Love and Heartbreak by Lexie Wolf

It is uncomfortable being the death doula for this beautiful, big-hearted community. I know this work is only just beginning.

I am a person who doesn’t like goodbyes. Have you heard of the Irish goodbye? I don’t know why it’s called that, but you slip away without saying goodbye. I love doing that. It’s just so much easier. Much less fuss. But I am determined to learn to be more graceful and intentional about goodbyes, through this learning opportunity that classroom Earth is gifting me.

I really had no idea what I was in for in 2017. I thought I was just opening a yoga studio. People would come in, do their downward dogs, and then go home. Lather, rinse, repeat. Are there some yoga studios like that? I feel like there must be.

Certainly the franchise studios. Just kidding.

I didn’t know anything about business — and still don’t — but we managed. Even during Covid, we managed, thanks to all of you who came out to practice on the rickety illegal platform in the parking lot, and on Zoom with our fuzzy rural internet connections and our kids wandering through the background while we were teaching.

I knew nothing at all about what it meant to form and hold community. But fortunately you taught me, and so we did it together. And now here we are — a family — with all of our connections and our shared experiences.

And that is how I find myself living inside my own little equinox of love and heartbreak.

This stormy equinox week is matching my mood. Hot then cold, the threat of tornadoes that thankfully don’t arrive. But mostly I feel a little out of sync with this seasonal threshold into springtime— this cosmic transition into all that is new and fresh.

Persephone, could you linger in the Underworld a little longer? I’m not quite ready for the turning yet.

Even with the ache in my heart, I am appreciating these final weeks — seeing you, practicing with you. Talking and laughing after class, crying together in the parking lot. So please come practice. Use up those class passes and come share the room while we still have it. And thank you for continuing to tell me what Yoga Garden has meant to you. It means everything to me.

As I was in the middle of writing this piece, I came across this poem from Andrea Gibson:

Just to be clear I don’t want to get out without a broken heart.

I intend to leave this life so

shattered there’s gonna have to

be a thousand separate heavens

for all of my flying parts.

That.

love,

Lexie

Mark your calendar for Yoga Garden’s closing ceremony on Sunday, May 17, from 3- 5pm. More details to come.