This piece is a major hit to my ego. I'll start with that. It comes after a yoga session that was particularly inspiring, one in which our instructor, a beautiful, delicate woman sporting chopped white hair and silver eyes, spoke to us in her breathy voice and asked us to consider letting go of judgement.
I won't lie to you, as I quivered violently in my best attempt at Lotus Pose in a swatch of spring morning sun, I thought to myself "Listen, lady, I'm just trying to get through this day." I wasn't in the mood for an hour-long yoga class early in the morning; I wasn't digging her daily soul-searching pep-talk. To be perfectly honest, I wanted to bend and flex my way out of that sunny yoga studio packed with colorful mats and heavy breathing.
Okay, so I was having a bad day.
As many of you know, I try my best to stay positive no matter what. It's really important to me that despite what is going on in my life, I remain optimistic. However, on this particular Tuesday morning, I was feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and pissed. That morning, I had an argument with my mother over the phone that left us both in a dark mood.
I was absolutely positive, as usual, that I was right and she was wrong. My mother and I actually have a history of not getting along. We are extremely close now, but growing up, it was never easy for us to communicate. We have almost opposite opinions of nearly everything: style, boys, how to properly make a bed. As a teenager, I found it difficult to talk to her about most things.
More importantly, I had unrealistic expectations of her growing up. I expected the cookie-cutter, stay-at-home, sunshine-all-day mothers I saw in Disney Channel movies. My mother is a beautiful human being, but she also works full-time and she didn't have time for the kind of over-the-top mother-daughter activities I saw on TV. She had time for late night talks and early morning goodbyes. She was strict and could tell if I was lying every single time. While my friends were able to get away with most rebellious teenage shenanigans, my mother raised me to know that if I ever tried to "pull a fast one" (one of her favorite phrases), I was destined for an early grave. Therefore, we spent a lot of time fighting about my inability to do the sorts of things my friends were doing.
However, as I sat in the mid-morning light on a random Tuesday in April, my yoga instructor said something that changed me.
"When you have conflict, let go of judgement and consider this: perhaps you are reflecting anger instead of a desire to fix things."
I stood on my bright green yoga mat in some convoluted pose or other, my eyes closed and my body shaking, and realized that maybe she was right. Maybe it wasn't my mom who caused conflicts between us; maybe it wasn't that she didn't understand me all those years—it was that I was radiating negative, angry energy every time we spoke.
My mother is delicate. She absorbs other people's energy and she can be sensitive. I'm a little more hardy—it takes a lot for me to actually become offended. I began to realize that perhaps she was reacting to my negative energy and not my word, and that that was why we struggled to communicate.
After this realization, I called her and apologized. I told her that I was wrong; I was being difficult and petulant. For those of you who are not as stubborn as me, just know that admitting to someone that you were wrong (especially when you still have the argument rolling around your mind) is incredibly difficult.
I came out of that yoga session with an understanding: it's time for me to change. I need to let go of my anger and try to understand what my mother is trying to communicate to me. I think that's something we can all learn to do better.
