Posts

Hold on Tight

  For several weeks, I had been meaning to attend a local group meditation practice: a sangha. I’ve been meditating irregularly for a few years. First, I would say it began with yoga nidra, which is a lying-down meditation I cannot recommend highly enough, especially for anyone who doesn’t get proper restful sleep at night. It’s powerful. Then, when I couldn’t afford that anymore, I started listening to recordings of Tara Brach’s guided meditations, and doing some on my own, using her RAIN method. I highly recommend that too. I might even say it changed my life. But really, all of the pieces came together to change my life, so it probably wasn’t just one thing. Anyway, after a while doing Tara Brach meditations, I got the itch to participate in something communal, with a group. But since we’re still in a pandemic, unfortunately, it has to be virtual. Finally, I made the time to attend one of these local sanghas online, on a gorgeous Sunday morning, when I wasn’t with the kids. The ...

Bonus Time

Speaking to some friends about how I feel these days, 3 weeks after separating from my husband of 10 years, I described this as my “bonus time”. The way I see it, at my ripe old middle age, by evolutionary or biological standards, I should be dead. As my mother said (jokingly, I think) after I had my son (I already had a daughter), my “duty was done”. I had checked all the boxes: got married, bought a place to live, had a girl and a boy. And yet…   Someone accused me of not being “fulfilled” by my family life. At first I was offended. Not only did I nurture those two beautiful little people in my body, and then WITH my body, but I sacrificed every eensy bit of personal space & time in my life for them. I gave myself wholeheartedly to their upbringing, and I did it with pleasure. It was incredibly difficult, but it was a choice. I *made* that family. And yet… they were right. I was not “fulfilled” by it, if by fulfilled you mean it is the be-all and end-all of your existenc...