Last night I found myself putting Ada to sleep in the same bed we were in the night my pregnancy ended. As I lay there, images of that night washing over and through me, I realized it was March 29. 8 months.

Waves of memory and emotion threatened to pull me under, pull me back into the past. I began to feel an ache in my side where my placenta – Ben’s life force – pulled away from its home. I saw myself in the bathroom, the clot the size of an orange, the bleeding that wouldn’t stop. I remembered getting in the car and wondering if I should call an ambulance, then deciding I would make it to the hospital alive. I remembered the flash of empty road and street lights against the dark as I called my husband, then the Labor & Delivery nurses to let them know I was coming. I remembered the security guard who thought my friend was my husband and smiled his congratulations as he held the door. My vision blurred and I remembered to breathe. I remembered the promise made to my daughter’s sleeping body, Mama will be back.

And I am. I am here for her, for my husband, for myself. I am here for life, in its totality, for as long as I can stay. I am older, wiser, more gray, more myself, and more grateful than I could have believed possible.

All moments are beautiful, only you have to be receptive and surrendering. All moments are blessings, only you have to be capable of seeing. All moments are benedictions. If you accept with a deep gratitude, nothing ever goes wrong. – Osho

It is important to recognize who you are, without being too egotistical or too humble. It is the two-fold problem of being all you can be. Many of you have not developed a picture of power that you would want to emulate. Many of your images and role models of powerful people come from those who have abused and misused their influence. Therefore, many of you have held back from using your power, because the images you hold of it are negative.

It is important to develop positive pictures about the nature of power.

Many of you are very evolved, have much inner sight and wisdom and are looking for ways to express it in the outer world. Learn to tell the difference between those people who are truly influential and full of light and those who only wear the cloak of power. This skill will assist you on your path of joy for it will also help you to recognize your own nobility…..It is important to recognize people who are full of light, for they come in many forms and packages. And it is time to be aware of those people who are not leading you to a path of greater light and joy. If you can clearly identify those people who have your greatest good in mind, and surround yourself with them, you will grow more rapidly and have much more to offer others.

Evolved people are very gentle souls. Some evolved souls do not yet recognize who they are, and may be too humble. They  are most often generous, helpful, and friendly. It may seem as if they cannot do enough for you. I am talking about a certain level of development where the personality does not yet recognize the level of the soul. Many of you are too humble, still wearing the cloak of self-doubt, of wondering who you are. You who are so kind and loving are full of light; you have so much to offer the world. It is important for you to take off your veil, for it hinders you in serving on a larger scale.

– from Living with Joy, by Sanaya Roman

When my friend and Kundalini yoga teacher Sat Nishan Kaur read this in class, it brought tears to my eyes. Sometimes hearing the things we already know, in a new way, or from a different voice, can crack us wide open to ourselves. I am sharing this excerpt tonight just in case someone else needs to hear it.

Take off your veil. Share your light. The world needs you.

The grief is pouring out of me like early days.

I don’t sleep well. I wake up tired, spent. I am unhappy, uncomfortable, as though I am the princess and there is a pea hidden under my skin. My patience is worn, my smile forced. Finally I take a moment to sit, to breathe, to feel where in my body I hurt. The hole in my heart has reopened – not that it was closed, but perhaps scabbing over. Its blackness yawns. I stumble into the bathroom and sob, quietly, so as not to disturb the morning too much. I go inside, ask my heart what will heal it today. I get answers – simple ones. Connect to your husband. Laugh with your daughter. Clean your house. Write. Dance. Stand with your toes at the ocean’s edge and scream – let it out, let it go.

Grief is a personal journey. It doesn’t follow a linear path. I didn’t want to climb this mountain again, but here I go. Maybe it will be easier this time. And I remember, the view from the top is breath taking.

When I chose the word ease to embody 2011, what I was secretly hoping for was easy. I wanted to close the door on 2010 and prance into a field of flowers, with showtunes playing and everyone smiling all the time. I wanted to know the money would come, the pain would go, and that I could just float for a while, recovering.

Yup. Easy.

No such luck.

I have opened the Pandora’s box of healing. One thing has led to another and another and another – physical, emotional, mental, spiritual – all begging to be taken out into the light, looked at and let go. 5 years from now when I look back at 2010 I will see it as the year my world shifted on its axis. I have a feeling that 2011 will be the year of adjustment, the year that the shift became reality, became me. Which is anything but easy.

And oh wow, am I learning about ease.

Easy wouldn’t have kept me growing, wouldn’t have forced the healing, wouldn’t have pushed me harder and farther than I thought I wanted to go. Easy could have been handed to me on a silver platter and I would have enjoyed it immensely, but ease is up to me. Ease will take me from seed to flower, because it’s about my level of trust, my faith in myself and the world around me. Ease is about sleeping peacefully with earthquake and tsunami predictions and an ocean 100 yards from my bed. Ease is trusting that I will wake up in the morning when the anxiety I don’t even know that I’m feeling is pounding in my chest. Ease is knowing that if I don’t wake up, those who love me will be okay. Ease is focusing on the weight lost and the health gained, not the ache in my neck and the numbers still to go. Ease is living with gratitude for all that I have been given, when I’m being pounded by grief and swallowed whole by anger. Ease is letting go of the story that has held me together and held me back, without having a new one to tell.

Ease does not come easily for me.

It’s what I asked for and here I am, in the thick of learning it, trusting I will come out the other side. Eventually.