Kari Wilson's Story - Finding Belonging

It was another Wednesday, after school, I was tired. It had been a long, long day teaching middle school. But it wasn’t just another Wednesday like any other. On this Wednesday, early, while most of us were still asleep, my friend and co-worker of many years, died. She was young, she was a mother and a talented teacher, she was a widow too early, her husband killed violently just a few years earlier. 

She was my hero in her courageous battle with cancer. And now she was gone.

The reality of death always feels impossible. I just can’t wrap my brain around the finality, the waste. So I sat in the back yard. I breathed, a lot, and I heard Dana’s voice saying, as she does most Wednesdays, “The hardest part is showing up.” I wanted to crawl under a blanket and just go to sleep. I didn’t want to think about life and death and the meaninglessness of it all. I didn’t want to miss my friend.
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I knew yoga and especially yoga with Dana and the lovely members of EmbodyGR would help. So, I dragged my sad self downtown where my community, Embody GR, lifted me up. I was peaceful in my quiet practice. Alone in my thoughts and sadness as I needed to be, but not alone in the physical world and we breathed. Breathing in unison, breath and movement, breathing and being, not one, alone, but many becoming one. That is belonging. And sometimes that is just enough and sometimes that is everything.