is threatening not because it is a small idea, but because it is so huge(19).

We have been brought up in a world that does not put love first, and where love is absent, fear sets in. Fear is to love as darkness is to light. It’s a terrible absence of what we need in order to survive. It’s a place where we go where all hell breaks loose (22).

If you recall in the Jim Carey version of the Grinch story, there is a scene where he’s been given the title of Holiday Cheermeister, a very distinct honor in Whoville. He is understandably reluctant, and just as he is softening, the old familiar taunts begin from the mouth of a childhood bully. We have already experienced a flashback of the moment that the Grinch became so “Grinchy” and so it is no surprise that in the moment, where love is so clearly absent, all hell breaks loose and he destroys everything.

As we all know, he continues his rampage long into the night as he steals all that he can which represents the frivolity of the holiday, all the shine, lights, gifts, and decadent foods. But it is in the home of Cindy Lou that he is confronted with pure love and his heart begins to change. She asks what Christmas is all about, the Grinch posing as Santa answers with the shallowest of answers, presents, and her disappointment takes over. She, like the Grinch, has also struggled to find meaning in the upkeep of appearances and the spreading of glitter and lighting of lights, and yet, as she turns away with the weight of her own sadness, she asks that the Grinch not be forgotten, making it clear that he is worth fuss, even if that is all this day is about.

Cindy Lou was a radical for love that night, her compassion for a fellow Who stronger and bigger than anything else. And as Whoville would wake to find their Christmas “ruined” it would be that little bitty Who bearing the reminder of what was really important all along. Sharing time, sharing presence, sharing love with one another despite the circumstances was what they would focus on.

Radical love, kindness, and compassion are what saved the Grinch from a life of misery and loneliness. Radical love, kindness, and compassion are what will save us all.

As you encounter the Grinches and the Scrooge’s of the world, may you remember that the story can be changed with love, kindness, and compassion. May you find yourself acting radically, like Cindy Lou, whose entire town thought she was crazy, but whose selfless love saved the day.

And if you cannot be loving to everyone, at least be kind, if you cannot be kind, at least be compassionate, and if you struggle to find compassion, may you take a moment to ask yourself who the real Grinch is and why, beginning at least with yourself.

* I have yet to add any disclaimers to these but consider this your warning.

We left twice in the span of a week or so, maybe, I don’t actually remember how long it was now. I do remember sobbing in the park behind the house, big fat ugly tears, on the phone between my mom, my dear friend willing to house my brood, including our dogs, and the school office as I prepped to pull the monkeys out before dismissal. Earlier in the day he had trashed my office, my sanctuary space where I practiced yoga and fostered my connection to the world though business. There was the crashing of furniture, the throwing of books, glass vases shattering and bamboo cracking, and lots of pushing, shoving and screaming.

We were not going back. Not with him there.

My voicemail quickly filled and the texts were never ending. I can’t believe you would do this to me CLICK I love you so much, I can’t live without you, I am so so sorry CLICK You NEED to come home or I will (insert threat) CLICK I am so weak, I need your help CLICK You will NEVER make it without me CLICK No one will ever want you CLICK Don’t worry, I am leaving, I’ll give you what you want CLICK You hate me CLICK You’ll never have to see me again CLICK

It was a familiar soundtrack, it had played often over the last few years, on repeat, sometimes with a skip or two here or there like an old warped record. And like a nostalgic old fool I still have a few of those songs, for what reason I could not say, but the time is coming to permanently archive them, of that I am quite certain.

He did leave and we went home to drop off the dog that amidst the chaos had thrown up all over the car, to survey the damage, which he had carefully cleaned, he was always good at covering his tracks, and pack enough for a few days respite.

I should have stayed away. Maybe it would have been different, ended in some other way, maybe I wouldn’t have had to be between that last rock and a hard place. It was another week before we would leave that second time, I think, it gets a little fuzzy here. I couldn’t tell you how or why it started, like usual it was inexplicable and following a lot of restarting and promising to do better this time. It was the longest day ever, I know that for sure. I packed up laundry baskets between the arguments, so it didn’t look suspicious. I defended myself when I should have saved my breath and reserved my energy. I would have if I had known about the marathon of pleading coached phone calls, where are yous and we just want to help yous, standing in the freezing rain telling and retelling the story of that night and all the outbursts on any and all of the nights preceding it, until we were sure we were safe that was to come. The days following would be long, I would need to be photographed by detectives, I would wait in the courthouse for paperwork, I would try to plan for the future without knowing what was coming.

I had hoped to leave fairly quietly but at some point that was no longer an option. As I hurried the kids to the car he started with the threats. If you leave I will…the barrage was endless…until it was the biggest one of all…I will hurt myself. You will have to live with that. I will kill myself and it will be your fault.

It felt like a power play at first, it was, after all, the only card he had left to use, the others were long gone and spent. And then it got serious and I got on the phone. He won’t do it and at least he will get the help he needs this time, I thought or I hoped or I prayed.

Post retirement we became immersed in hunting culture, after military life many find it to be a therapeutic outlet including us, and of course the military is synonmous with gun culture too, so the sounds of artillery and gun fire were nothing new. I had even shot a hog on a beautiful ranch in Florida once and owned my own pistol, but there is something about that first shot when you aren’t expecting it. It’s jarring. Even more so when your back is turned and you’re on the phone explaining what is happening while you try to get your kids frantically in the car. I will never know if he missed accidentally or on purpose, or what we would have witnessed if he had chosen a less conspicuous firearm that night, all I do know is that bird shot will travel through ceiling, sub floor, the bottom of a fiberglass shower and lodge itself quite neatly in the ceiling a floor overhead. It sticks incredibly well and over the course of the next few weeks it would rain down only occasionally, bit by bit, little pings to remind me of what had happened here.

Its hard to explain what it felt like that night, another complicated day in the life that was so rife with complicated emotions that it was quite normal to feel sad and angry and fearful and relieved all in the same breath. Mostly that night I felt the weight of my choices to stay all this time, to try to support him rather than put us first, to allow the walking dead to rule over the living once more. Sometimes I think maybe PTSD is the real Zombie Apocalypse. We are raising up an army of walking dead, except this army looks normal, seems functional, healthy even, but deep inside they are often pulled elsewhere. I got good at seeing it happen, a glazed over quality to the eyes, a distance that told me he was in the desert with the ghosts and not on the playground with the kids or at the table with us or participating in this moment in time. You try and you try to draw them back, sometimes it works, but sometimes the senses have already been too dulled for them to hear you despite your increasing volume, animation, and pleas. Sometimes you can only walk away and close the door to save yourself even for just a minute.

As I drove away, trying to simultaneously comfort the hysterical kids in the back seat, and hear reassurance from the 911 dispatcher, through a combination of freezing rain and blinked back tears I questioned myself over and over again. I was mostly angry, why the hell had I allowed them to experience that. Me, my choices, they showed them that, if I had only…

If I had only, but it was so damn complicated. Up to that point that night I felt I had failed three people, four if I count the way I spoke to myself about what we had endured. As the caretaker of house Rogers I had lost the battle, maybe even the war. I was broken and defeated and so tired. I had forgiven a lot in the name of someone else’s healing, a healing that never came to fruition and all my best efforts, my planting and weeding, watering and feeding, had for the last time bore no fruit. I was ready to burn the orchard down.

The next morning when I called the detective to tell him I knew where he had slept that night, it was the easiest of those phone calls I had ever made. I was not angry, I was clear, I was weary but I still hoped that somehow this time would be the bottom, that he would find the help he desperately needed, and the kids and I would get a fresh start on our terms this time.

Except in the end he took that away from me too. He had unraveled, but I felt undone, and in a few days I would become the one left to make the really hard choices that none of us ever wants to make. Like one more test of my will, would I write the ending with cruelty or grace?

Expect this to be at least one part Yoga and one part Christianity, all parts me and we should be good.

Not one of us is immune to the stuff of life. Of course by stuff, I mean shit, but I was at first thinking I would refrain from cussing today. Oh well. The difference between those who sit and wallow in their pile and those that stand and walk through the fire is really actually pretty simple. I have already mentioned that my secret was choosing not to be robbed of my freedom by the circumstances that were created by sometimes my own, but most often my husband’s choices. Just as I chose to respond, albeit sometimes following the gut reaction, I first had to choose to surrender.

The thing about surrender is we immediately see the image of the white flag on the battle field. It connotes giving up, losing, folding your hand and walking away or even being captured. The kind of surrender I am talking about is active, not passive, it requires renewed commitment rather than complacency, it is hard and it does not mean that the battle ends. In the philosophy of Yoga this is known as Ishvara Pranidhana and as I dove head first into my own studies, preparing to become a teacher, it was this aspect that would have my small town Methodist roots converging with the ancient work of Patanjali and my modern experience on and off the mat. It was this type of surrender that saved me from the madness.

On the eve of my 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training was the second time he was arrested. I am sure there was a domestic, we fought and I think that might have been the time he sent a hammer through the door I had barricaded. He was so drunk that when they brought him in to the station he blew 3 times the legal limit, and that was after he drove off and hid in the woods for what felt like an eternity. It was amidst the chaos that night that I had to decide whether to put my future on hold again or carry on. I scrambled for kid care for the weekend and I went. I threw my hands up in the air, looked skyward and declared it was what it was and I was not going to be stopped from what felt like a calling, not anymore.

We got a word that first day, a word that was to carry and shape us on our way throughout the next six months of training. While he was walking south down a four lane highway in mid January without a coat, I was pulling the word ‘Faith’ from a jar.  It was the first time that weekend that my childhood faith and my practice would intersect. It would not be the last, not then and not in the nearly two years since that moment.

According to google, ‘faith’ is a noun that can mean either the complete trust or confidence in someone or something, or a strong belief in God or doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof. Surrender, in this context, is the action of turning oneself over completely to our faith. Deborah Adele highlights two phrases in her book The Yamas and Niyamas on this type of surrender, Ishvara Pranidhana, that Yoga calls us to:

Ishvara Pranidhana, the jewel of surrender, presupposes that there is a divine force at work in our lives. Ultimately this guideline invites us to surrender our egos, open our hearts and accept the higher purpose of our being (166).

Surrender asks us to be strong enough to engage each moment with integrity while being soft enough to flow with the current of life (172).

As the year would press on and life would press in the phrase “strong enough to engage, soft enough to flow” would become an important affirmation for me. It would remind me that through faith in God, the Divine, Universe, Soul, whatever I wanted to call it in the moment, I could simultaneously summon the strength to deepen my roots, standing my ground when necessary, and yet allow the winds of change to blow freely through my life. It would remind that God had brought me this far already and that certainly He would see me through it all.

There are plenty of greeting card adages that you hear during these types of periods in your life, you know, when the fog is so thick you sometimes doubt your ability to see through it. One of my favorites is one that comes from my upbringing, God doesn’t give you more than you can handle. Ha. For sure there were many days I thought, I knew, that was a lie. There were many moments where it certainly felt like God had given me much more than anyone could or should have to handle, in much the same way all of those men and women we know with trauma have been given a burden that was far too heavy to carry. It wasn’t until I began to understand surrender in the yogic context, that I realized that even though sometimes surrendering to life’s stuff felt like I was being chipped away, like my roots were being exposed, in reality it was giving me the ability to shift with what was and not just survive, but thrive.

Surrendering my life to something bigger, greater, and more powerful than myself simultaneously made my problems and pain seem very small and me seem like a giant and important piece of the divine puzzle. In the process the pain unfolded into purpose as I released the narrative that my ego wanted to write, as I reminded myself of the smallness of my problems. It kept anxieties at bay and allowed me to live in a space where I could still find joy in the every day moments. Surrender to the will of the Divine created the space of healing that has led me here, where I type these words in an effort to show you that overcoming and healing from our current and past pain is not only possible, but probable, should you choose it.

And as I continue to walk through the smoldering ash of the last few years, sifting through what is left and extinguishing the flair ups that do inevitably burn from time to time, I continue to practice the art of surrendering my Self, my life, and my pain to the greater purpose that has been set before me.