“Love wins always.”
Grieving for our New Orleans
“How are you doing?”
“Great”
“How are y’all?”
“Great, happy New Year”
“How are you - really?”
- silence -
Last week, I realized that I ask people how they are often. I start my yoga classes with that question. All week long, I got that habituated response of “fine”, “great”, “good”.
I said the same thing when someone asked me. But I am not just fine. I’m sad, I’m angry, I’m concerned, I feel awful, I feel grateful, I feel awful for feeling grateful. I am all the feelings. I imagine we are all all the feelings. But I doubt many, or even any, of us here are “great”.
Then on Friday, I asked it at the beginning of class again. The response was “good”. So I re-asked it with a bit of permission, to be honest. Immediately, the energy shifted, and my shoulders dropped back.
We talked about how if yoga teaches us anything, it’s to feel our emotions.
We’re allowed to have all of the feelings. We’re allowed not to be “fine”. We are allowed any damn feeling at any damn time.
So cry. Laugh. Scream. But be honest about your feelings to someone today.
. . .
Today we walked down Bourbon St. to see the memorial. We cried. We felt the energy. We saw the art. We heard the jazz. We smelled the beer. We prayed. We left a few sticks of incense from India burning. And lucky for us, as we were about to walk away we saw our friend Haiyan on a pedicab. New Orleans is a small town. “We are all family.”
“Love wins always.”
