Reverb10: December 29

Defining moment. Describe a defining moment or series of events that
has affected your life this year.

I've been drawn my whole life to a lifestyle that I can't seem to get to, but in July I gave myself a birthday gift that ended up being the perfect "taste" of the lifestyle I dream about. It was a day-long Yoga Retreat, in a lovely country setting, complete with thunderstorms and vegan food. Having longed for a sort of "crunchy, hippie, 1960s" sort of existence (I grew up a couple of years behind the real hippies, graduating high school in 1974) instead I focused on being a feminist and not doing the "traditional female roles" of teacher, nurse. I went into a field that was "up and coming for women" and supposedly better paying (accounting) only to realize I was miserable. But it took me years to get my degrees, and I wasn't about to do an about-face in my last semester of night school when the realization hit me like a ton of bricks! I became a Yuppie, instead, and let my fantasies transport me to a "back to the land" lifestyle of growing my own food and herbs, practicing yoga, and then morphing some of each into a kind of eco-feminism (which I still believe in). This was easier when I lived with my mother, as I had the time, and the land to practice "part-time farmer." I was also younger, and stronger. :)

But that day in July 2010, amongst like-minded women, breathing in the rain-drenched air from the wildflower garden thru the windows of the studio, practicing Sun Salutations and trying to follow ahimsa in not over-doing and hurting myself, I realized that this is the world I am best suited for, happiest in. And so I found myself inspired to include more yoga, more cooking with local ingredients and fewer animal products. I no longer have the land or the time to "farm" nor even enough light where I am to grow herbs in a pot (my cats would eat them indoors!).

I have accepted that I can only enjoy such days sporadically, tho' at least I account for a non-profit that does good works - and I do at least take comfort in that. So am finally practicing ahimsa that way...

It is a process, this learning to live the life we wish to live and provoking the changes we'd like to see in the world.