Over Labor Day weekend, I went on a yoga retreat in Utah, guided by my dear teacher and friend, Mary. To say that this was a long-standing dream is an understatement. I’ve been wanting to go on retreat with Mary ever since she mentioned going to Italy, back before the pandemic started.
Though Mary’s presence would’ve been enough for me to go, I also hoped to find some solidity within myself. I’m in a time of transition, fully done with a career path I expected to stay on for the rest of my working life. I found myself in a murky place, without a path in front of me, and I started to build up my protective walls.
I didn’t realize how high and sturdy my fortifications had become until I spent time with a group of people who were completely removed from my daily life, and who were kind and silly and loving, from the very first day.
I knew I was lonely, but I didn’t realize how much, until the last morning when the goodbyes started.
One person, who I had spent quite a bit of time talking with, was leaving. He hugged me, and my eyes and nose started to burn, my throat ached. I was grateful for the dimness in the room because I didn’t want people to see as I tried not to cry.
The tears wouldn’t stop, though. I went to the bathroom, and when I came back everyone was setting up for our final asana practice together. As I lay on my mat, my tears began in earnest, flowing down my cheeks for the entirety of our hour of asana, breathwork, and meditation.
I thought they were done as we lay in savasana, but then Amelia gave me a forehead massage, and the gentle touch started my tears all over again. Once we were done, she came and wrapped me in a tight embrace and whispered, “You are so loved.”
The tears began again, and continued as Mary hugged me and told me I was loved, as Debra hugged me, as Molly asked me if I needed anything.
“Honey, I didn’t think you were going to let us in,” Debra said as she hugged me. And I didn’t realize I had been keeping people out.
I’ve always prided myself on being authentic, and open, and honest, and I believe I am those things, still. What I didn’t know is that you can be open, authentic, and honest about the details of your life, about your thought processes, about your mental health diagnoses, about your history of abuse, and you can still have walls up, around the most vulnerable parts of your heart.
I had walls up around my wants, and my needs, because I was just so used to not getting my needs met. Stop expecting, stop hoping, stop asking. Stop expressing desire. Even better, stop feeling.
I internalized, in quite a big way, the Buddhist idea that life is suffering, and that it is our desire that causes suffering. It turns out that ignoring and shutting down our desires causes suffering, too. Isolation, loneliness, and an inability to connect, emotionally and physically, with others.
When the walls crumbled a bit in the saltwater bath of my tears, I started poking at those soft places in my heart and found shame there. Shame over wanting and needing things I can’t provide for myself. Shame because I’m not as independent as I wish I could be. Shame because I need people. Shame because I fear that need. Shame because a part of me still blames myself for when other people have exploited that need and caused harm. Shame because I’m still not healed, fully, from that harm.
I’ve been trying to write this post for weeks, and keep finding myself unable to finish it… I struggled for my first few days back, from the retreat, to get back into the rhythm of my life, and questioned how I could continue to dismantle my walls, how I could find the connection I need.
I don’t have a grand takeaway to end this post, no resolution to the loneliness I’ve felt, no grand and cathartic healing of my shame, though its power is lessened now that I see it.
I’m just here, reaching when I can for connection.
Ink and Vein 