“La mejor parte de estar roto es que encuentras a quienes son capaces de darte partes suyas para que tú vuelvas a estar completo.”
-Alejandro Sequera, Mi Viaje Sin Ti 

Keep in mind, I am not a professional translator, but here goes:

“The best part of being broken is that you find the people who can give you the parts to make you whole again.” My Journey Without You

I scrolled through old photos with the swipe of my thumb, remember when memories and photo prints were all we had?, when I realized something I hadn’t put together: My hair length is directly correlated to my hopefulness.

I cut my hair off last August (2020).

Last July, I got an email that rocked my world (a world from which I thought I had revoked my citizenship).

This week (a year later) I stood in front of big mirrors, I mean big enough to organize all your self-doubt and ship it direct to your mind while you’re in cow pose, as a bunch of women and one brave man posed around me in *warm* yoga. It is important to note: I was there with my friend. It is so much better with a friend. If that friend is yourself, more power to you. She is a regular at this *warm* yoga studio (it’s not hot unless it’s Bikram, well okay) and she gets out of bed early to do it. You bout to be lookin’ like a Bikram I mutter as we walked into the studio. I revved myself up: if she can do it, so can I (with the coupon code 3FREE).

What I know about yoga is that stretching is important, and finding yourself on your space (not mat, I noticed them say), is just as important. But why do we push ourselves through the paces in a room with other people who we respectfully ignore for an hour as sweat drips off our faces? Okay I’m sorry, my face. After the first fifteen minutes, my shirt was drenched y no exagero!!
I know: we need another human to guide us through the poses, and we need to keep up with other people doing hard things in order to do them too (working theory, who dis?).

I’ll tell you why there’s no sense in having long hair in the desert. My hair goes limp and lifeless without the help of humidity. You’d think curls would be their happiest in dry air because we all know how bad the poof can be, 90s bad (or good?), when it’s humid. But when I saw those little curls next to my ears spring up from sweat, it occurred to me that this doesn’t happen in Tucson and trust and believe baby, we sweat in Tucson. Denver, where it is considered dry by most, is humid by Saguaro standards. Curls, I missed you!

And while the sweat drips down all parts of me in *warm* yoga, it’s yoga with weights. So let me get you straight on this: I’m doing eagle pose Garudasana with cactus arms while holding 3-pound weights as I bicep curl while a space heater blows on me. You can think whatever you want about people who do yoga, that is your right as a Child of [insert what an agnost says instead of God] but Core-Power Yoga is not for punks. And you can tell every down-dogger you know while you are surfing out your warrior that I said so.

My hair is growing out now, by the way. It’s at the awkward length where I need a hair band and three bobby pins to keep it off my neck. Maybe I am feeling more hopeful.

But I have something to say, and it’s important: I’ve done yoga off and on for years, and you know what I still haven’t gotten? The breath.

Breath: the fundamental tenant of yoga, wait a minute, the fundamental tenant of life! But I can’t time it right; I exhale when I cat and inhale when I cow and forget to breathe while I am somewhere in wheel pose, if I even dare. Still, I must be breathing because I haven’t died in a class yet.

Can concentrating on my breath really matter that much? Don’t comment, yogis, I already know what you’re going to sayvasana.

Abuelita: Last month we thought Abuelita was dying. I got a call from Clarita late at night that Clara Salquil Warrior Queen of Santa Clara La Laguna (and I do not exaggerate, she is the strongest woman I know and WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COWS, every woman you know is strong) to inform me that Abuelita was at death’s door. Even the strongest warrior queens leave us, especially when we need them to stay. Mortality has a way of calling us to the plate when the strongest and bravest of us pass on to [insert whatever an agnostic is supposed to say for the afterlife].

I wished, as I lifted weights in the *warmth,* that I believed in God so that I could send all of my buena vibra, mis suplicaciones, to save this woman or at least keep her from suffering. I wondered if this dip in her health was the response of a frail, petite 90-year old body to the COVID vaccine, but when her sickness went on for over two weeks, where at times she was not even speaking, I was sure it was not vaccine related.

And it was in front of that yoga mirror, I wondered if Abuelita was taking her last breath while I breathed heavily.

But still, I’m not even breathing right. My mind is scattered willy-nilly as I move through the poses: my attention gets snagged on how the teacher pronounces two in a peculiar way every time she counts down, and I notice the waifish waistline of the woman to my left and then there’s the hustle of the yoga warrior to my right who always eyes her abs in the mirror. Oh shoot, Amber got a shout-out. Where is my SHOUT-OUT! This is my first week!! Okay, I got a shout-out. I am obviously not focused on the breath.

Well, friends, all of this is going to connect, I assure you: hair, Abuelita, yoga and breath. (And if it doesn’t, are you gonna put the fun in refund? Sit yo’self down!)

I just stepped on a flight to Los Angeles, destination Tucson. To take a break from the computer, I pulled out the book Mi Viaje Sin Ti. One of the best humans in the whole world, a friend who will be embarrassed if I say her name so I won’t, sent me this gift of a book sometime last July when that world ended (you remember the one? from earlier?). If she knew what a gift she was sending, I hope she would have hugged herself 5 times for all the times this book has hugged me.

The book is by Alejandro Sequera and written in Spanish, a language as romantic as English is utilitarian. He is a poet. What’s more, reading his work in my second language makes every line double-poetry. As a visitor to Spanish, I encounter words flavored differently and it ignites the layers of meaning I hadn’t considered. Then I meet new words that I am a stranger to. Plus, the author Sequera is an artist of language.

His journey with loss (of a relationship, and the death of a dear friend) makes me feel seen in my own grief.
He writes:
Entre tantas tristezas conocí a alguien que tiñó de alegría mis colores grises.
In the midst of such sadness I met someone who painted happiness of my layers of gray (again, not a professional translator).

I am going to share other lines that spoke to my corners of loss:

“Si tienes esto en tus manos, es porque decidiste realizar un viaje sin él, sin ella, sin nadie más.” p. 9 

“Quién me vaya a conocer, no quiero que me repare, no quiero que se convierta en la medicina que me hará torpe después, quiero curarme yo solo, saber que puedo hacerlo, no quiero volverme dependiente de alguien consumiendo el placebo de la estabilidad.” p. 11

“Quiero conocer personas con ganas de sembrar amor en cada esquina en la que se paren” p. 12

It is when I read these words that I breathe deeply, using the air through my lungs to calm me, because if I don’t I will start to cry on this plane. There is nothing wrong with crying but I am wearing make-up and sometimes it isn’t worth the mess.

“Me gusta soñar despierto, sabes por qué? Porque… sé que existen personas bonitas, llenas de vida y son esas las que te inspiran a seguir… Esa gente es la que mejora el mundo.” p. 12

One of my favorites: “Nadie nos dice con exactitud el tiempo que dura el después del después.” p. 14

“Hay amores fugaces y otros que parecen eternos. A mí me ha tocado el fugaz, solo espero que el eterno, pronto llegue y se pose en mi vida, moldee mi esperanza y arrebate de mis ojos el miedo” p. 16

And as I read the words of loss, acceptance and joy, I realize somewhere over Nevada that I am not ready to visit some important places in my past, not yet, because I know there are people there who matter to me more than I want them to. And until those feelings fossilize more, I won’t return.

La luna me dijo: The moon said to me
Si quieres yo te abrazo, If you want I’ll hug you
Te arrebato y te amo. Squeeze you and love you
Yo le respondí: I responded to her:
Quiero que me ames, I want you to love me,
pero no es hora, aún no. But it isn’t the right time, not yet.
Estoy aprendiendo a hacerlo yo mismo. I am learning to love myself.

So, I could sit here and retype this whole book for all its glory. But I won’t. The author suffered through the experiences and, in that, he carved out the space to write them. The writing is the easy part (which I believe even on the hardest day of writing). The living is the hard part. Believe me, writing about yoga is a hell of a lot easier, Lord God [uh, whatever an agnostic says here] than sweating it out. Or maybe it’s just a different hard: writing and living. Either way, there is breath for both.

BUT I made a promise to you, my loyal reader, or perhaps my new friend, that I would tie all of this together. So here it is:

I have been in a slow panic this year, grieving my aunts’ deaths (which I have mentioned), embracing a new career as my hair grows back in, in a city where I am making a new life in a country I am pretty sure I don’t want to live in, or belong to, most days.

I have been trying to crawl out of the panic.
I know that the answer is to love myself. They say it’s all about self-love, all the prophets and Celine Dion. And I am figuring out that self-love is such a struggle (beyond the obvious struggle that it just is) because I grew up in a religion that taught me to fear myself, not trust myself (for I am flesh and the flesh will lead you astray) and certainly not love myself. Love is the work of the Lord, after all. But I have looked under nooks and crannies and I don’t find the Lord. I. Just. Don’t. Certainly not in the traditional model that I was taught (which was not considered traditional by any of its practitioners, mind you).

So, me toca self love. That’s it. I will say no to the moon porque estoy aprendiendo a hacerlo yo mismo.

So no wonder, I haven’t gotten the breath right. The breath is the most important part, and yet, I am distracted by the sensation of stretching my limbs and clenching my booty and competing with the person on the mat to my right. Love is practice, love is discipline, love is breathing into the difficult spaces and deeming them worthy (I think).

“No lo olvides, para crecer tendrás que perder unas cuantas cosas, personas y lugares. No tengas miedo, estás creciendo.” p. 19
Don’t forget, to grow you have to lose some things. Don’t be afraid, you are growing.

To all those supporting me on my journey, as I hope to support you, breathe.

And for your viewing pleasure, other stops on my hair journey.