“Ms. Meredith!” A fiery force of a four-year-old flashes by my side. She swings a well-adventured unicorn backpack down onto the lunch table and proclaims, “Where have you been? I love you.”
I break open.
She’s a comet of enlightenment, like all these preschool students, brilliant rays of aliveness awe-awakening me back into the present moment.
Where I have been?
Not here, sadly.
I’ve been brooding all morning. I’ve been nursing hurts through projecting judgments. I’ve been analyzing instead of allowing the feeling. I’ve been retaliating to what-is through mental resistance, and that’s launched me out of body, out of relaxing into the flow.
This tiny guru arrives at my elbow right when I’m darkly immersed in moody expectations, right when I’m distracted in ruminations. With a burst of affection and a commanding question, she swiftly pulls me into rejoining the scene of a preschool lunch that always moves so sweetly, so slowly.
I delight in watching the unhurried and deliberate enjoyment of each blueberry, the precise bites and thoughtful chews of neatly sliced turkey sandwiches. Even the innovative decision to dunk pretzel sticks into an apple juice box enthralls me.
I savor the scene, in being present with the students who are my teachers. I come home to the purposeful motions of lunch, to feet pressing into the spring dirt beneath the picnic table, the warm brush of sun. I soften back into a body that I practice embodying, because I easily exist in the esoteric, the ethereal plane, the space enriched with intuition, visions, dreams.
When I land back in my body, when I breathe gently and fully, I also come home to the undercurrent of stress, to feeling the stream of anxiety that I react to and the reaction rockets me up into my head. And in the mind, I just analyze and problem-solve instead of feeling, allowing, accepting and working with what-is, which is the remedy I need to gather the information and with body-wise intelligence proceed.
Where have I been?
The question trails behind me, and my body demands that I answer it, because my body will not let me betray myself, because the body breathes truth, and it’s an unfiltered truth I can hear when I pause and attend to the needs of my inner child.
And in case I don’t linger long enough in a pause and give my inner child the proper and generous attention she needs, my body sends the message with a sudden eruption of allergies. I weave around the bungalow in fits of sneezes and sniffles that finally pushes me to rest.
Where have you been? I love you.
The allergies actualize the tantrum I haven’t granted myself permission to throw. I’m allergic to a certain work environment that confines, confuses, where I consciously dim to become less of a target for critiques and unwarranted slews of advice.
The tantrum takes shape like a memory that is not a memory but a story told to me about me so often that it has become a memory.
I’m four and I yank all my beloved books onto the floor.
My mother misses the silent ransacking of cherished stories, and walks in after the rage, but she immediately reads what my four-year-old self is communicating and gets me out of that preschool.
My preschool memories are not borrowed stories. These scattering of early education events remain vivid and real.
In preschool, the teacher reprimands me for taking one stair at a time instead of two, for playing with the pieces of a board game instead of following the rules of the board game.
The lessons downloaded include the following: you will be punished for being different, you will be punished for going at your own pace that does not match the preferred and productive pace.
In preschool, the teacher lifts my dress up in front of the class and smacks my bum, because I am wearing diapers as underwear.
In silence, I slam my books to the floor.
My parents discerned the message and honored my wishes through prompt removal and mindful choosing of where to place me next.
Now, I need to discern the message, trust the message, and take the action my inner child needs to feel safe in authentic expressiveness, in relaxed being.
This environment mirrors my preschool and reflects the walking-on-eggshells sensation of being splashed with a judgment.
My reaction is to withdraw, to question my instincts, and be coated in an anxiety that places the emphasis on staying out of trouble with my authority figures instead of exuding a presence that nurtures support and connection and sweet empowerment to the children.
And this tonic of presence I give to myself.
I am here.
I hear you.
I thank you, because you speak up for my truest and nonnegotiable needs.
So now I’m the adult and take the steps necessary to protect and ensure wellbeing.
Where have you been? I love you.
Staying present is an act of love.
I know that my students, in yoga and in the preschool, simply and profoundly require my presence. This is the teaching. The words, the actions follow from there. In presence, there’s the accessibility of gentleness and bravery to meet life as it is, and the listening informs the clarity on how to continue when the time feels right to act, to speak.
And I keep relearning and relearning that I can only offer energy when I have tenderly and courageously accepted and nourished my own well of being.
Throw the fit. I will love you through it. I won’t abandon you. I won’t abandon myself.
Where have you been?
I’m back, and waves of thanks for the reminder, to come home, to be here.
I love you. I’m here for you. Let’s eat those strawberries and goldfish with such reverence that we stay closer and closer to the present, to being a grounded and embodied presence.