health

Life These Days

sundaribliss2 Comments

I’m not calling this thing the CoronaVirus or the Pandemic. Those words carry fear and it’s not going to help me by continuing to repeat them. I’m calling it the Reset. The planet clearly needed one, Mother Nature is on a serious glow-up! But I think we all needed one too. That being said, this Reset is a mother fucker huh?!? I know that coal produces diamonds when put under pressure but I would have settled for a Topaz honestly. 

I get asked a lot how all of this is affecting life in the bus, and nomadic living so I thought I’d do a breakdown

  1. We were seconds away from tiling our bathroom floor and building a door to separate the front of the bus from the back. I’m only strapping on that crazy mask once and it’s for groceries so for now Mama still poops with no privacy. 
  2. We didn’t know this was coming but Eula- Mae is designed for social distancing. We carry a 65 gallon water tank, plus 5 extra gallons, a full apartment sized fridge for storing food, an oven, an outside grill and have 6 panels of solar and 8 AGM batteries from GoPower Solar! We are completely comfortable off grid and it takes about 4 weeks before we need to hit up civilization again.
  3. Part of this tour was my leading a workshop in each city. Guiding women through Yoga Nidra is one of my favorite things. I teach what I need and I heal a little bit with each session. I’m really sad that this is no longer an option. 
  4. Both of our primary sources of income were already online. Before we moved from Miami, I had moved my private yoga clients online. I was already leading Death Doula workshops on Zoom and my work with the non-profit grief org The Dinner Party is a remote job. John is a graphic designer and so nothing changed for him at all. We are grateful every damn day for this.
  5. Both of us are homebodies by nature but I still want to be out IN nature. We are BUMMED that National Parks and State Parks are closed. That being said I am not bummed about no longer having to fake like I’m enjoying those long ass sweaty hikes. Now we take short walks around nearby trees and this one returns to her home for a glass of wine within the hour. Like a lady should. 💁🏾‍♀️
  6. Yes, we’re still traveling! If we still lived in Miami, we would need to ride our elevator 3 times a day to walk our dog. We would pass dozens of people in the mailrooms and parking garages. Not to mention trips to the store. Right now, outside of John, I walk past people 1 time per month when we run errands. Outside of that there are always other busses and RVs parked in the same campgrounds as us. We wave and are grateful to see a smiling face but that’s as close as we get. I feel safer in the bus than I would have in my condo. The fact that the view changes is what I believe is keeping us sane.
  7. This is seriously testing my spiritual practice. I speak often, in my classes, about Yoga off the mat. The poses are just a vehicle for you to sit in mediation. The practice is about cultivating kindness, patience, humility and recognizing the divinity in yourself and others. When it’s hot in the bus and I’m tired of working and John leaves a dish in the sink it takes a lot of Om’s to find kindness and patience. I am quickly pushed to be more humble when I dare to complain about my situation and I remember how many are without jobs and are stuck with people they don’t like in homes they don’t love. And damn if I don’t struggle seeing anything Divine in my husband, or myself, when he asks me for something that I know he could find if he bothered to use his peripheral vision. 🥴 But I keep coming back to the practice. Some days I fail, badly. Some days I’m like Mother Theresa in this bitch! Some days I just drink wine and decide that adulting is for the birds. It’s a reminder that I am forever a student of this Universe and that it’s during times like this that you see the true Yogi in you. Not when you squeeze into Lululemon. 

Watch the words you say this week. Let this be a “virus” outside of your home if you must. But inside your walls, inside your mind, let it be your Reset. Let it be where you finally give yourself permission to be Mother Theresa or Cardi B and you don’t give yourself shit if Cardi B is more fun right now. Let this be where you find patience for yourself and however long it’s taking you to get to where you want to be. Let it be the space where you practice kindness by talking kinder to yourself. And PLEASE let the Reset allow you to start to see and act on your own Divinity. You. Are. Special. 

It’s 12:00pm here and we’re in Needles CA waiting on a solar shower from Amazon. Mondays are my ME days so I think it’s time for a glass of wine and Netflix! Who else is watching #BlackAF?!? I’ve brushed my teeth and written this. That’s enough adulting for right now.

Pay attention to your own bandwidth today and sign off when necessary!

RESET


					


	
	


			
				


	


		
Kindness Aint That Hard

					

				sundaribliss4 Comments			

		
	


	
		

			

Throughout life there have been a number of things I’ve been self conscious about. My weight has never been one of them. My mother never talked about hers. Diets weren’t something that was discussed in our home. She was gorgeous, and she knew its though was never egotistical about it. She always made me feel pretty, no matter what weird adolescent stage I was going through at the time. And when I did come into my own, she was quick to tell me when my inside was shining uglier than my outside. She would also let me know when I was looking fly and who doesn’t appreciate that 🙂 My nickname was Moosie in my home, as a nod to my thick thighs, and it was ALWAYS said with love. 





Nickname aside, I was tiny most of my life. And didn’t care. I gained the normal amount in college. And didn’t care. As my mom got sicker, and died, I began to cook like a chef (and eat like one) and 5 years ago weighed 190lbs at 5 foot 8. Thicker than a snicker. And didn’t care. Weight looked good on me.





What I DO care about is my health. From fibroids to vertigo, excema and vitiligo, my body was screaming at me to get my shit together by the time I was 32 and at 35 I almost landed in the hospital. Again. Who cared what I looked like!? I didn’t FEEL good. I was working in Wellness, but I had never paid special attention to what certain foods were doing to my body and it showed.





And so I’ve been working at it! It takes time but I now know juicing celery is the ONE thing that keeps me on track. All of my symptoms go away. I’ve figured out that dairy and meat make my skin and digestion crazy and that if I don’t eat a ton of fruit I have weird periods. Deciding to give up my amateur butter laden chef habit meant that I lost weight. Moving on to a School bus and traveling full time takes adjusting to and my eating habits fluctuate. I’m 131lbs right now. I FEEL amazing. I don’t care about my weight. But everyone else seems to!





Recent comments said right to my face??
I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this skinny. /  Oh My God!? / Are you eating/  John looks wonderful but you look so frail honey.





And the KICKER! That’s not how your man met you, you better be careful.





WOW! And what’s worse is that these all came from women. 





How very lucky that my mama raised the woman she did… That I don’t have an issue with my weight. That my health is more important than my bra size. That I LOVE my man and his opinions but I also LOVE myself. Because HOLY HELL women can be really mean to each other.





Do not ever comment on someone’s weight unless they’ve asked your opinion. Can you imagine what one of those comments could do to someone whose weight was connected to something emotional or distructive?
Can you imagine if this skinny person saw YOU and said I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this fat! Or You’re looking so old these days!





It’s mean. And unnecessary. And none of my business. 





Your job as a woman should be to make the women around you feel like Queens. Be aware of how your words land. We are all here to raise each other up and make each other feel beautiful.  Your lips are a doorway to feeding that or robbing from it…





The truth is these women love me. These comments were careless, not intentional. But maybe we should all work to be a bit more intentional. Become intentional about the energy a woman takes when she leaves your company.  Women are the world’s Caregivers. Imagine if everyone taking care of someone else felt as worthy as they should? Imagine the impact she would leave behind. We are all responsible for that.





Namaste Y’all. Take care of your women. Kindness aint so hard.

					


	
	


			
				


	


		
My New Brother

					

				sundaribliss1 Comment			

		
	


	
		

			

I’m not sure where to begin, with Grief Camp or with finding out that my dead father gave up a son in 1978 and my family knew?! I’m not sure why I haven’t made my life into a book by now, or at the very least a pamphlet, because you can’t make this shit up!





On October 26th I watched as people, in their 20’s and 30’s, flew in from as far as Dubai and as near as Chicago. I was there because I work as a Community Manager for The Dinner Party. But I was also there because I lost both of my parents a few years apart to different forms of Cancer.





Before camp, TDP staff got together for a night of preparing and pizza and talking about our own goals as grievers for the weekend. I wanted to leave having let go of anger towards my father. The morning camp started I made a list of the 4 biggest things I’ve been carrying around.





  • When I was 10 my father’s mistress called our house, on Thanksgiving, and told me details about their relationship. I didn’t see my father again for 4 years. He lived 20 minutes away.
  • I called my father once from outside my mother’s hospital room and begged him to help me. He told me she deserved it and hung up. He then showed up at her funeral, late, sat in the front row and 2 days later asked me to borrow money. Which I gave to him. I wouldn’t hear from him again.
  • A year or so later, I was walking to Union Square to meet a friend for drinks at Blue Water Grill. I see my father, and a woman walking towards me. And as the Universe would have it we are the ONLY people on the street. I stopped and waited for him to stop. She was blissfully chatting away and he mouthed for me not to say anything, shook his head and walked past me. 
  • The next time I saw him, he was in a coma. The same woman was sitting bedside. And still. I stayed. And held his hand. And told him I loved him. The weeks and months to follow until his death uncovered more lies and more secrets from the lives he had invented with so many different people. But he was my father. And my first love and so I stayed.





After he died, I did what I do. I wrote. I cried. I meditated. I traveled and drank too much. I burned candles and sage and I came out years later feeling like I was GOOD! And then I had a Reiki session. I was fresh off of casually dating a man I knew damn well I shouldn’t have and laid on this woman’s table at The Turnberry Resort in Miami, FL. After the 1 hour silent session, and my being STUNNED by her mastery of the skills, she turned to me and said “You need to heal your relationship with your father or you’ll always have difficult relationships with men.” Ummmm. “You got all that from waiving your hands above my liver?!? ”  But I never forgot what she said.





Well now it’s 2019 and I’ve realized months before camp that I was still fucking pissed. Falling in love will do that to you. I pride myself in being able to recognize my own shit. No one deserves your pain. After I threw the 2nd fan in his direction I realized it was time to take a step back lol 





So AGAIN I did the work. I realized that half the time, I wasn’t arguing with John. John had simply triggered a memory and my response was to that emotion that was never healed. John is the only man, I’ve ever really loved, and the little girl who wasn’t loved right is a wee bit bananas when she gets mad. And here’s the thing. Other dudes might have deserved my crazy. He doesn’t.





So I made that list. And I burned it at camp. And I cried and hugged and did all the things. I also watched as all of these other beautiful people moved through their own pain and I was reminded that my pain was not specific to me. There were people sitting in that room who I wouldn’t trade my story with. There is always someone who is dealing with more than you. I left feeling lighter and I came back to John feeling proud of what I had released.





 And then this shit. I’ve always known my father had had children before I was born. Unfortunately, we didn’t grow up together. I’ve never known the full story but from what I gathered, he had “chosen” to be a dad to only 1 of us and I’ve spent most of my life avoiding them because I’ve felt guilty. We’re in contact on social media but that’s about it and after my dad died I think it almost got weirder for me to begin a relationship. They are older and more mature than I, and have never stopped reaching out. One of them reached out this morning to tell me we have a brother. Thanks to ancestry.com he took a DNA test and found her. He had been given up in a closed adoption in 1978. I was born in 1980. He’s lived in NJ. I grew up in NY. I don’t know the chain of events yet, but my uncle has known. At least 1 aunt has known and so had my grandmother.





My world has been rocked before. And when it has I call on everything my mother and Yoga have taught me. As a teacher myself, I know and believe that there is a lesson here. I think about what I would tell my students and I remind myself to BREATHE. I am good at stepping back and trying to determine what future me needs, because present me is down the rabbit hole. And so I tell myself that there is a blessing here and to not be guided by anger.





But. I’m also a 39 year old woman who deserved the truth. I also don’t believe that family secrets should prevent you from having a moral compass. I am steadfast in knowing that I could have used a brother when I found myself with no one at 31. And that toxic is toxic. Family or not. When I think about what future me needs? I think about a healthy marriage. She needs to be in a loving partnership. She no longer passes down what has been YEARSSS of generational disfunction. She trusts whose around her and love is poured honestly at the table where she sits.





So, I AM pissed. But I’m also done doing the work for now. Sometimes anger aint so bad. I’m deciding, (for my own health) “not my circus, not my monkeys.” sometimes family are the people you choose rather than your blood. I’ve got some AMAZING blood ones (that sounds gross lol) and they know who they are but my chosen ones deserve only the best of me. And sometimes walking away is the best “work” you can ever do.