Gratefulness on a sunny morning with a cup of chai

For a couple of weeks now, I've been thinking of this quote from Donna Farhi that I heard from my amazing yoga teacher:

We establish a calm abiding center, not to fortify ourselves against the chaos of life, but to help us become resilient, tolerant, and accepting of the inevitable, perplexing, and often agonizing losses we all go through.

I was thinking of this quote when I started this post three weeks ago, sitting in an almost-packed-up house, taking stock.
The starting of that old post read:

After a year in Cornfield University in a Midwestern Town, I'm moving back South. (When I say it that way -when I say 'moving back' - there is a finality and irreversiblity to the move that I haven't been admitting aloud). In the last two something weeks, I've nursed a persistent cold, submitted papers, graded, dealt with belligerent, entitled, spring-fevered students, and planned my move. Along the way, I've come so close to giving up and running away, changing my name and getting a fake passport.
That I'm sitting down in a nearly empty kitchen this morning, baking these delicious End of Semester Scones and sipping a chai in a dixie cup merits much patting-on-the-back and many congratulations, yeah?
And especially given that this comes in the wake of a personally and professionally horrifying year, I'm glad that I'm still here*.

And in three weeks (which, admittedly, is a small speck of time in the cosmic scheme of things), I'm still thinking of the idea of a calm, abiding center. This time, I'm sitting in a nearly-unpacked house.


This has been a year of great loss and large dollops of change.
But, it has also been a year for learning - learning my own needs and limitations, learning to let go and to ask for help**.


And so, I'm taking this moment to be (somewhat publicly) thankful for friends (old and new - some of you are reading this, even***) who've been wonderful teachers. For you, I'm very, very grateful.

I plan on spending the next two months unwinding and continuing some of this practice.
I'll be around, I'm sure. So, until I get back to my next post - may you find your own center and may you receive the kind of nurturing support that I have in this past year.

*I know, it's only mid-year. And that makes this an awkward time for end-of-year reflections. But, I'm clocking May-to-May, here.
**Seriously, there's no way, that I could have gone through this past year alone.
***Poor Baker, Witches - I'm looking at y'all. DH, I'm also looking at you.