Given the opportunity to hike solo, I chose a ridge hike overlooking the Pacific, high above sea level I would have sweeping views of the vast ocean and the lush, green vegetation. But first, I would have to climb…

In February, I’m focusing on self-love. A foundation spiritual principle of yoga is non-violence, ahimsa, and if I am being honest, some of the harshest violence is directed toward myself.

Each time I roll out the yoga mat, center myself for practice, I begin again. Yes, building on the work from the days before, but knowing that I’ll never be “done”. Despite frequent practice, my hamstrings will often be tight, my hips achy, and my shoulders activated from the cold shoulder hunch. And my mind….often too, tight, achy, and activated.

Beginning with Halloween, I find the last two months of the year, well, the most, MOST time of the year. Sometimes it’s the most wonderful as the Christmas tune opines, but sometimes it’s the most stressful, most grief-filled, most frustrating, most taxing time of the year. Honestly, whatever I’ve already been struggling with up to this point of the year, gets exaggerated, and as I try to ‘make memories’ and ‘choose joy’ and ‘cultivate gratitude’ sometimes the efforts work, and sometimes they fall flat.

In order to root myself in the present this fall, I would stop off at a nearby creek to meditate after middle-school drop-off. In the sunny autumn, I’d sit on a rock kissed by the sun with my toes in deliciously cold water. Meditations were first colored by an abundance of green, followed by gorgeous golds, reds, and yellows, and now with barren wood and limbs to dot the winter landscape.

Alone, and Enough.

As I embarked on the 3-mile circuit loop to a waterfall in the Pocono Mountains, I was alone. My 9-year-old at an awesome outdoor camp, my 13-year-old at the condo working on her summer homework, the children were engaged and I was elsewhere, alone.

Alone is not something I have been with any frequency for about 18 months now. As is true for many parents during the pandemic, sustained alone time is something like a faraway dream---it used to be part of my life, I faintly remember….alone and not in a frenzy to produce or accomplish, well, it’s been a while. As my sandals walked the root and pine-needed covered path, I realized instead of experiencing joy at my aloneness, my time in solitude, I was having some surprising feelings.

Sixteen years into Recovery, and the ink still wet on my yoga Grace teacher training certificate,