We get to a beach and there is no one there, so I let the dogs off their leashes and let them run. I sit down in the sand and I’ve stopped crying, but I feel nothing. I’m numb. I think about Andrea and how I’ll never see her again, and my grandmother and my mother, who is going through a divorce now—she needs me but I can’t be there for her. And I think about Pepper’s collar at home and how he’ll never wear it again and how that was my fault, and all of a sudden I’m standing up. I’m not thinking anymore, I’m just walking. I walk and walk and I don’t stop until I’m waist-deep in the ocean. My sneakers are heavy with sand and water and the waves are pushing me around. It’s hard to stand. I look out at the sea. It’s rough. I could just keep walking, I think to myself. I could just walk out. Out of life. I could. I hear Ringo barking and, suddenly, I’m pulled back into the moment. If I died, there would be no one here to take the dogs back home. It’s the one thought that hits me and it’s enough for me to turn around and walk back to shore. If I walked into the ocean and died, who would take the dogs home? It was a very rational thought. And it saved me. As I walk back to the car, Ringo is at my feet and Quila and Laika are running ahead and they are so joyful. The clouds part a little bit. I realize I’m wet. My shoes are wet. Why was I in the water with my shoes on? I see myself from the outside looking in. Soaking wet, fully clothed, walking my dogs back to the car. What a silly moment that was, I think, and that was that.
When I get home the wave is gone but I’m still feeling a little numb. I tell Dennis later in the evening as we’re preparing dinner, “I walked the dogs today and thought that maybe I should just walk out into the ocean and not come back.” Dennis stops chopping the onion that’s on the cutting board in front of him. “You did what?” “It was just a thought. I got wet. It was stupid, I changed my mind. There would have been no one there to take the dogs home.” I say these words to my husband like I’m casually talking to him about my day or sharing something that happened at work, but what I actually said was “I thought about killing myself today.” I don’t realize what I’ve done until after dinner. Dennis is outside, on the phone. He is crying. Crying hard. He hangs up and comes back inside. His eyes are red. “Why are you so sad?” I ask. He turns to me with fire in his eyes. “Do you realize what you just said to me? Do you have any idea how worried I am about you??” He starts crying and he hugs me and it’s so tight I can barely breathe, but not because I can’t feel love but because I feel so much of it. His heart is beating against my chest and he is crying and crying and crying. I hold him. “I love you so much. Please don’t ever do that again,” he says between sobs, and now I’m crying, too. I hold him and his heart and there is so much life here, not just death. I’ve let death take up so much space it’s literally almost killed me. As I stroke my husband’s hair and hold him close I decide: enough. Enough death. It’s time I come back to life.
I wasn’t serious about not wanting to live, but I realized I needed serious help, and started reaching out to my friends and family more. The next time I felt a wave of grief coming, instead of closing off, I picked up the phone. Having someone there on the other end of the line made everything more bearable. I realized I don’t need anyone to give me advice or to tell me everything is going to be okay. I just need someone to be there. I had so many people in my life, but little by little I had sealed myself off from most of them, thinking I was alone in my grief. When I started opening up more and asking for help, I found that, actually, I wasn’t alone. I had so much to live for. Andrea and Mormor and Pepper dying didn’t mean the end of my life—it meant the end of a part of it. I was learning how to navigate the world without them in it. I knew: there was no going back. I had to move forward.
• • •
One day, I was in Savasana at the end of class when, suddenly, I felt Pepper’s presence. I’d experienced this with Andrea, too, but every time the feeling was followed by a massive wave of pain and an overwhelming longing for life to be different. It wasn’t fair that she died at twenty-four years old and it made me angry at the universe. When I felt her presence in moments of silence, I hadn’t been able to stay with it because my perception of what should or should not be clouded the experience and she’d disappear. In the beginning, that pain was so searing I thought I wouldn’t be able to survive—that I would die from my grief.
Then my grandmother passed. I loved her deeply, but the pain over her death was entirely different. It hurt, and I knew I would miss her, but it was her time. She had a long, beautiful life and died surrounded by people who loved her. At least I got to say good-bye.
When Pepper died, it was in the worst way, not in peace, and not silently, but in pain, with us clinging to him, not wanting to let him go, unable to save him. Had we let him down? Did he wonder why we didn’t do more? Why we didn’t take care of him better? I felt so guilty. It was consuming me.
Then he came to see me in Savasana. It was so quiet and suddenly I felt his presence. Before I knew death I would always wonder what people meant when they referred to that feeling; how can you feel someone’s presence when they are clearly not there? Well, now I knew. I was finishing a class, lying flat on the floor on my mat at the end of practice, and suddenly I just felt him. He was there, covering me like a warm blanket on a cool night. I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel the pain, or the what-ifs, and I didn’t get the image of his agonizing death. Instead, I smiled. I saw him running on the beach—always the only one of the four to come right back to my side while we were walking. He wasn’t sad. He was happy. He was nudging my hand with his head, saying, “Don’t worry. I’m still here.”
Later, I posted an ode to Pepper below a photo of Ringo and me during my practice:
Late night candle lit yoga with this guy on my mat the entire time. He digs himself beneath the blanket I use for Savasana and puts his head on my neck in Child’s Pose. He wants to be so close. All the time. I think about Pepper who would put his little face on the corner of my mat but not more. He’d lie there, looking at me, my feet landing just centimeters away from handstand to Chaturanga. He never flinched. Trusted me blindly. But he stayed in that corner, never interfering. Like he knew, I needed space to move. I wrote that word just now, move, and my phone autocorrected to Love. I need space to love? I guess it must be true. I think of all the loves I have lost this year and I lose my breath a little bit, once again. Like it’s new information. But maybe that’s all it is. Death. A little space to love. Ringo is close and I love him. Pepper has given me space to love and in that space love grows. I hope he feels it, somewhere. My love is growing thanks to you Pep. I will never understand death. But I understand this moment. For that I am grateful.
Three deaths and they are all still here. I just have to be still enough to feel them.
let go
15
* * *
TRUST
When I had reached almost one million Instagram followers, I was approached by a Swedish publisher to write my first book. The idea was to put together a collection of yoga poses, healthy recipes, and stories of wisdom and spirituality. The title was, predictably, Yoga Girl. It’s a weird thing, writing a book. The lag time between finishing it and seeing it in bookstores is months, sometimes longer. Yoga Girl was published first in Sweden and then the United States, where it went on to become a New York Times bestseller. Most of it was written before the string of tragedies in my life, but even the last parts I had to write—the dedication and acknowledgments pages—don’t mention Andrea or Mormor or Pepper. The pain of the loss was still too raw.
The book launched in November 2014 in Stockholm. Along with the publication came a book tour and classes and speaking engagements. It was on that tour that I fully began to realize the success of my career. Everywhere I went, huge venues sold out. Hundreds of people lined up to take photos with me every day. I spent hours after every appearance hugging people who came to see me.
Because so many people had followed my story on social media, my classes weren’t as mu
ch about poses anymore as they were about healing broken hearts. “You’re a poet,” people said. “We love you.” “Thank you.” “You’re such an inspiration.” “You have changed my life.” I had a hard time wrapping my head around it—I hadn’t tried to do anything. I was just coping, and sharing my story. I didn’t feel like I was doing something great. Most days, I was just trying to survive.
While my star was rising, my mom was getting a divorce. She had been with David for as long as I was with Dennis and I considered him family. They’d struggled for a while.
My mom had had a string of men, and in my book each one was worse than the last. When she met David, things quieted down and I’d hoped for the best. I so wanted it to be love and for her to be happy. Then again, her happiness seemed to always be fleeting, always followed by depression and sadness.
When my grandmother died, I’d been worried from afar about my mother, but didn’t want to step too close. My curse had always been thinking I had to save her, but at that point, I was busy trying to save myself.
Since that moment on the beach when I wanted to walk out of life, and afterward seeing Dennis in such pain, something within me had shifted. I saw how always being the one to be picked up made it easier to give up and lie down. It wasn’t until the moment Dennis broke down that I realized just how self-absorbed I had been in my grief. After that, I was committed to making sure that it was Dennis and me, together. I couldn’t close myself off in my grief anymore, I had to let him in. I knew now that healing wasn’t linear—it’s not something you do one day and then you’re done. I was going to have good days and bad days. The key was to have someone to talk to when the bad days arrived. To share what I was feeling. To have someone by my side. I wished I could have been that person for my mom during her divorce, but after everything I’d been through in the past year, I had nothing left to give.
My mom told me that she and David had been fighting a lot. That was no surprise. She’d been calling me in the middle of the night, crying and telling me what a bastard he was. During those times, I barely had the chance to digest what she was saying before she’d call again, excusing him by saying, “He didn’t mean it,” or “It was all a misunderstanding.” I hated talking to my mother about her relationships. It always came with drama, and my fearing for her mental state. David was charming and good-looking and funny, but he was completely unreliable, and he drank too much. They both drank too much when they were together.
I don’t know what the final straw was, but the end of their relationship scared me. In my eyes, David was the one who took care of my mother, relieving me of the responsibility and the worry that had haunted me for the first twenty years of my life. Who would look after her now? I wondered. Mom said she was fine and she’d be even better once they were officially divorced. I was doubtful, but I tried to be supportive.
Dennis and I went home to Sweden for Christmas that year and, surprisingly, Mom seemed to be doing great. She looked happier than I’d ever seen her. She credited her girlfriends for her transformation. The difference between this breakup and all the others, she said, was that this time, whenever she fell into pits of despair, her friends were there to pick her up. For the first time in her life, she had real female friends and having their support made all the difference. Celebrating Christmas with my family was beautiful and quiet, but I longed for New Year’s Eve and the new start it represented. Mom and my sisters followed Dennis and me home to Aruba to help us ring in the New Year.
New Year’s Eve was exactly what I’d hoped it would be. Mom looked great. Her hair was bright; she was tan, and wearing new mala beads that sparkled. But it was what she told me that made the evening perfect.
She talked about the epiphanies she’d had, and how for the first time in her life she felt like she was on the right path. She had changed her Instagram name to @yoga_mum and shared revealing captions, similar to mine, about life and the lessons she was learning. She had finally started seeing a proper therapist, who had prescribed antidepressants. I was so happy to hear she was seeing a therapist and taking medication. For me, this changed everything. She was taking care of herself. She was supported. I allowed myself to be cautiously optimistic that she really was on the right path.
When she was finished telling me about herself, Mom asked how I was doing. I realized that she’d been standing on the outside looking in through all of the recent pain and loss in my life. I wondered if my pain scared her the way her pain scared me.
She asked me about Andrea, which she hadn’t done much in close to a year since the accident. They’d never met, my mom and my best friend. I decided to take a chance and give her an abbreviated version of what I’d been going through. I didn’t want to cry—I didn’t want to fall apart. It was a relief, letting myself be vulnerable with her. Eventually, the conversation shifted back to her and David and the divorce. I told her that I worried it would set her back. “Everyone is waiting for me to crash,” she said. “But what if there doesn’t have to be one? What if, for the first time in my life, I allowed myself to be happy?” I decided to lay it all out. “It’s hard to trust you when you say that,” I said. I went on to tell her about my deep-seated fear that something bad would happen; that I hated it when she was sad, but it was even harder when she was happy, because then everything was so unpredictable. “You’ve never had a breakup that didn’t almost kill you,” I said. “I don’t think I could take you not being okay right now.”
I began to cry. My mother took me in her arms and held me. It felt so good. I felt like a child. She wiped away my tears with her sleeve and took my face in her hands. “You never, ever have to worry about me trying to commit suicide again,” she said. “I promise you that from the bottom of my heart. You can trust me. Let me be your mom.”
Hearing her words was like hearing the sound of prison doors opening. I had walked around with so much fear for so long, always worrying about whether she was happy, and what she might do if she wasn’t, and now her words were setting me free.
That night I had the best night’s sleep I can remember in years.
• • •
The next day, for seemingly no reason at all, I started to feel annoyed by my bracelets. I was on my yoga mat and they just seemed to be in the way somehow. It was strange. I had worn bracelets for nearly a decade and never before noticed them while I was practicing. My bracelets were a part of me. Some I bought on trips as mementos of my travels around the world. One was a gift from a lady selling fruit in Cape Verde, another from one of my trips to Spain. I had friendship bracelets with Andrea and my friends Olivia and Daniella, and many more from students. Three of my bracelets were ones that Andrea’s cousin made for me for my wedding, with string from Andrea’s braids. I could trace my past on my wrists. Thirty-something bracelets I never took off—not even in the shower. I was doing a bind in Malasana and I just couldn’t get the right grip. It was time to take them off.
I knew that cutting off my bracelets would be like chopping off all my hair, except there wouldn’t be anything left to grow back. I knew it would be a huge thing, but I needed a fresh start. A clean slate. New beginnings. New Year’s Day was the time for letting go.
I grabbed a pair of scissors and walked out to Pepper’s grave. It was late afternoon and a beautiful day. Pepper’s tree had grown lush and gave me some shade. As I sat down in the grass, I heard the leaves moving in the wind. I cried for a while and then I took a deep breath and started cutting them off, one at a time.
“So long, 2014. Welcome 2015. May the New Year bring us peace and joy and normalcy,” I said as I cut through leather and string. “I want everyday happiness and everyday sadness, but no fucking death or trauma or crisis. And balance. Please, God, Universe, Spirit, whoever is in charge—give me balance. Please just allow me to watch some sunsets and travel a little and stay home and argue about the dishwasher and write and kiss and do yoga and be happy and sad and feel okay. Thank you.”
When I got to the last bracelets, the
ones made with string from Andrea’s braids, I almost couldn’t breathe. Suddenly it felt unreasonable, this letting go. I pleaded with her for guidance. “I’ve been wanting for this year to be over for so long and now I’m sitting on Pepper’s grave cutting your bracelets off my wrist and I don’t know if that’s okay. Where are you? Can you please just give me a sign?”
At that very second, I heard a loud crash inside my house. It sounded like someone had fallen—Dennis? Mom? One of my sisters? I put down the scissors and ran inside. No one was there. I looked around, and the blood drained from my face. My altar had fallen. It had toppled over, with no one around, and everything on it was scattered on the floor. I have no idea how it happened, but I knew that if I’d been looking for a sign . . . This was it. I cleaned up the mess, wiped away my tears, then walked back outside and cut the last of the bracelets off my wrist.
Another lesson learned: Letting go means releasing the pain, not the love. When someone we love passes away, they’re close enough to give us signs when we need them, but far enough away for new love to grow. Love never dies. Death is simply a wide, empty space to hold all the love left behind. Love always stays.
love
16
* * *
BREATHE
Later that January I took a combined work and girls’ trip to Thailand. I was hosting a retreat in Koh Samui and brought my friends Olivia and Daniella with me. Before I left, I received a message from my mom saying she was going through a rough time. She was sad again. It hadn’t been for long, just a few days she said. I wrote her back with words of support but without letting that old worry pull me in. I reminded myself of our conversation in Aruba earlier that month, and that she was getting professional help. I could be in Thailand, enjoying time with my girlfriends. It was okay for me to live my life.
To Love and Let Go Page 18
