Page 90 of The Ground Beneath Our Feet
Even though she was skinny, she showed how she moved the fleshy part of her butt to the side to sit on her “sits bone.” My butt was only fleshy parts, but if even the skinny teacher had to do it, maybe we weren’t all that much different.
After we sat, she talked us through breathing with our belly, allowing it to fully expand.
It gave me the freedom to let out my stomach, which I normally sucked in.
But no. Here, it was allowed to be.
“There is no wrong way to do yoga,” she said. “The only thing that you mustn’t do is hurt yourself. Do not push your body beyond what it tells you. In yoga we listen to what our bodies say. We listen to what they are teaching us. In the holding of poses, or asanas, we find a stillness, and in this quiet, we find ourselves.”
We did some poses, and with blocks, she came around and adjusted my movements. My body moved the way she wanted it to, surprising myself. I held poses longer than I ever thought possible, and my feet and hands firmly rooted to the ground.
My body connected to the earth.
Anchored.
Grounded.
I breathed in and out, my belly freely moving.
And at the end, I knew I’d be back again.
I lay on my back in the farmhouse at Headlands Ranch, thoroughly soothed after the yoga session. I couldn’t wait to tell my therapist about it.
My heart had expanded to include me: confident, strong, and whatever else I was right now.
By breathing and being in the moment in my yoga class, I knew that I was not my past, nor what I would become. But I was Jessica right now, and I accepted myself. My body. As is.
And I loved it.
This was my earthsuit. I wasn’t going to be able to trade it in and get a different model. Hating myself and my body got me nowhere.
As I stared at the vintage plaster ceiling, I thought, I accept myself.
Tears trickled down my face, but they were tears of joy, not despair. This was what it felt like to accept myself in the now. As is. Not as a project to complete. Not as something to file away and deal with later. But my imperfect self—it was perfection.
Just then my phone lit up from Mikey. I picked it up.
He’d sent me a picture of Schmedley sitting on my bed with the caption, “He misses you, and so do I.”
I cried harder. I missed Mikey and all of his animals, but I needed to do something for myself first.
I’d put Mikey into the same box as my father. But was he the same?
Pulling out the paper that Mikey gave me with the AA meeting, I knew what I had to do.
