Falling
In temperate climates that cycle through all four seasons, fall is considered a season for the senses: the feel of cooler temperatures and longer nights arriving, the visually pleasing palate of reds, oranges and browns, the taste of spice in everything, the sound of crunching leaves underfoot, the smell of wood smoke…etc.
It is also a season of transition, a reminder of the changes happening from without and within. In the movement from a bright and buzzing summer toward the dark, quiet stillness of winter, one may sense something shifting as they look inward.
It can be a time of thanks for our bounty in life, a season designed for communing with friends, family and nature. Yet one may also notice pangs of melancholy in the crisp air moving down their chest. “You expected to be sad in the fall,” wrote Ernest Hemingway in ‘A Moveable Feast’: “part of you died each year.” Fall can be loss; it can be grief. It can feel like the raw unravelling of leaves and the baring of our branches. It can be deeply needed and yet vehemently pushed away.
Cat has taught me a lot over the last year about how the cycle of the four seasons can be represented in our lived experience (even if you live on the equator!), and this season of fall and everything it represents has held particular importance for us both in very distinct and yet entangled ways.
Over the past year, Cat and I have been grieving a lot. Cat was diagnosed with a condition called PMDD that brings on a host of debilitating symptoms during the luteal phase of her menstrual cycle. Despite being a condition that effects many people, it is underdiagnosed and poorly researched which can often leave those suffering with more questions than answers as they explore a path to healing. Cat has been grieving the loss of her life before this diagnosis, as well as the possibility of living with this condition for an unknown amount of time. Her search for answers and integration has also asked her to courageously confront latent trauma and sadness living her body and heart from past pains.
As for me, I have been grieving the loss of a couple of close relationships this year. Loss has been a central theme in my life- I lost my dad (and almost my own life) when I was 16 to gun violence at the hands of my mother, and as one could imagine, grew up in a broken home that felt confusing and unsafe, like losing my innocence. The little family I had left I would later lose in various ways. Luckily, I had the resources, guidance, and inner-determination to keep going, and the love of friends that became family. Even so, I have lived since childhood with the scars of complex trauma, and have found intimate relationships the bedrock of this struggle, extremely triggering both when I’m in them, and when they end. With each experience I am forced to confront what I have been trying to absolve for my entire lifetime.
Although our stories are different, I think Cat and I can experience our inner falling in similar ways: anxiety, depression, fear, helplessness, feeling like we are too much, feeling misunderstood, feeling betrayed by our bodies & minds, feeling very alone and disconnected, feeling the need to isolate, to run away, to start over, frustrated and angry, desperate for relief, for answers, for resolution…
But there is another way to fall. Looking back, grief is what brought Cat and I to our yoga practice in the first place (whether we were aware of it or not), and it is what informs a lot of our teachings. How to rise, how to fall, and how to rise again (and fall again). We wanted to find a way to feel at home and at peace in our body, a way to show up in an uncertain and unequal world, and to not abandon ourselves (or others) in the face of life’s injustices, challenges and losses. We wanted to learn how to risk ourselves, to be vulnerable and honest and courageous, and stay open to the daily possibility of joy and love in life, knowing that it could also break our heart. We wanted to learn how to let people go, how to let things die, and how to renew ourselves and our experiences. And most importantly, how to lose everything, and in those moments, hold ourselves in our aloneness:
Maybe some of our story resonates with you. After all, grief touches all of our lives on an individual and collective level. We have all lost something or someone, or have something or someone to lose. Our greatest intention when we teach a class, workshop, or retreat is to remind you of your ability to hold yourself wholeheartedly through both your joy and your pain, your abundance and your privation, your rise and your fall, in community and by yourself. We hope to provide you practices, ideas and experiences that you can turn to as you live in your questions and move towards your answers. There is no rapid transformation therapy (unfortunately, ojalá). Everything we teach is work that we are constantly learning, continuously evolving, and co-creating in community.
And as important as it is to hold ourselves, let us not forget the invaluable gift we give when we hold another person, if only for a moment- to listen to their story, their struggle, to learn from them and to offer in our eyes the words “I hear you, I see you, thank you for revealing yourself to me. What do you need?” I think we could all change to world if we walked through our lives with that kind of generosity. As my teacher Selena Garefino says:
“Be interested, not interesting. We all crave human connection and community, and often in our quest for love we think we have to [be interesting], when the real key is being interested. Compassionately, deeply, & seriously interested. Turn on your listening.”
Thank you for listening.
