I'd like to share a personal story that, I feel, has much to offer to our current state of broken-ness as an Anusara community and that it is possible rebuild something that is real and lasting. Last year, my 41-year-old sister suffered seven life-threatening strokes and hovered between life and death in a coma for three weeks. During that, the most difficult period of my life, I had the great joy of realizing the efficacy of all that I had learned from Anusara yoga. Living in the unknown became second nature during those long weeks, and the hope that any spark of life would have given would have been celebrated. The first hope, was that she would live. That was soon followed by . . . what if she lives? Will anything ever be the same again? What of her will we get back? Will we get any of her? Will we, her family, be able to take care of her, or will she need professional caregiving for the rest of her life? Is there any possibility of a ful recovery? Or, harder-to imagine, a vital, healthy, vibrant life?
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
Despite all odds (75 percent of those who suffer her same type of stroke die within 30 days), she not only lived, she was, in fact, transformed into a vital and happy woman. Is her life the same? No. There is a "new normal," but she would be the first to tell anyone, that she is much happier. She is restructuring her life around what is life affirming and enhancing. She has had to look at old ways in a clear mirror and step up to make changes, and she continues to live every day with the limitations she is left with. She has come to love the story of the Ganapati in which he takes the broken piece of himself--his tusk--and uses it to write the epic story. Her significant limp is her broken tusk.
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept."
We have this opportunity as a community. Yes, there will always be a clear and distinct moment when "everything changed." It will never be the same again, but I feel great hope that, as is the case with my sister, the brokeness brought with it the gift of creating something sustainable and beautiful in its real-ness, beautiful because it once had a broken tusk.
"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand... once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.” ― Margery Williams from The Velveteen Rabbit
If you want to make something Real, love it.
May we love our broken community into Real.
