many returns
on coming back home and to ourselves again and again
This winter, I returned.
I returned home to Pittsburgh, my childhood hometown, the place of my birth and my growing up.
I returned home to Kripalu, a spiritual home that has shaped me.
I returned home to myself.
I returned home, to Costa Rica.
On Monday, I return to work.
I am thinking about the places our lives orbit around, the places we return to, again and again, on what it means to go back, and who we are when we do.
First I returned to Pittsburgh. It was the first time since my mom’s memorial. Too often, in my adult years, it feels like my Pittsburgh returns are for funerals. Maybe there have only been two, but it feels like too many. This trip, I wanted to go because I really didn’t want the next time to be for another funeral. I wanted it to be fun. I wanted it to be just a visit, just because. Because it is always home, because it is where I’m from.
Returning home to a place we knew well but haven’t lived in for a long time feels like a dream. In a dream, things are not often what they seem. “It was my house, but it wasn’t my house…” When I return to Pittsburgh, this is always how it feels. It feels like a waking dream, things oddly familiar yet changed, slightly out of place. Having not lived there for over twenty years at this point, and only returning every couple of years, things are always different when I return. Places where I spent a long time, years of my life, have completely transformed, yet not so much that I can’t see the shadow of what used to be there (or in most cases, what wasn’t there).
On the school grounds where I went to elementary school, where we used to have field day and run the mile for the Presidential fitness test, there is now a bright shiny huge health facility. At the intersection of the local bar where I used to work as the karaoke-singing waitress, there is a massive shopping center and a new restaurant called Dive Bar. I worked in the actual dive bar but this place appears to be masquerading as one, an upscale version of the family-run establishment where I came into young adulthood.
Then there is the part where I pass places that have shown up in my dreams. I often dream of sites from my childhood - my old house, or the intersection by the elementary school, or Middle Road which we drove down every day on the way to school. I pass these places that I remember and which have shown up in my sleeping life in the intervening time.
We circle past our old house. “It’s my house, but it’s not my house…” Someone is in the garage so we drive past quickly, not wanting to alarm them or draw attention. There is a single white plastic chair in the middle of the front lawn where we used to play catch and put on theatrical performances for the whole neighborhood during summertime. Where we used to catch fireflies. The chair looks out of place in the vast lawn. Why is it there? I imagine there is a man who sits and drinks a beer by himself on that chair, which is puzzling because there is a beautiful back porch facing the woods, private, with a swing, a wonderful place to drink a beer by oneself if ever there was one. I make up stories about these people who must live there now, the house where I grew up, where our family lived for over twenty years.
Places where I used to be able to navigate in the dark blindfolded, I no longer have any sense of where I am. A faint past knowing permeates but remains elusive. Recognizable, yet so different. Dreamy.
Things are the same, but not the same.
We are the same, but not the same.
My teacher, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, talks about how we are both the same and not the same at the same time. Both are true. This is the nature of interbeing when understood from the point of view of no separate self - that as a human being, we are an everchanging non-static flow of spiritual materiality connected to everything else in existence (past, present, and future). In his book No Death, No Fear, he writes
Am I yesterday’s me?
I have a photograph of myself when I was a boy of sixteen. Is it a photograph of me? I am not really sure. Who is this boy in the photograph? Is it the same person as me or is it another person? Look deeply before you reply.
There are many people who say that the boy in the photograph and I are the same. If that boy is the same as I am, why does he look so different? Is that boy still alive or has he died? He is not the same as I am and he is also not different. Some people look at that photograph and think the young boy there is no longer around.
A person is made of body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness, and all of these have changed in me since that photograph was taken. The body of the boy in the photograph is not the same as my body, now that I am in my seventies. The feelings are different, and the perceptions are very different. It is just as if I am a completely different person from that boy, but if the boy in the photograph did not exist, then I would not exist either.
I am a continuation like the rain is the continuation of the cloud. When you look deeply into the photograph, you can see me already as an old man. You do not have to wait fifty-five years.
I return to these places, the same and not the same. A continuation of my past selves. I bow to these past selves, who are still in me, yet also not me.
Then I returned to Kripalu, a spiritual home.
In 2006, I spent a month at Kripalu in their residential intensive yoga teacher training (YTT). Twenty-seven years old at the time, I felt woefully inexperienced to be a yoga teacher, and yet had a steady daily practice of about 7 years at that point and had a desire to learn to share the practice. I was at a juncture point in life, which I luckily sensed was a rare opportunity. I had returned to the US from the Peace Corps, had finished working at the Idaho ranch where I had spent the previous year and a half, and didn’t know my next steps. The path was open with many possibilities, and I realized this was a chance to do this training. I applied and was accepted, and that October, I packed up all my worldly possessions into my 1992 purple RAV4 with racing stripes - nicknamed Grimace because it looked like the McDonald’s character - and drove from the Sawtooth mountains to western Massachusetts as the autumn leaves began to turn.
I chose Kripalu because in college, after falling in love with yoga practice, my cousin recommended the book Yoga and the Quest for the True Self by Stephen Cope. He talked about the mindfulness of chopping vegetables in the Kripalu kitchen, of selfless service, of going there for a retreat and never leaving. I loved this book and I knew I had to go there. In 2006, it was a pilgrimage, a homecoming to a home I had not yet visited.
YTT was a pivotal month, a life-altaring month. I deepened my yoga practice. I made some friendships and connections I still hold dear today. I finally learned to sit and meditate, something I had been trying to teach myself for years with little guidance beyond books. And I learned to teach, and as I returned, I realized this was my first teacher training. I thought about how much being a Kripalu yoga teacher, even though I am not actively teaching yoga anymore, has informed how I teach everything, who I am as a teacher, and how I orient to teaching, learning, and education.
I had returned once before, in 2015, to attend a Stephen Cope workshop on his then-latest book, The Great Work of Your Life (another favorite, on the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita). I had won a gift certificate in a Kripalu referral program raffle, without which I would not have been able to attend. Utterly broke, going through a divorce, and grieving the loss of the relationship, the gift certificate facilitated a time of deep healing. I had the chance to learn from and meet Stephen, and as he signed my well-trodden book with multiple layers of highlighting and dog-eared pages (which delighted him to no end), I was able to tell him how much his words had meant to me. That they had brought me to Kripalu and brought me back again. That he had changed my life and I was grateful. He was gentle and kind, humble, and genuinely touched.
This winter, I returned, for R&R time, their self-guided rest and relaxation retreat where you can attend anything on the schedule. It was my first solo retreat since Daphne was born nearly 6 years ago. I reconnected with 27-year old Steph, who was there looking for direction, and 34-year old Steph, who was grieving and healing. I reconnected with pre-motherhood Steph, who was able to spend ample time in solitude and who maintained regular retreating as a core part of her personal practice. I believed they all both be proud of 44-year old Steph, the international peace professor, writer, scholar, enchantress, and mother, 44-year old Steph who is finding herself again.
I returned to Kripalu, I returned to myself.
Meditation practice, at its heart, is about returning. It is about coming back to the breath (or whatever object you are using as your focus of attention), again and again. In meditation practice, we gently guide our attention to return to the breath when it has strayed, as it will stray.
This is the point. To return.
To return to the present moment, again and again and again.
To return to yourself, again and again and again.
Returning to Pittsburgh and Kripalu, I am thinking about the places and people I orbit around, places that I loop back around in my life over years. This is one of the gifts of midlife, these returns. That you have a long enough view that you can see these places and people who you circle back around. That you have the time to circle back and return.
As I write, I am preparing to return to work after three glorious weeks off, returning, returning.
I am not sure how to prepare.
On Saturday, I take my first bike ride of the year. I ride my bike to the cafe across from campus, because when I think about what I want to do with a few free hours while I have a babysitter, I want to go for a ride and get a coffee and write. I choose to go across from work because I love it. As I ride, I contemplate how I get to ride my bike to do work that I love on a beautiful path that nourishes me, and that these are no small things in this life.
I remember how much I love my work. I love my students, my colleagues, the campus. I get to do work that aligns my gifts and ethics and passions. That I can ride my bike and walk to work and there’s a vegetarian cafe across the street. I have been around long enough with enough jobs under my belt to know this is no small thing, that these windows of work-life-heart alignment are rarities, and I am truly grateful for the conditions that have brought me here and let me stay here.
I return, having reconnected with home, with myself.
I return, with my renewed aspirations, dedication, and focus.
I return with clarity around what needs doing, and what really does not.
I return anchored to this place, yet tethered in my heart to the many places and people that are a part of me.
In each moment, I bring them all.
In each moment, a continuation.
Thank you for this beautiful reflection on self and returning. I think about my life in the US as what was and what wasn't. The ability to temporarily slip back into that life like a well-worn pair of Birkenstocks is a privilege. And that this latest visit was one of much-needed rest and reconnection.
Oh Steph… this resonates on so many levels. Thank you for sharing.