My mom and my daughter in 2019
“Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how.”
-James Russell Lowell
This is a long post, which I didn’t originally intend, but I guess that’s what happens when I give myself so much time to reflect on yoga, my mom, and my experience of being a mom. Also, I had been taking this month of January to honor my mom, who’s birthday is this month. As with my typical advice, take it in chunks. That’s why I separated it into sections:)
Making peace with the present moment
There is nothing that has made me respect my mother more than becoming a mother myself. I’ve always respected my mom, but I never could get a sense of her real strength until I knew what challenges she had to go through as a mom.
I’m not saying my mom is perfect, either. None of us are. I hate to say it, but it’s so typical to not really appreciate someone’s role in your life until you lose them. I haven’t lost my mom yet, but I have lost parts of her: I am in that weird quandary of grieving the loss of who she was before she started declining mentally.
When we chat on the phone, her dementia often shows in scattered conversations and misunderstandings. How do I talk to someone that sometimes knows who I am and misses me, and yet sometimes doesn’t know who she’s talking to? Lately it has hit me hard because I’ve been looking back at how my daughter was at age 1, 2, 3, and 4. She’s getting to be a big kid now at age 5 and the beloved memories I have of her in her earlier years seem largely forgotten to her developing mind.
It made me think: my mom and my daughter have both been forgetting moments that I cherish. What is it that we love about someone besides memories of them that we treasure? What about who they are now, in this moment? Honestly, sometimes I have a hard time accepting myself as I am in the moment, living through the chaos of motherhood. How can I merge the past version of myself that I got to know so well over the decades with who I am now as a mom?
And can I integrate the past versions of all those I hold dear with who they are now? It sounds lofty, I know, but just the attempt can bring some depth to how we relate to others as well as to ourselves. We might not succeed at this 100%, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying! This integrating past and present can be one of the most profound yoga practices ever and we can use the idea of svadhyaya to approach it.
Svadhyaya
Svadhyaya is one of the Niyamas in yoga practice. Niyamas are a set of practices that help us relate to ourselves in a yogic way. Svadhyaya is sometimes translated as self-study. Who are you, besides just someone’s mom, wife, partner, daughter, sister? What is your identity besides the job you go to, accomplishments you’ve made, or even your race, ethnicity, nationality, or gender? If you’re not sure how to answer that, no worries! That just means you’re getting ready for a really interesting adventure in getting to know yourSelf.
But where to start? We need space to practice svadhyaya. I don’t mean that we need a space to throw down a yoga mat - I’m talking more about mental space. We need time to ourselves so that we can sense into our feelings and thoughts. It starts with small moments of solitude and downtime.
Of course, the traditional practice of svadhyaya is usually things like meditation and reading sacred texts, but I like to think outside of the box. Perhaps we should call it something other than svadhyaya, for those that are less familiar with yoga philosophy. I haven’t found that word yet, but I do know that I like to get creative with my practice. For example:
One of my favorite things to do is to look at old photos of myself and others in my life. Who was I then? How am I different now? How am I the same? When I look at past photos of friends and family, how was that person important to me then? How did they change me or how did I change them? Or, what were my relationships like back then and are they the same or different now? Try it. Wonder: who was I? Who am I now? Who am I becoming? Who am I always going to be, despite ups and downs, changing circumstances, and life phases?
Then give yourself some moments to breathe and stretch on your mat, as you are now, apart from who you were or who you’re becoming. This is the most profound yoga. Ask yourself: who is it that is stretching on the mat? Is it the me of my past, the me now, or the me that I am becoming? Or maybe even all of those merging at once!
Me as a teenager in the 90’s with my mom
Breath as ripple
You might have been in a yoga class where the teacher directed everyone to ‘let go of their story.’ The idea is that, apart from the events (stories) in your life, your true, spiritual identity is deeper than that; it’s unchangeable.
This can be so hard to grasp at first. On the one hand, so many of us assume we don’t change all that much in adulthood. We have our preferences, our lifestyles, our work and/or family life, and our personalities, and often these things don’t seem that fluid. The truth is, any of these things are less stable than we think, which can be both unsettling and enlivening!
But, we might wonder, why would a yoga teacher ask us to ‘let go of our stories,’ especially if our stories have brought us strength, inspiration, and a certain peace of mind? I think of this practice of letting go of the more superficial aspects of ourselves as a practice to be touched upon regularly, but not necessarily to be lived out in every moment of our lives. Think about it: next time your kid says, “Mommy?” you probably don’t want to respond with, “The True Me isn’t your mommy; underneath that, I am Light, Love, and Peace. I am a reflection of the Divine Light that shines within us all.” That wouldn’t go very well, nor would it help your kid much in their development, haha!
I think of letting of my story as a way of sort of dipping my toes into a sea that is too deep for me to get to the bottom of, but that imparts some of its peace and vastness to me in moments when I forget that I am more than just the little things I do every day.
This practice doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be as simple as pausing from whatever you’re doing, exhaling completely, taking a deep breath or two and calling to mind something that reminds you of what matters most to you. For me, one of the most important things is connection with others. But sometimes it’s quality solitude, good food, or a creative outlet. What about you?
The breath brings us from thoughts of past and future to our felt experience of the present. In one single breath, the ripples of past, present, and future can commingle and dissolve. Now and then I feel a pang of sadness for how I used to be able to get in a car and drive to see my mom, to go out shopping with her, or have coffee and a conversation. Now, when I call her on the phone, sometimes the dialogue is disjointed, confused, and awkward.
When I visited her last summer, it was nice to just casually spend time with her. No need to keep a conversation afloat, and she was ecstatic to see the kids. It was the mom that I have always known and loved and then there was one big change: she spoke about 95% of the time to me in Tagalog, her mother tongue which she never taught me.
I had been anticipating that possibility for years! I couldn’t believe it had finally come to pass. Luckily, she realizes that she needs to speak English to me on the phone, but it made me think: wow, conversation with my mom in Tagalog — this could be a new phase of getting to know a part of her that has sort of been veiled from my view.
We breathe, we sing, we laugh, and speak. Our breath can be quiet and we can also use it to make sounds and communicate. Who are we? How do we practice svadhyaya? This experience with my mom and her reverting to Tagalog made me think: these are things words simultaneously can and can’t tell. Our language shows so much of us, but it can never reveal the whole of ourselves.
There’s another peek into svadhyaya for you: words can be a catalyst for self-knowledge, but they can never paint the full picture.
Cycles and Seasons
There must have been a time when my mom’s mind functioned mostly in Tagalog, like when she was a child. But who knows, maybe it always functioned mostly that way. Now that she is in “the winter of her life,” she is touching upon the words that brought her into this world. Perhaps I feel like I’m losing my mom as I knew her, but who knows, maybe she’s regaining herself as she was before I ever came along.
There’s so much I can’t or won’t know, but that’s okay. What I do know is that we live through cycles. Don’t they say that when people grow old, they go back to a child-like state? Should we really call it decline, or are we limiting our view? Cycles are kind of mysterious that way. I am now in the winter of the year (January in Chicago) during the winter of my menstrual cycle (the bleeding phase) reflecting on my mom as she is in the winter of her life. I’ve written about this before and I will write about it again and again: these cycles overlap all the time and that’s what makes each moment unique. It makes each breath unique, each movement, yoga pose, and conversation unique.
Remember that when your yoga practice seems to get repetitive, or when your life as mom gets a little tedious. Stop, circle your neck and head, your hips, your shoulders and wonder: which cycles in my life are overlapping now? For more ideas and guidance on this, visit this post from November last year.
Joy comes, grief goes
Emotions travel through us as ripples. We learned this before we became moms, with the ebb and flow of menstrual cycles, the ups and downs of relationships, and just from the experience of being full of the emotions that come with being human.
We came to know it even more as we went through pregnancy, childbirth, the early days of raising a baby, and maybe the chaos of raising a toddler. We know in our bones that things come and go, that nothing lasts forever. We are always letting go, releasing past versions of ourselves and others, defunct projects, old goals, outdated habits. Every time we exhale, we are letting go of things as they were; every time we inhale, we are opening up to things as they are becoming. Yoga is that simple, it’s just remembering to practice it in this way in the heat of the moment that is difficult.
Since we are just about a month into 2022, we can sit and wonder: what goals and expectations did we have for ourselves and for the year? Do they fit who we really are, and who we are becoming? How the heck does yoga help us with this?
By inspiring us to know ourselves better, through svadhyaya. Sometimes we do this by slowing down, breathing with intention, and moving our bodies so that we can let our emotions move through us. Other times, by just recognizing where we are, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so that we can give ourselves permission to rest, cry, laugh, be angry, or just to feel our feelings. Then, there are those times we can truly say ‘namaste’ to someone in our lives, even when they might not act the way we expect them to act.
The more joy comes and grief goes — and perhaps the opposite, the more grief comes and joy goes — the more we know how to see beneath the crashing ripples that are the cycles in our lives.