Well this is tender. We’ve arrived on Vancouver Island. The ocean feels like home, and Leif already has a best friend next door. There’s something very grounding about walking along the ocean knowing this is now a permanent (ish) home I’ve dreamt of since I was a little girl. And still, I find myself sitting in quiet moments with a lump in my throat, fully aware of a truth: I miss Whitehorse. I miss the community we built, the people who held us. And I’m so excited to be back in a place where so many students of mine have waited for my return.
Two things can be true. I can feel ridiculously happy to be here—and still be grieving the loss of what we left behind.
For weeks I’ve been trying to write about it, but everything came out like a highlight reel or a rushed attempt to make sense of the complexity. Until I remembered the story of Shiva and the nectar of compassion — drinking poison to save the world, holding it at the upper palette, neither swallowing it nor spitting it out.
This, I think, is what it means to live with emotional honesty. To hold what’s hard without becoming it. To feel joy without pretending grief doesn’t also live here.
There’s a kind of Jalandhara Bandha of the heart that I’ve been learning to practice lately. It’s the act of holding—gently, bravely—the ache of change without collapsing into shame or guilt, or handing that ache off to someone else. Our culture teaches us only to be rational and to bypass what is tricky because we fear we’ll get stuck there forever. But the truth is, we sit in meditation not blaming it in and not blaming it out so that we can hold space for the entirety of our experience – not just the socially acceptable parts of us. It’s the willingness to sit longer than you normally do. And in doing so, we can love all of ourselves.
People ask me how I’m doing, and I don’t always know how to answer. “We love it,” I say, and we do. But also, I’m still digesting the goodbyes. I’m still learning what this version of me needs. And that takes time.
I’ve always believed that yoga prepares us for these moments—not just to breathe or stretch, but to stay. To stay with whatever’s real. To stay with our own contradictions.
So if you’re moving through something that doesn’t make sense yet, I want to say this clearly: two things can be true. You can be full of joy and still tender with grief. You can be brave and scared. Rooted and unraveling. You don’t need to choose just one.
I’m here. I’m happy. I’m grieving. And I trust that all of this belongs.
With love,
Darci
Founder, Amitié