Heavy and Hopeful...

Hello.  How are you?  I am just ok in this moment.  Another week has gone by and as I write to you I feel the heaviness of our world and the events of this past week weighing on my heart.  And as I listen to my kids play outside and look at the the beauty by which I am surrounded, I also feel hopeful for their future, our future.  It will never cease to amaze me how we can hold two opposing feelings, equally important, equally sacred, equally necessary.  Hope and despair.  Love and loss.  Joy and grief.  I am having a difficult time finding my own words to share.  So instead, I will look to the words and the wisdom of Mary Oliver. 

HEAVY

That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel,
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it –
books, bricks, grief –
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled –
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?


Our load is heavy and feels unrelenting at times.  This is precisely why our yoga practice is more important than ever.  It shows us how to carry the heaviness with compassion and tenderness and it guides us towards the light and the action we must continue to take to make the world better and more just for all.    

This week you are invited to REST.  We cannot save the world, ourselves and each other by constantly doing.  We MUST take time to rest, to notice things of beauty.  Time to tend to our heavy hearts.  Time to tend to our souls, worthy of rest. heaviness down, relax and reset so you can continue to show up for yourself, for each other and for the world in the special way that only you can.

I’ll leave you with the beautiful words of Kaitlin B. Curtice.

“We hold hope and despair, one in each arm, and we cradle them close to our chest, because they both have something important to say at every moment.”