Monique Minahan

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Monique Minahan

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The Grief Practice
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#WriterMo

Hello, Santa Barbara 💞 I'm looking forward to bringing this conversation up your way in January. Register at YogaSoup.com under Events. See you soon!! xox Mo ______________________ #grief #griefinthebody #santabarbara #ventura #ojai #santabarbarayoga #yogaforgrief #traumainformedyoga

I will not ask you to rise before you are ready because sometimes playing small is how we survive. I will ask you to show up as you are and honor your deep capacity for authenticity. I only ask of you what I ask of me. Let's practice, tmw, 3:30 @gatherencinitas

About last night... let's do it again. Let's keep stepping into awkward, edgy, uncomfortable, nourishing relationship with ourselves and with each other. Let's keep creating spaces that can hold the truth-telling about our loneliness, our love, our travels to the ends of our heart. Let's keep asking each other questions instead of trying to fix or save each other. Let's keep using the simple ways humans connect best (moving together, eating together, talking together, laughing together) to stay sane, supported, stitch our wounds and slow down enough to hear our own hearts when they toll for us. ______________________ #gatherencinitas #weareallinthisthingtogether #weAREthisthing #yogapotluck #weavethecircle #socialengagementsystem #thankyou #iloveyou #goodnight ✌️

It was important to you, the way they were buried, the way you were allowed or not allowed to say goodbye . It was important to you, the sharp or soothing tone of the nurse telling you it was time to leave before you were ready to leave . It was important to you, that the doctor put down her cup of coffee and sit down, look you in the eyes before announcing he was going to die . It was important to you, the words and tone that were used to describe their emptiness "died" or "passed away" or "gone" all had a different level of pain . It was important to you the place you spread the ashes the way you did it years later or never . It was important to you, the way you crawled into the hospital bed next to them the way you held their hand or their head or their heart . It was important to you, that no one wore black or that everyone wore black that there were mariachis or poetry slams on grief that people laughed and cried at the same time . It was important to you, every single detail that no one else seemed to see especially in those initial fragile moments when part of you was dying too, the exact moment when mountains of paperwork appeared more urgent than your tender heart . It was important to you, how they died like it was important to you how they lived for months or for years, small or large . It was important to you, I see now. It was important to me, I see now.

Our hearts can seem so inadequate in these human bodies of ours, next to other human bodies living, dying, suffering. Even love can feel too big, too like those other big feelings we can't quite comprehend and so always fear a little or a lot. . Our big work, inner and outer, can seem so meaningless in the face of massacre. Our lives, even more fragile the closer to home it hits, can feel more and more restless as our perceived zone of safety shrinks with every news story. . Yet safety is not the removal of threat. Safety and hope can survive even the harshest of conditions. Like the palm tree trying to grow through the curb that my neighbor Bill spent a morning digging out. . And so when my son said tonight, "Mommy, I wish I would never die... but we all die" I don't ask him where he learned that. I just say, "Me too, baby. Me too." . We carry on. Our hearts are needed on the front lines more than ever. However we show up. As a teacher or a student or a parent or standing in line at the grocery store. Our capacity to hold humanity and each other from joyful to tragic end is how we survive. Rest your heart, then back at it we go.

I hear our collective longing, masked by our collective outrage I hear the way your breath hums under the words, in-out-in-out just like mine I hear the questions underneath our respective answers I hear the silence under the loudness I hear my son say to my husband, "Did you vote for me?" I hear that heavy pause filled with all the unsaid love and fear before he answers, "Yes. Yes, I did vote for you." The answer I am sure every single parent would say. I keep listening for the longing underneath it all. Sometimes, like tonight, I find love, hidden under an "I voted" sticker and the roses he got me for our 8th anniversary, drowned out by the news on TV, but still there, strong as it's always been, wanting to be heard.

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