Day 92: The Mug That Shattered My Story
Today, something strange happened in the middle of my meditation.
I had brought a mug of sliced papaya into the bedroom - one that Jenn had lovingly cut up for me. The mug was one of my many from Kuwait, one I’ve carried with me for nearly ten years. It said:
“There’s no place like Mahboula.”
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I put the mug on the table and sat down to do my meditation. And then, without warning, it just teetered off the bedside table and shattered. All on its own.
If you know me, you know I love mugs. I collect them obsessively - they’re little containers of meaning. But this one was special. It referenced Mahboula, the neighborhood where I lived in Kuwait. The place I wrote about in Sober Yoga Girl. The place where I met my ex-husband. The place where my life unraveled in ways that even as recently as January, I was still healing from.
For almost ten years, I’ve carried deep guilt and shame about the choices I made in Kuwait - especially my choice to get married. When I started this Substack, I wrote a lot about my healing journey with that relationship. It’s been a decade-long wound. We never had closure. He walked out the door, and that was it. We both carried so much suffering - so much that we each ended up writing books about it.
For years, I believed I was a terrible person who ruined his life. And when I published Sober Yoga Girl, I re-identified with that story. I reattached to the narrative of being the villain.
This week, I started reading The Dharma in Difficult Times by Stephen Cope. One line stopped me in my tracks:
“Disorienting dilemmas can undo us for years. One of my own three dilemmas — divorce — took ten years to resolve in my heart, mind, and soul. (My many divorced friends say the same thing.) I know people who have never recovered.”
Reading that gave me a strange sense of relief. Maybe my timeline isn’t so off after all. Maybe ten years of unraveling and integration (even though our marriage was very short) after divorce is normal.
At the start of 2025, my ex-husband sent me the book he wrote - a memoir he has no plans to publish. I’m one of ten people in the world who’ve read it. I wrote about what it felt like to read his version of the story. It was finally accepting what I’d done in a way that allowed me to move forward. (I even think Sober Yoga Girl, to a degree, was a story written while I was still in denial.)
I wrote him an apology email.
And then - silence. For three months. (As usual. He’s always taken his time to reply.)
Eventually, in the midst of my sexual assault recovery, his email landed in my inbox. I haven’t written about it yet - because that trauma has taken up most of the air in the room. But his response was… underwhelming. Almost casual.
He said, “You have nothing to apologize for.” It almost felt like he was saying: “Oh yeah, no worries. Ain’t no thing.”
Like I was apologizing for bumping into him on the subway or being late to a coffee date.
It stunned me. I’ve carried this giant, heavy boulder of guilt for ten years, and for him - it seemed like… no big deal.
Maybe at the time, it wasn’t no big deal.
But clearly - he’s let it go.
And I haven’t.
The Weight of the Story We Carry
I carried a story for a decade that I was a villain. And this is what the Yoga Sutras call Vrittis - mental fluctuations, thought spirals, the stories we attach to. My mind built a whole identity out of guilt. And that identity stuck.
Lately, I’ve been obsessed with this song called “Judgement” by St. Finnikin. The lyrics hit a nerve - especially these:
What if the guilt I hold onto is actually the sin, hmm?
What if the judgment I was told from God never began?
What if Karma’s more like a loving teacher?
Why does that feel better than the story from my preacher?
To me, these lyrics flip the script. Maybe it’s not what I did - maybe it’s the fact I’ve held onto it for so long that kept me stuck. Karma isn’t punishment. It’s the universe teaching us through love, through learning, through life.
And Then, Back to the Mug
When it shattered, my eyes popped open. I couldn’t finish my meditation.
Why did it break? What could it mean?
I told the story to Jenn this evening when we got home from an Open Mic Night. She talked about how she randomly picked that mug, filled it with papaya, and texted me to tell me it was there waiting for me in the fridge. “It was almost like that mug shattering was meant to happen.”
The Mug as a Symbol
A mug is a container. It holds warmth. It holds stories.
This particular mug that said “There’s no place like Mahboula” held ten years of memory, of shame, of identity.
When it broke, I didn’t just lose a cup.
I lost a version of myself I’ve been gripping too tightly.
Mahboula isn’t just on a map. It’s a memory of a younger, softer, more lost version of me. That mug couldn’t hold that story anymore. So it shattered.
A Spiritual Interpretation
Release: Something old is breaking off.
Reminder: That version of me isn’t here anymore.
Invitation: Witness this moment. Don’t brush it off. Let it teach you.
In the Yoga Sutras, 2.10 says:
“The subtle afflictions can be reduced by returning to the Source.”
The pain, the identity and the narrative are all a subtle affliction - and it dissolves by returning to Presence. By witnessing. By letting go.
What If It Wasn’t Destruction… But Initiation?
What if that mug broke because the story had already dissolved?
What if that shatter was the sound of completion?
Completion, which was necessary for me to move on to my relationship with Zestie Bestie (Mr. Mimpi Indah, Habibi (My Love in Arabic), The Approaching-Boyfriend (Boyfriend in Waiting), Mr. Vritti, Mr. Jack Pot, Mr. Meditation, Rocket Man, Mr. Mantra, The Meow-ditator, The Rational Mystic, Burrito Boy, the-guy-i-like-that-i-feel-safe-with, him (the crush).
There is lightness in letting go.
There is beauty in sacred messes.
And finally - space for a new chapter.
Those who know me well know that I have a Taylor Swift song for every bf/ex. (I just sent Zestie Bestie his song.) It’s not planned, but I’ll hear a Taylor song and just know it’s their song. (I won’t share Zestie Bestie’s song because that is for us!)
My ex-husband was the only ex of mine that didn’t have a song - which is so weird because he’s the most significant ex in my life - until one year ago when she released Tortured Poet’s Department. And this is his song.
Manuscript
…And the years passed like scenes of a show
The professor said to write what you know
Lookin' backwards might be the only way to move forward
Then the actors were hitting their marks
And the slow dance was alight with the sparks
And the tears fell in synchronicity with the score
And at last, she knew what the agony had been for
The only thing that's left is the manuscript
One last souvenir from my trip to your shores
Now and then, I reread the manuscript
But the story isn't mine anymore
I think a lot about him. I really hope I meet him again in this lifetime. I just want to hug him and express gratitude for being one of my greatest teachers.
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