Day 53: Stepping Back Into my Skeleton

Finding My Way with the Healing Power of Chanting

Its 2am here in Abu Dhabi. It’s night two of my yoga retreat. Today was a pretty special and amazing and also emotionally challenging day for me. I have tried so hard to sleep and just haven’t been able to access rest. So I’ve given up and started to write.

Today I wasn’t planning on writing something for the Daily Dharma because all of my thoughts are consumed about what happened last week. I did write a few things today but they were mostly detailed recounts, to help me with my own processing. Things I wouldn’t post on my Substack (yet - but maybe eventually).

I wasn’t planning on telling the retreat guests anything about it, but I honestly felt like I was moving around like a skeleton. I knew I was not the same yoga retreat host or yoga teacher as I normally am.

This morning I did my first physical yoga practice in a week. Up until that point I found it too frightening to be in my body. At the end of the class, I chanted kirtan for the students on my harmonium. I burst into tears. I ended up telling the story. They held a circle for me.

I think I cried because it was the first time I’d felt spirit inside my skeleton again.

When I chant right now, it is the only time I feel like there is something inside of my skeleton. It feels like spirit comes back into my body, for a moment. That’s the only time. I don’t feel it in asanas or in meditation. Just in chanting.

It was hard for me to write today because I’ve finally transitioned from the shock and numbness and absolute fear of what happened to anger and rage. It’s very strange to feel emotions after feeling nothing for the last week. This last week, I was very oddly calm about it. But I see now that I was in shock.

While in shock, my brain has been simultaneously working on overdrive to try and find answers to how someone could possibly be so sinister to do what he did to me. The more conversations I have with people, the more perspectives I have, and I think I’ve come to an understanding. That was part of the fear - that I just didn’t get it. It didn’t make sense. I will never know for sure why he did the things he did, but the more I try to form an understanding, the more it helps me to move forward.

Carolyn, one of my retreat guests this weekend, who has been a godsend, said to me, “I was actually glad to see you angry this morning, because it was the first time I’d seen you angry since it happened. And that means you’re moving on to the next stage of healing.”

“Was I angry?” I asked her. I couldn’t even remember. She said that yes, I was angry.

Then, in the evening, I got angry again. This time, I felt it and knew what it was. Anger.

I know I am not his first victim, and I know it wasn’t an attack directed at me. The way he carried it out, he’s done it before, and he will do it again. It is quite hard, despite knowing this, to separate myself from the story. I think anger is a normal feeling to have in the immediate aftermath of trauma such as this.

I’m doing my best to be in my practices and just taking care of myself, as best I can. I know it is going to be a long recovery ahead. What happened is going to change my personal sense of safety in dating relationships and my perspective on life forever. The difference now, as compared to when I experienced trauma when I was younger, is that I am well equipped with the tools and the community to process this.

Eventually I will tell my story in a more public forum, because I know it will support other women and survivors. But for now I am not there yet. For now I am doing my best to just step into my skeleton again.

I am grateful for all the people who have been holding me up this week.

Thank you.