by Saeeda Hafiz
I felt good about our agreement. Leaving, I knew two things: One, I could only be me and do what I knew. Two, doing something I had never done before, I was about to discover a me that I hadn’t known existed.
* * *
I was comfortable during my first week at Craig’s house. But at night I had some fearful thoughts. Is this place really safe? My adult self understood that the child in me experienced violent traumas at night, but it didn’t stop me from being afraid to sleep in new places. I feared that an old memory would be triggered, or worse that I would relive it with someone else.
Then I thought about what Ted, my mentor at the bank, had said about moving in with someone who would murder me. I knew that I was taking a risk, but I still wanted to live out my plan to be a chef.
So I decided to get down to business. I challenged myself to follow all of my training in developing seasonally balanced meals for healing. For an entire year, I experimented with not repeating the same dinner menu twice. Also, Craig and I discussed what foods would specifically help him heal based on his macrobiotic consultations for his cancer, and I happily researched new twists on healthy meal planning. Cooking became increasingly fascinating, and I liked to see the results of healthy eating. Being fully present with food preparation and cooking simpler meals put me more in touch with the characteristics of each food and the relationship between foods. My main study with food came from macrobiotics, but the basic food concepts that I learned at Sivananda were also in accordance with what I was practicing. Sivananda emphasizes that a yogi’s attitude toward food should be “eat to live, not live to eat,” and also that a yogi should consider both her knowledge of food and her internal experiences so that she can create the most positive effect on the body and mind while minimizing harm to other beings—practicing ahimsa. The best way to support the Earth is to eat a diet that creates the best you in body, mind, and spirit. I loved that philosophy when I first learned it, and I still do.
I observed that I wasn’t being led by taste alone, although my taste buds were constantly being reawakened. My new labor-intensive cooking adventure made me feel like an alchemist in a laboratory, changing lead into gold for the body and soul.
I had felt robbed when I fully understood that most of our food is masked in salt, sugar, MSG, fats, and the like. As a macrobiotic chef, my tongue was being liberated to taste the true flavor of each food. Food was no longer bland, or good, or bad. It was a gripping experience in simultaneous subtlety and intensity.
Case in point, I discovered that millet possesses a nutty flavor with a sandy richness. I hadn’t realized that my tongue longed for such texture. I savored the plump sweetness of baked yams minus the brown sugar, marshmallows, and butter; I learned to taste the natural sugar of a hot baked yam. Chickpeas were soft pillows that calmed me down from a long day’s work. Steamed kale with lemon juice was a curly crunch of spring. Each dish stored potentially healing characteristics that could assist in arresting or reversing some serious illnesses.
“Cooking,” in the words of macrobiotic chef Cecil Tovah Levin, “is the highest art and the highest responsibility for human beings to take on. We have the power in our hands and in our kitchens to change our destiny.” It was also nice to hear Craig say each evening, “Wow, another great meal!” I realized that so many of us just don’t eat or appreciate the taste and energy of basic, simple, and fresh food.
Because of all the cooking I did for Craig, I took my lunch to work regularly. Within my first month of working at CARE International as their marketing database consultant, I had a few conversations like this one.
“What are you eating?”
“Millet, chickpeas, yams, and parsnips,” I said, failing to mention the sautéed collard greens and mixed vegetable soup still in my bag.
“What the hell is millet?”
“It’s a grain. It’s the same grain CARE feeds its recipients, you know like sorghum or rice.”
“Why are you eating it?” It sounded like a demand and not a question. “It’s good for us. B vitamins, fiber, and I think magnesium.”
My colleague gave me a blank look before marching back to his desk.
* * *
Four months into my CARE International job, I attended a daylong seminar, which meant a series of slideshows, lectures, and group discussions. This also meant we were sitting down most of the day, so I packed my food for the occasion.
At home, I’d eaten short grain brown rice mixed with some buckwheat groats cooked with raisins for breakfast. Good grains for the winter. On top of the warm cereal, I sprinkled some roasted sunflower seeds and drizzled a dollop of maple syrup. This sustained me quite nicely and kept me away from drinking coffee and eating pastries.
Midmorning at the seminar, I ate an apple while others finished the pastries.
For lunch, I had creamy carrot ginger soup from my thermos, garlicky black bean stew, brown rice, steamed greens, and a sea vegetable salad. For dessert, I made a kabocha squash pie with an oatmeal crust. I watched my workmates eat sandwiches, takeout, Lean Cuisine meals, frozen lasagna, or pizza.
Late afternoon, I snacked on my own mixture of almonds, dried cranberries, dried currants, nori sheets, peanuts, and plain popcorn.
It felt good to have my own tasty, nutrient-dense stash.
The next day, while strolling down the hallway, I heard someone call my name. I turned around. I saw a senior manager leaning out of her office doorway and gesturing for me to come into her office.
I walked back to her office, where she offered me a seat. I didn’t know what she wanted so I was a little nervous. My anxiety lessened when I saw the vulnerable look on her face.
“Saeeda, I hope this is not too personal, but yesterday I watched you eat your way through the entire seminar and you still look great. I mean, you’re nice and slim. What were you eating?”
I told her.
“Did you grow up eating that way?”
“No,” I said, reflecting back to my childhood and choosing not to blurt out every detail about how I had actually come to this cooking-yoga life. “I just wanted to make healthier choices and started really applying myself. Now I have a few private food and yoga clients.” I didn’t want to tell her that I was also doubling as a live-in chef. I wasn’t sure how that would go over in my corporate world.
“I want to start preparing better meals for my family. Can I hire you to consult for us?”
I was honored that she asked me to consult, and agreed to take her on as a client. I put together a comprehensive meal plan for her and her family with meal suggestions and strategies to help them incorporate healthier foods and eliminate not-so-healthy ones. At first it seemed so odd that she didn’t know how to do the very basics of cooking simple healthy food. I had to remind myself that I also had to learn the most basic cooking skills, too. If you don’t inherit food traditions from your parents, you have to acquire them a different way.
Still I was happy, especially since Ted, my banking mentor, had predicted that no one would want my food services. He was wrong. In addition to my consulting clients, my live-in client was proving to be kind. We didn’t spend lots of time together, but when we did, we had good conversations about religion, philosophy, and his latest stock investments.
Six months earlier, if you had told me that I could visualize something into a reality, I would have been skeptical. But there I was, in Hot-Lanta, the Black Mecca, cooking, teaching, managing a marketing database, and making some cool new friends.
In Pittsburgh, when I’d pursued my interests I was often the youngest and the only black one in the circle. But in Atlanta, it was not that way. In fact, there was always someone like me in the group. In Hot-Lanta, I felt like I could become anything, and anything, and anything.
* * *
In Atlanta, I had what I called a bike-pedaled life; I was going places but all the energy was coming from my ow
n legs in motion. I was busy, and I was meeting socially fabulous people: lawyers and professionals, CNN anchors and people in broadcasting, artists and playwrights, the Morehouse College men who started a raw-food vegan restaurant called Delights of the Garden, and Dr. William Richard, founder of the Atlanta Center of Preventive Medicine. I was always meeting, greeting, or entertaining someone. And I pedaled faster on my bike than I ever had before. In May 1994, I reached a fork in the road. My search for Rahima had dried up. I was torn, one foot in the corporate world and the other in the holistic health business world. I felt like I needed to give my full attention to one or the other.
I burned with curiosity, inspired by the thought, If you want to see what you are made of spiritually, start a business. I had always wanted to be a business owner and entrepreneur, but didn’t know if I had the fortitude and faith to succeed.
One day, I decided to take the leap of faith, and I went into CARE International and quit. Though it was a surprise to my coworkers, friends, and family, it was even more astonishing to me—for all the same reasons. I had put all of my efforts into creating this new life, which included a high-earning marketing database job. I had never been so consciously focused on my intentions and what I wanted to create. And I got most, if not all, of what I wanted. I was amazed that after seven short months I was willing to walk away from the corporate job. It had even paid me more than my old job at the bank, and I didn’t mind the work—at times, I’d really liked it. But I was listening to my inner voice, which by then was a trusted companion.
I didn’t know what my new life was going to be like, but it felt like the perfect time to take the leap. I was a live-in chef, so I did not have the typical rent worries. I had savings and I was only twenty-seven years old, which meant that I could fail royally and still have the rest of my life to pick myself up and try again, or just get another job. Either way, I wouldn’t live the rest of my life with the I-never-started-my-own-business regret. Also, I had no dependents; I just had uncharted Saeeda-territory to explore.
* * *
As last, both my feet were in the holistic health world. In fact, my to-do list easily buried me up to my eyebrows. Doubtful thoughts stabbed into my brain like darts thrown at a dartboard, with conversations like this playing constantly in my head:
“Do what you love, the money will follow.” “Will it? Will it really follow me?”
“You’re here to contribute your unique talents to the world.” “Am I really? Maybe I am just here to do nothing in particular.”
And the Chinese proverb, “Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.”
Well, I got it. In some kind of fashion, I got everything I wanted.
As a little girl of nine years old, I wanted to have my own business. When my friends were playing with dolls and playing house, I was playing office. I remember getting a calculator as a gift. This gift triggered infinite hours of play. I set up the calculator, an old unused Bell rotary telephone, and a notepad on a small wooden desk in our upstairs hallway. I would sit at the desk, pretend I was answering phone calls, and then give orders in a loud voice to the imaginary people who worked for me.
At eleven, I wanted to be a teacher, at fifteen, a psychologist, and at seventeen a computer programmer. But mostly I had always enjoyed sharing my knowledge, no matter what I imagined. I liked to teach.
Here’s where it got confusing. Sometimes I felt called to do something purposeful in life, something that had a greater meaning for the greater good. At other times I felt like I had to create my own life, and I wasn’t certain if anything mattered much at all. Spirituality gave me the opportunity for my life to become a living laboratory. As a living organism, I was challenged daily to become more of my true self, but without truly knowing where my limitations or true potential lay.
So when the mysterious voice in my very first yoga class predicted that I would one day teach yoga, it felt right to quit my job and go to an ashram. When I followed those New-Agey books and actually manifested the life I thought I wanted to live, I felt I must be on the right path. But the misconception was that it would be easy and joyous to do all that I wanted to do.
In reality, my calling, and my new life, was a different kind of hustle.
Most mornings I was up and out the door by 5:00 a.m. I’d teach my first yoga class at 6:30 a.m. Then I’d eat breakfast, food shop for the upcoming meals, and market my services to a prospective client, all before lunch. Next I’d teach a midday yoga class, have lunch, and prep the veggies for the few new dishes that I would make later. I’d take a short late-afternoon nap, and then I’d go and meet another client. After that client, I’d come home to eat dinner. Finally, I’d rest for a bit before heading out to my evening yoga class. I’d go to bed by 9:30 p.m. or 10:00 p.m. I liked what I was doing, but I felt that I was always doing it, and I didn’t like that. Was this really my calling? Had my life become the famous Buddhist quote, “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water?”
During one particular night, I was slow in getting ready to teach my private clients.
I sat in my room, pondering whether or not to cancel the evening’s yoga class. I must’ve looked just as worn out as the 1970s mauve blinds hanging in my bedroom window. I sat on my futon bed and stared toward the window, peeking between the blinds at the grass and my black Nissan Sentra, a purchase I’d had to make since commuting by bike in Atlanta was not really feasible, and thought, “What do I do for my clients, anyway?” Then, I slid down onto the mauve shag carpet and touched my toes in a forward bend and thought, “Isn’t it strange that people pay me to tell them to touch their toes? How can that be important?” Then I rolled over into plough, and thought, “I know that I receive tremendous benefit from every single yoga class that I take, but that can’t be happening to my clients, too. Can it? Does this work even matter?” I uncoiled like a worm, and then I was flat on my back staring at the ceiling lamp. Like a good yogi, I went into fish pose to counterbalance the plough. Upside down, my eyes roamed my room of austerity. My desk—a small bed tray—adequately housed my tiny office. I had grown from that nine-year-old girl playing office to a twenty-seven-year-old yogini (female yogi) working in a Zen office space, partitioned by imaginary walls dividing my work and sleep space. “Maybe this is my destiny playing itself out,” I thought, “even if it is a hard path to travel.” With this thought, and lying flat in the relaxation pose, I drifted into a deep sleep.
* * *
After I awoke in the dark from my deep nap, I faced another lingering problem. I needed money. I got up from the floor and looked at myself in the mirror, long and hard. I said, “Who am I? What am I? What the hell am I doing? Was Ted right? Am I regressing my race and myself by just being a yoga teacher in a health club and a live-in chef? These things didn’t necessarily require a four-year college degree. I no longer have the corporate title or status. Will people take me seriously? Can I take myself seriously? What value do I really bring to the table, anyway? I work hard, and I am always on the go? Shit! I need the money.”
I dressed, left the house, and got into my car. I headed toward my client’s house, where three women gathered once a week for their private yoga class. Driving there was a struggle for me, but I arrived on time. I taught the class, but at the end I felt the need to confess my state of mind. I am not sure why I needed to confess, but I just did. “It was really hard for me to keep tonight’s appointment. I was going to cancel.”
“Noooo,” Ellen tearfully said. “This is my only hour of peace a week. I hadn’t told you guys this before, but I’m in therapy. I told the therapist that I have been contemplating suicide but my private yoga class, once a week, is the one place where I can feel some peace. Life seems possible.”
Another woman, Diane, chimed in: “I have been depressed for such a long time, but I find that this class helps me not feel as depressed.”
&n
bsp; My eyes swelled with tears. “I had no idea this class was so meaningful.”
Nancy, the other student, said, “I am doing this class because a close friend of mine had cancer and she said yoga is helping her to recover. My friend and I talked about how yoga can be an ounce of prevention. Coming to this class is also a great time to bond with my friends. I get tired of meeting people over coffee and cheesecake.”
At that moment, I got it. Yoga affected us all. It also revealed one of my weaknesses. I had a habit of thinking that my experience could only happen to me.
I learned, and I made mistakes. I failed, learned some more, and made more mistakes. These were the times when I missed my dad or, more accurately, a dad.
As a child, I remember getting into bed feeling unprotected, vulnerable. In bed, I would imagine a dad, not necessarily my dad, who wanted to be with me—a dad who would read to me at night and make me feel safe, special, and loved.
I had the same feeling in high school when I did not look like other girls and the boys just thought I was weird. I needed a dad to tell me that I was pretty, strong, and powerful.
I felt it again in college when I wanted a dad to drive me to school every year and help me set up my dorm room. I wanted a dad to be there to tell my boyfriends: “If you mess with my daughter, you are going to have to deal with me, you knuckleheads.” I needed him to be a symbol of protection. My dad never gave me that.
After several months of managing my own business and hustling, I arrived at home one night to find myself having strong Where-is-my-dad? thoughts. I tried to brush them aside, but they returned after I finished preparing for the next day’s workload.
I slipped into bed, and the thoughts hovered over me in the same way fog creeps over and around mountain peaks. I usually stretch myself out on my back, pull the covers over my breastbone, and gaze down toward my toes right before drifting off to sleep. But this night I curled into a fetal position and pulled the covers over my head, allowing only my nose to stick out. I took a few deep breaths through my nose, and when the initial Where-is-my-dad? anxiety had disappeared, a deeper spookiness disturbed me. I felt like a five-year-old, crying and rocking myself back and forth. To dry my tears, I imagined a dad hugging me. He took over the rocking so that I could fall asleep. I imagined this dad telling me, “You are successful. You are powerful. You are attempting many things that most of us are too afraid to try. You’re not alone, I am here.”