This evening, one day after my last infusion of Herceptin, I went to yoga. I haven't been able to make it much lately as summer plans have prevented my timely departure to attend the evening sessions. My body needs yoga. It is an addict. I think I could be quite content in life simple doing yoga and painting all day long.
At any rate, my favorite instructor teaches Wednesdays. As her young tummy is subtly swelling with her first child, her siren voice sings for us to move into savasana, corpse pose, to restore our bodies from the hour of strength training and sweat. She sings out for us to remember our worse memory in our lives. I don't want to go there, but her voice is calm and sings like a siren, so I do. I think of the moment I woke from my bilateral mastectomy surgery. I believe it was 8 or 9 at night and I had been laying there for about an hour coming to after the surgery. I was alone. I couldn't hear or see as they put a Vaseline on my eyes. I scream, or I think I scream. I never felt more alone in my entire life. Maybe I am dead.
Lying there on my yoga mat, the tears roll into my ears. The salt mixes with the salt of my sweat. The siren calls for us to take that memory and forget it. Forget it; put it into the past. I choke back trying not to curse her for bringing up such a memory and to not heave into an ugly cry. I replace the imagine with the one of my son moments after his birth. I gazed into his clear, chocolate brown eyes. He seemed to say, Momma, I know you.
I needed that. I wonder how it is Miss Yogi knows what I need. Okay, like I am the only one out of the thirty some odd people in the room she is talking to when she changes the recovery of salambhasana to one supporting the chest up off the mat. See, I can not lay flat as I have bandages still covering my brand new, totally fake and odd nipples. One thing that is true is that when I am doing a yoga class, I do not feel alone.
Alone. This seems to be a feeling vibrating through the circle of women in my life. Each of you have challenges. Some are so profoundly massive that I honor your perseverance. Tonight, I pondered the loneliness that seems to vibrate through the feminine kind beyond my circle. We are busy and are moving in and out of our daily roles. But, there seems to be a ripple of unsettled emotional beings. Could this be a collective conscious event? Could Eckhart Tolle's predictions of a New Earth be emanating through the female gender?
Now, don't get me wrong. We, if I am permitted to speak for my dear friends, are quite satisfied with our roles as mothers, teachers, wives, chefs and taxi cab drivers. We wouldn't have it any other way. But, there seems to be a hint of change and unrest. May it be the biometric pressure changing as the leaves hint at turning for the fall. I can not tell. And yes, we talk and talk like hens in a chicken coop. Yes, we feel better and less alone. Yet, at the seed of it all, when we are silent within ourselves, we feel it. There is something going on. I only wish I could take a big band-aide and make it all better.
What I can do is tell you that I see you. You are beautiful. As spoken this evening by the young sage yoga instructor, whatever you are doing and where ever you are right at this moment is exactly what and where you are supposed to be. The unrest, the struggle, the big decision you need to make is presented to you for a reason. And, you will know it. You will know all about it. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe in a decade. But, you will. So move forward like Saint Joan of Arc. Let your instincts be your guide. And for heavens sake, read you kids The Three Questions by Jon J. Muth. Namasta.
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