It’s this bitter sweet dance I have with my Yoga mat these days. I desperately crave to be there, but when I get that moment to practice… to return to a class as the student … I hear whispers of the sound of heartbreak.

My Yoga mat is such a familiar place and it’s seen me through many seasons… the ones when I stood tall like the Warrior, the ones when I fell like the Child, the days I felt joy like the Dancer and the journey that led me to settle into the Goddess. And when I return here… I feel so much at home and yet… so far from the girl that was.

I walk that line on my mat… hesitantly interweaving that girl with the woman that became the Mumma. And it’s a hard line to walk. To feel the freedom of indulging in self growth, while you stand on the other side of the line… thick in the season of Surrender. Deep in the days of pouring myself into the growth of another. And when I leave the mat, I feel sad to leave her there. That strong and sure girl, moving with connection to body, mind, spirit.

And only recently, after many sessions of walking away and feeling like that girl remained back there on my mat… it dawned on me that I’ve never left her there once. I feel her return to me strongest in that calm space that is my practice… but I am sure now that she has always stayed there within me. Without me even really knowing. Quietly but certainly… guiding my breath and my thoughts. Speaking strength on those low days… bringing presence to those rushed days, allowing release through the tense moments. Because this is what my Yoga practice has taught me.

She is not the girl of before… she is the woman of right now. And she is the reason I move through this season of surrender with a gentle sigh of the breath, with a slow release of the shoulders and a moment to flutter my eyelids down and know that the journey continues.

The seasons will roll.

I will rise and fall over and over… just as I did before.

Because I am still that girl.

Except now, I am her and more.