Yoga Girl

stepfather—even though I was only five years old, I’d been so busy taking
care of my mom and my little brother that I never allowed myself to be
sad. No one talked about it in the family and it was like a chapter of my
life was torn out of the big book of our family. I had a lot of grief inside of
me that I’d never gotten the chance to release. And anger. Oh, boy, was I
angry. I was angry at my mother for being so fragile when I was little. I
was angry at my father for being distant. I was angry at myself!
My entire view of the world changed in just one week, and I left the
center a different version of myself. I realized that I had taken on traits
that were not at all who I really was at my core. I wasn’t an angry person.
Situations and events that came my way had made me into an angry
person. When I learned how to let go of those events, I could let go of my
anger and stop feeling mad all the time! I got a glimpse into what life
could be like if I wasn’t so preoccupied with smoking and drinking myself
to death. I started looking at the big picture, and all of a sudden, I realized
that I wanted to be happy. I’d never had a longing like that before in my
life. I’d been too busy just surviving, but now that I had tools to deal with
all the feelings I had locked up inside, I wanted more. I wanted happiness.
Balance. Peace.
Looking back at it now, I didn’t have a terrible time growing up at all; I
had two parents that did their absolute best with what they had. Most of
the negative situations I found myself in, I created on my own. I came
home and had a big talk with my parents. I quit smoking. I stopped
drinking. I started going outside, being in nature, and I started spending
time with different people. I went back to the meditation center one more
time, this time for ten full days, for a deeper course on how to resolve
childhood issues. is one was, if possible, even more profound for me,
and I found myself changing more and more. It wasn’t so much that I was
becoming a different person—quite the opposite. I was chipping away at
the marble to find the masterpiece hidden beneath all the experiences I
had accumulated throughout my life. I was becoming myself.
It might sound crazy, but it really was as if a veil had been lifted. ere