When you’re in the depths of despair, people will tell you that you’ll learn from the experience and come out of it a stronger person. At least that’s what they said to me when I was mourning the loss of my parents. I didn’t hear their words; I blocked them out. How could they know anything about what I was going through
It’s impossible to say the right thing to someone suffering bereavement unless you’ve had a similar loss – and even then it’s never quite the same, because the people involved (and the relationships you had with them) will always be different. There was nothing anyone could say or do to lessen the pain of losing my mother. She was my best friend, the person I spoke to every day, the person I shared everything with.
I was 29, and the most my friends knew about death was through the loss of a grandparent or a pet. I was stepping into an unknown world of immense loneliness. I desperately needed somebody who could hear me – really hear me – and know and see the extent of my pain.
I am the youngest of four children yet even within my family I felt lost because my siblings were married with kids. I knew they hadn’t lost the most important people in their lives because their children and spouses were still with them. Of course it was a massive loss for them too, but it was a completion of the circle of life. As a single woman in my 20s I wasn’t ready to see it the same way.
My father had died six years before, when I was 23, and you’d think that losing one parent makes you more prepared for the loss of the other – but it doesn’t. When my dad passed away I clung to my mother and we became even closer.
You might also think that because she died of cancer and had suffered with the disease for over two years that that might have prepared me for her death, but again, it didn’t. In her last months I visited her at the nursing home every chance I had, but she never wanted to speak to me about the looming possibility of her death. I wanted to confront the permanent separation we were about to experience, but she wouldn’t – or perhaps, I think, she couldn’t.
She was the quintessential mother and she loved her children more than anything. Leaving us in her 60s was devastating to her. It just didn’t feel like one of those deaths where you could celebrate the glorious life she had lived; instead, it seemed that she was taken from us much too soon. Had things been different, we might have had another 20 years with her.
In my bewilderment I made a decision that may seem strange to some. I crossed the Atlantic to continue my career in New York City. I felt it would be easier to cope in a foreign country where my parents had never lived, so I wouldn’t have to face reminders on a day-to-day basis. I thought I’d be able to carry on and pretend everything was OK. But bereavement is a dark, scary place, and I felt stuck there despite my new geographical location.
When someone suggested yoga might help me cope, I was sceptical, but figured I had nothing to lose. I didn’t really know what yoga was but if it could help me feel even slightly better, I was willing to try it. At my first class I noticed the teacher had a genuine sense of calm about her. She spoke about breathing while we contorted ourselves into strange positions barefoot on the floor. At the end of the class it felt like the first time I had taken a full breath in the two years since my mother’s terminal diagnosis.
Stress encourages shallow breathing, and shallow breathing retains stress. As I walked out of the class and onto the streets of Manhattan, I felt that something had lifted. It wasn’t much, but I felt a little lighter and more able to be with myself. It’s hard to explain, but just being with myself was exactly what I had been unable to do for months because it meant facing reality and accepting what had happened.
So there, in a little studio in New York City, began my life-changing yoga journey. Over the next year or so I learnrt how to be present in the moment, and with it began my healing process. I experienced a profound shift in my understanding of myself; I was far stronger than I’d given myself credit for. After years of darkness I began to see light. I felt happiness when the sun was shining, and slowly found myself able to laugh again.
My journey wasn’t complete though. My high-stress investment banking job had initially provided an escape from grief, but now that I was getting better, I could feel the toll corporate life was taking on my health and happiness.
And then the 9/11 bombings happened on my doorstep. My office was located next to the World Trade Centre and I found myself running from the falling towers, lucky to escape. Before my very eyes something much, much worse than my own personal tragedy unfolded.
After that, my tears dried up for good and I woke up to my life. Simply surviving, and getting through the day was not enough: it was time to start really living again. One of the best things about exposure to mortality is you really get the message loud and clear: You only get one shot at life, so you better make it brilliant!
Until then I’d always done the right thing, always followed the conventional path that leads from university to a stable job to eventual retirement. But this wasn’t enough for me anymore. I started asking myself what it was I really wanted from my life. And then one day while I was in the ‘downward-facing dog’ position it came to me: yoga. I realised I was never as happy as I was in yoga class, so why not make it the basis of my new lifeI I decided to do a yoga teacher training course and would leave New York once I’d completed it.
That summer was a good time for me. I had completed my yoga training and was preparing to leave my life in the US. I had completed the NYC marathon (another goal I’d set for myself) and was done with my corporate career and the ‘Sex and the City’ lifestyle of single women in Manhattan. I was looking forward to rain, the BBC, fish and chips, and a lovely little village in Wales where my parents lie.
But, as so often happens in life, just when I thought I had it all figured out, the universe sent me something unexpected: Andrew. My ex-boyfriend; the one who got away. It had been five years since we were together, but no relationship had been quite the same after Andrew. He hadn’t been ready for the seriousness of our connection the first time around, but a lot had changed in our time apart and this time he was serious about us.
You’re thinking it all sounds wonderful, righte Well, it was, except for one catch. Andrew is South African and had no intention of living anywhere else. I was torn. Finally all I wanted was to go home to be around the landmarks and people that reminded me of my mother. But I also didn’t want to miss out on a chance for love. I remembered a banking client once telling me “Mr Right is out there looking for you but he just can’t find you yet.” Now Andrew had come back and this time he was ready for me; I couldn’t let the possibility slip me by.
Yoga taught me that sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is relax and go with the flow, so that is what I did. I visited Andrew in Johannesburg and he did a first class job of showing me the beautiful sites in and around the area, but after a while he had to get back to work and I was stuck at his home. I decided to find a yoga class to keep me busy, but when I googled “yoga” and “Johannesburg” hardly any results popped up. “What an opportunity for someone,” I said to Andrew.
That opportunity became mine. I decided to settle in Jo’burg for the time being so that I could give yoga teaching (and our relationship) a serious go.
The prospect was difficult, given that I didn’t know a soul in the city. But if there’s one word that sums me up it’s tenacious, and I was not going to be deterred. The first class I taught drew a mere six people: Andrew, two foreigners, a South African I’d recently met and two of her friends. It was a very far cry from the yoga scene I’d known in Manhattan. The next week, only two people came. The following week there were none. Those first few months were disheartening, but I believed in what I was doing and I spoke about yoga everywhere I went. I felt I had to somehow kick-start the yoga revolution that was taking the US, Europe, Asia, and more recently Cape Town, by storm.
Fast forward a couple of years and I was teaching 20 classes a week, anywhere I could. From Virgin Active gyms to country clubs to corporate classes. I then branched out and started leading yoga retreats, taking people to the bush, then the Drakensberg, and eventually swimming with dolphins in Mozambique.
Finally my business, Yoga Warrior, was gaining momentum and I decided it was time to take the next leap: my own yoga studio. I invited some of the best yoga teachers in Jo’burg to teach with me, and soon the studio started filling up and a new chapter in my life began.
Looking back, it seems as if everything happened just the way it was meant to. When the fabric of your life comes apart, there is an opportunity to put yourself back together again, prioritising the parts you love best, and cutting out those that don’t add value to your life. The process is slow and it allows you to evolve alongside it. The courage you find along the way stays with you, grows, and allows you to take risks you would have never dreamed possible. Going with the flow with Andrew was one of the best decisions I’ve made, and we’ll be celebrating our wedding anniversary.
Yoga put me back together. It became such a part of me that eventually there was no separation. For me, life is yoga. I no longer work, I simply do what I love, and finding this passion has allowed me to feel more fulfilled than I could ever have imagined. I believe yoga shows us the light to be the person we most want to be every moment of every day and I cannot think of anything more rewarding than helping to turn on that light for others.
Of course I would have my parents back in a heartbeat, but I am so grateful for what their loss has offered me in experience and growth. I now see a glimmer of truth in what people told me at the time – that I would come out of it a stronger person – I just wasn’t strong enough to comprehend that possibility while I was grieving.
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