Pandemic Journal 12/2/22: The Bridge – what yoga means to me

Yoga means โ€œto yokeโ€, to join, to bridge. โ€œOnly connectโ€, wrote novelist E M Forester when I read his famous novel Howardโ€™s End in my first undergraduate English class in 1969. My professor said: Only connect. For me, now โ€จmore than fifty years later, โ€จyogaโ€™s connections expand into a rejuvenation โ€จof the body and the mind. Yoga means holding out for more. Not giving up or giving in. It means giving up. Giving in. Yoga means sensual pleasure โ€จand the erotic spring. It means contemplative disembodied reflection. Yoga means somewhere between these spacesโ€จof opposition -โ€จan ease in whatever emerges.

Pandemic Journal 3/8/2020 โ€” Thunderstruck! (a letter to my daughter on her birthday)

My often privileged life is long enough to have had many ups and downs over almost seventy years including navigating the unevenly distributed challenges of this global pandemic. My daughter is the highlight of my life well-lived. I am grateful for the gifts of adoption, for the lifetime of love that ties us together.