Yoga Girl

“Where did he go?” I’d ask over and over again. My mother always
turned her face away. One day someone else answered me: “He went to
heaven.” “Why?” I said. I didn’t know where heaven was and why he
would choose to go there without us. “Well, he loved you and your brother
so, so much, and when he was flying he was rushing home to see you. But
he flew too fast and crashed his plane, so now he is in heaven and you
have to be strong for your mother.”
I don’t know who told me this, if it was a relative or a friend of the
family, but this scarred me so deeply it would take me more than a decade
to even understand. I was just five years old, lost and alone, looking for
someone to comfort me. And I find out my stepdad left us to go to heaven
—because I made him hurry? I couldn’t wrap my five-year-old brain
around this, and I decided it was all my fault. If it hadn’t been for me, he
would still be here, and my mom wouldn’t be sad all the time. is is
when my memory starts to get very, very fuzzy. I remember walking into
my mother’s bedroom to wake her up every morning, always finding her
facedown with a pillow covering the back of her head. I asked her why she
did that, and she told me it helped her fall asleep. For the longest time I
slept with a pillow covering my face, thinking it would help me fall asleep
easier, too. Now I know she wasn’t sleeping, but bawling into the mattress
at night so we wouldn’t hear her scream. I remember holding my brother’s
hand while we walked to school, making sure he didn’t trip on the
sidewalk. I remember my sixth birthday party. An ambulance. More
screaming. Suddenly living with my dad in a house we didn’t really know.
I remember going to see my mom in the hospital, lots of crying and her
hugging me so hard I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t find the suicide letters she
left us until much later.
It wasn’t until I got on the spiritual path in my late teens and started
inquiring about this time that some memories came back to me. I’ve
learned that sometimes the mind does what it has to do to keep us alive.
Massive trauma is simply too much for our hearts to handle, so the mind
shuts down to protect us. Time passes and we forget. But the difficulties