February 2008

Thank you to my friends on Twitter for this help: (this was collected ages ago, but I’d been having trouble updating this blog)

I guess by now it’s apparent *why* I’ve been a little jumpy on the inside. When I wrote this the separation was not public. These do help. One day at SXSW I went and hid behind the cardboard thingy outside the bloghaus, cranked out some sun salutes and then worked on my headstand. I also get strange random urges to do crow (bakasana) which I suddenly started to be able to do despite months of neglecting my practice.

Elsie Escobar @YoGeek and of course you can just listen to the last 15 min of this episode and chill… http://is.gd/Bb

Elsie Escobar @YoGeek suptabaddhkonasa’s good 4 chillin’ but the task is done faster by going upside down, if ur up 4 it do this! http://is.gd/1dR

Vice-Queen Maria @vicequeenmaria I like doing corpse pose with an eye pillow on my forehead and a blanket rolled up under my chest

Elsie Escobar @YoGeek going upside down will do it most of the time http://tinyurl.com/yppu83

Catherine Laine @cat_laine child’s pose, downward facing dog, leg’s up on the wall pose is especially nice

dllavoy @dllavoy supta bada kinashia (no idea how to spell). the three diamonds. (This one? http://yogajournal.com/poses/663 -laura)

Jen Zingsheim @jenzings Inversions are very good for calm…try a shoulder stand or plow…they work for me. Bridge pose too.

Lauren Vargas @vargasl I prefer childhood or cobblers poses to ground myself.

Eve @GeekGirlTV Child’s Pose. Downward dog? but mostly just child’s pose.

frozen2late @frozen2late Child’s pose is the most relaxing. http://tinyurl.com/24myrp

Connie Crosby @conniecrosby Shava-asana is always the best to calm me down

my niece has grown into being a beautiful, smart, responsible, caring, hardworking woman. seeing her today… hearing her excitement about coming back for a longer visit (as soon as this summer?)… meeting her boyfriend and seeing he is a decent soul, and great with his kids… tearing up with her over the necklace… watching our babies play together… sitting with our families and laughing a while… it could not have gone better.

my half brother who took his life in ‘99 left behind some awful and jagged realities. his sons are dear to me, but continue to struggle mightily. she is the one wondrous thing he (quite accidentally) gave the world.

i still love danny (or at least my baby sister childish image of who he could have been) in a strange way. but in my niece and her son, that’s where something so much more worth loving lives on. danny’s been gone a long time, and the person i mourned when he perished probably never even was.

but i’ll never stop believing in her. thanks ace. i love you.

when i was 27 and living in PA i “adopted” my 14 year old niece, and raised her thru some pretty gnarly teenage years. the most shocking thing about the experience was learning how massive and stunningly permanent a parent’s love for a child is. i was unprepared for that. there’s no measure. even when you jump into the middle of it like that.

we each saved the other’s life. for 3 years it was just her & me. she helped me plug back in socially when i was lot of a loner. she gave me a strong sense of purpose to work and start making something of myself. i got out of a bad job situation and into a dream one, working from home so i could take better care of her. i bought us a house and some land and we had a little farmette.

she did amazingly well considering what life had thrown her way. she graduated high school and finished a year of college. but more than that she continued on her way to becoming this amazing person, with an ability to love and care and feel very deeply.

but, i haven’t seen her since august 2003. she ran away to ohio to be with a guy she met online instead of going back to school or coming to my wedding that september. at the reception, i kept thinking she would walk in, but her friend phoned me the next day once she’d figured it out. my niece has lived there ever since.

as hard as that was, i don’t fault her that choice. she wanted to start all over with a clean slate. yeah, it was REALLY dangerous. and the guy did turn out to be a loser. but she got into a better situation and she built a life for herself out there.
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