Nest Open, Heart Full
about 4 days before heading up to Canada, where he will attend L’ecole de Cirque de Quebec. Tomorrow is his high school graduation, but he will not be there. We celebrated the closing of this chapter of his life with the Baccalaureate ceremony last Sunday, and an emotional gathering with his closest friends and their families afterward. (As well as some ceremonial gowned leaps from the roof to the trampoline, as you can see in the photo above. A colorful alternative to Pomp and Circumstance).
My own feelings have yet to fully surface. I will miss indulging in that ritualized surge of pride of seeing him walk and receive his diploma, but I carry pride and love for him in my heart everywhere I go, so it doesn’t, at this moment, feel like a huge loss. And while I dearly miss his lively, happy presence I don’t miss the piles of casual debris that drop in his wake everywhere he temporarily parks his body. (I’m not complaining. But I’m not going to glorify it either.)
So Liam leaving just…..is. Every family with children who grow up and graduate and move on experiences this milestone in their own way. Ours is unique (yes, yes, he’s “running off to join the circus.” I want to retire that phrase almost as much as the “empty nest” phrase) but every family and every individual has a unique journey. And certainly we have to do the work of planning, setting goals, helping them actualize what comes next, but there is a healthy amount of “letting things unfold” required as well. If you are a parent, think back for a moment to when your child was, say, 2. You followed him at every turn, reached out to shield him from life’s potential perils, wiped poo from his wee bum, scraped snot from his rosy cheeks. I didn’t back then imagine the time I’d let him walk out the door not fully prepared, likely to make huge mistakes. I didn’t really fully imagine letting him go at all.
I can say with full confidence, that capable and wonderful as he is, he will make big mistakes. He will have to figure out a lot of stuff. We are doing some of that for him, but less and less. He will have to figure out so much in just the next year, living in a French Canadian city with roommates who speak very little English, that it is frankly beyond my ability to figure it all out ahead of time. So, once again, the well-traveled theme of opening my hands, and letting go. We do this in all kinds of places in our lives.
The balance between managing our lives, and leaving room to simply let things unfold. The practice of yoga gives us opportunity to do this, on the mat and off.
We do the work, we study the self, we understand what we can, and then we step back a bit and resist the temptation to over direct, every step of the way. If you need a physical, concrete example, think of your hamstrings. If they are tight, you cannot bully them into becoming more pliable. There is an enormous amount of patience and time required to get tight hamstrings to lengthen. You can do the poses that warm up the whole body, do the poses that help stretch the hamstrings, but if you mindlessly and aggressively force that process, you will not get longer hamstrings, you will just get hurt.
Summer is a nice time to soften the grip on your life, your actions, your yoga practice. Even if you are busy, the additional daylight hours provide the possibility that maybe, we don’t need to rush. Maybe, we can dwell in the present moment with the understanding that things will unfold in their own, wonderful, surprising ways.
Our new Yoga Immerson Program with Sharon is a go! Already we have a sizeable group of yoga students registered for the program. We are so excited about this new offering. To those who showed up for Sharon’s Q & A, thank you! To those who missed it, we have opened registration on the website, with links to a pdf that outlnes the full course with dates, content etc. The discounted rate is available until July 1. Check it out here.
