The Healing

by Saeeda Hafiz

  “Wow. That’s very liberal of you.”

  “Well, I just know how human beings can be around this sort of thing. And at this point in our relationship, I would just hope that you would tell me.”

  “No need to worry. I’m not going to have sex with Pam.”

  “I’m just saying, after a few glasses of alcohol anything can happen.” He laughed and said, “You are quite unique.”

  * * *

  As far as I knew, Nick didn’t sleep with Pam. He told me that they did meet up, but it was completely platonic. I believed him and was relieved. Internally, I realized that I had also been testing what kind of guy he really was. It was important for me to put that tricky situation out there in the open and communicate about it.

  Nick and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but I could tell he was also enjoying our slow pace. The end of his marriage seemed to still hurt him deeply. He and I were both trying to see if we were able to have a longer-term relationship. Neither of us wanted to fail.

  Subconsciously, I had a lot of milestones to reach before I felt that I could trust him, or myself, to be in a real relationship. It had been about five years since I’d had sex. Spiritually speaking, I didn’t want to intertwine my soul with some random person, or someone who wasn’t serious about me.

  Nick and I had been dating for about six months when it finally happened. I heard the knock on the door and he must have seen it in my eyes, because he greeted me with a kiss that immediately turned into a deep, impassioned embrace. All time stopped. I was in the present, and only the present moment. After the kiss, I took his hand and led him to my bedroom. We sat on my bed, facing each other, breathing each other in. Noses close, letting the air from one person’s nose enter into the other person’s nose. We did several rounds of this. Then light caressing. He was being very gentle, yet enthusiastically interested. He was mindful of the fact that I had not had intercourse in five years. His actions were very nurturing. Undressing slowly, we moved into a horizontal position and then he mumbled, “This might hurt, since it has been a while for you.”

  “Uh huh.” I wanted to cry happy tears because he cared about how I would feel.

  The caring and pace was perfect. Our bodies intertwined and our physical union was yogic, as our breath, skin, and spirits merged together.

  This went on for hours. When we separated, exhausted, I had one thing on my mind.

  “I’m hungry,” I said.

  “Me, too,” he smiled.

  * * *

  Soon after, Nick received a job offer from a high-tech company in Arizona. We casually talked about the future. I said things like, “I always wanted to get my international MBA from Thunderbird. I could go to school there while you are working. I can teach enough yoga to earn a decent income.” We both laughed in a knowing way about that.

  It was easy for me to entertain this option because, even though I was working hard at the YWCA, I was tired of the minutiae. I was ready to throw in the towel and find another job. I didn’t act right away, but I did let these thoughts float around in my mind until it was time to make a decision. I also remembered that I’d never wanted Pittsburgh to be my home. I was a visitor.

  * * *

  In May, Nick told me that the tech company had rescinded the offer due to the bad economy.

  “What do you think you’ll do?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know. Live with my parents for a while and try to figure things out.”

  I stayed quiet. This was sad for both of us. One of my biggest strengths, and weaknesses, is empathizing with others, sometimes against my own interests.

  Soon after, I attended Nick’s graduation. I felt honored to be there cheering for him and all of the MBA friends I had made. I helped Nick pack up his apartment, as he prepared to leave for Wisconsin and his parents’ house. When he left, he told me, “It doesn’t make sense for us to date long distance.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I don’t have a job. I don’t know where I am going to be living.”

  “I understand. You do know that I want what’s best for you even if it doesn’t include me,” I said. Of course I wished that it would include me, but it didn’t have to. I also was a bit relieved that I had given this relationship an honest try, and still it was ending naturally. I didn’t fight it. I accepted that we were broken up. Overall, I felt that I was closer to being able to have a healthier and more permanent romantic relationship, even if it wasn’t going to be with Nick. I also thought maybe this is what I would have experienced in high school if I’d had a boyfriend. Instead of being seventeen, I was thirty-four.

  * * *

  In June 2001, Nick left Pittsburgh and me. Every night for more than a week, I’d fall asleep in my bed around ten o’clock, and then in the middle of the night, at two or three in the morning, I’d wake up, grab my blanket, and head toward the living room. I wrapped myself up in the blanket like a caterpillar in a chrysalis, laid my head down on the sofa pillows, and put my back against the cushions. It was the same thing I had done on my mother’s couch when my business was failing, but this time the feelings were much different. I’d softly weep tears of yearning and heartache and breathe deeply until I could fall back to sleep.

  I talked to Tory about the natural end of my relationship with Nick. “I don’t know if it is the end of it,” she said. “You said yourself, Pittsburgh is not your permanent home. I usually don’t step in with my personal opinion, but let me take my therapist hat off for a minute.”

  Tory stopped for a moment or two to search for the right words. Excited, her voice went up to a high octave. “You remind me of one of my other clients. He was really in love with this woman, and he had to decide if he was going to move to be with her. He wanted to keep the relationship going, but was hesitant.” Tory paused. “I told him, you should risk it. If you don’t do it, you will always be wondering. My client had never acted this way regarding a woman. I told him, I think you should give it a shot. And now, you are in a similar situation.”

  I reminded her that we had broken up.

  “Yeah, but you can still investigate where it might go.”

  “He does call me every few days,” I said, as if I were looking for evidence of his affection toward me. Nick had even called me to tell me he had decided to live with his cousin in San Francisco. Then, when he was crossing the border from Nevada into California, he called me to say, “I wanted you to be with me as I crossed into my new state.”

  I said, “Remember, I want what’s best for you even if it doesn’t include me.”

  I guess I was trying to protect my heart.

  “Think about it,” Tory interjected. “You might always be wondering what if.”

  After my therapy session, I did a meditation about what to do. I talked to Buddy, my when-all-else-fails-what-sustains-me friend, who helped me design a plan of action.

  “Just start looking for a job,” he said. “You can get a job anywhere. Nick moved out to California jobless. Just see what is out there for you. This will help you make a decision.”

  My mind flashed back to an old memory about San Francisco. It was 1989 and I was sleeping in the San Francisco Hyatt at an INROADS alumni board meeting. I had a lucid dream about being in ocean water. I was able to swim freely in this water, and when I woke up I realized that it was a strange dream to have, particularly because I don’t swim very well. I had never swum in the ocean. In the dream, the ocean water made me feel like I could emotionally go through anything.

  * * *

  It was July 2001 and I made up my mind to create a new life again, this time in San Francisco. To do this, I had to remember everything I knew about being That Tao Girl. I meditated and recalled the time that I had moved from Pittsburgh to Atlanta and called on “spiritual magic” to give me the courage to take a leap of faith. Hopefully, the outcome would be better: a job, a boyfriend, and living
in a beautiful city. I asked myself, “Can I do this again, and this time not fail like I did in Atlanta?”

  * * *

  A few months before I decided to make this move, I sat in on a Carnegie Mellon University MBA class in social marketing, both as a guest and as a social marketing subject. One of my yoga students was in the program. Every time she was out and about in Pittsburgh she heard my name mentioned and wanted to study my social networking circles to see how it was possible that so many people were connected to me. She believed that I was some kind of social hub, and MBA students found that sort of thing important to study.

  For several weeks, four women from Carnegie Mellon’s MBA program came to my house to interview me. I loved it. When I was in college, I had always wanted to have a business that people would study to see how and why it was successful. It was important to me, since everything in my environment said that I should be low-achieving. I wanted these women to give me some insight as to why I wasn’t totally failing at life and what made me different from my siblings.

  I remembered a conversation I’d once had with my younger brother, when he’d told me that his boss wanted to promote him to an assistant sales manager.

  “That makes sense,” I said to Omar. “You’ve been working steadily at the store. You have been our top earner for several months. People at the mall love you.”

  He paused, then said, “Well, when I told a few of my boys about the promotion they…” He paused again. “They said that I was tryin, to act like I was better than they are. Working at the mall.”

  I was furious. “Omar, if your friends don’t want to see you progress, then they really aren’t your friends.”

  Even though I knew that I was giving my brother the right advice, I could tell that he was conflicted. He didn’t want to lose his friends. He wanted to grow, but he also wanted to belong to the group.

  I started to see how different I was from all of my siblings. They most wanted to belong to a group in which they felt safe, and I wanted to feel at home within myself as I moved from group to group. I also thought that my many small groups made up a much more important large group—a cosmic, universal group that would define all aspects of my personality.

  I attributed a lot of my staying afloat and being true to myself to my food and yoga study. I held on to five concrete things: First, set an intention. Second, think positive thoughts. Third, speak those thoughts aloud. Fourth, do the deeds to manifest those thoughts. And fifth, detach from the outcome. It was pure yoga philosophy. These teachings gave me a social and emotional buffer to help me begin the healing process from my multigenerational traumas.

  I was learning to listen more deeply to myself, That Tao Girl. Daily, I sat down at my altar and did a meditation and ritual to focus my attention on the things I wanted to create in my life. I burned sage to clear out the negative energy. Then I burned incense, Nag Champa, to remind me of life’s sweetness. Next, I focused on what goals I wanted to create. I made a vision board, a concrete representation of everything that I wanted to make real in my life. My routine brought me comfort, and yet I could see the humor in it. If I had been spying on myself from another building, I would have sworn that I was a witch casting magical spells. Daniel, who had wanted to marry a Christian woman, would’ve been freaked out. Yet who wouldn’t want magical powers?

  Just like I did back in 1993, I applied for jobs nationwide. It felt good to cast a wide net. I had some good reasons to leave my life in Pittsburgh in exchange for a new life somewhere else. But I knew that I wasn’t moving anywhere until I found a job. I was interested in seeing if my food and yoga business could take root in another location, and if I could go from being a big fish in a smallish pond to a small fish in a much bigger body of water.

  Last but not least, I wanted to give the Nick-and-Saeeda relationship a chance, a fresh start. Nick was clear that I was no longer his girlfriend. But all of his actions said otherwise. For example, he sent me Craigslist job postings, which made me feel that he was encouraging me to live and work in the Bay Area. This was the opposite of my dad, who was all talk and no action. Nick’s actions suited me just fine, so I never nagged him about why he didn’t call me his girlfriend.

  So I became That Tao Girl–Take 2, and, to my surprise, although the dotcom world was crumbling and sending shockwaves through the San Francisco Bay Area economy, I landed a job within two weeks, at the Marin County Health Club. It was the same position I had at the Pittsburgh YWCA, as a director of health and wellness. I had one month to get ready.

  One Sunday in Pittsburgh, I announced at the end of my yoga class that I had accepted a job in San Francisco, and I would only be teaching for a few more weeks. “Noooo,” a few students cried out. One woman, visibly upset, grabbed her things and her mat and walked out quickly. I couldn’t run after her, since there were about forty people in class who began asking me questions. On my way home, I thought about how yoga had been so magical for so many, and how it changed lives.

  My last few weeks in Pittsburgh were precious. I tried to make heart-to-heart connections with everyone who needed or wanted an extra special goodbye. The woman who ran out of my class came up to me the following week and said, “This class is so special to me that when you announced you were leaving, well…I just lost it and had to go home.” Another student, Janet, came up to me and handed me a gray jewelry box. With some hesitation and fear, I opened it. I was confused and pleasantly surprised. Inside was a beautiful gold bracelet. I had never received such a fine gift before, from anyone.

  “I just wanted to show you what you and your teachings have meant to my life,” she said. “I’ve stopped smoking, and I decided to become a yoga teacher. I signed up to go to Sivananda, the school you attended.”

  I grinned from ear to ear. I told her she would be an excellent yoga teacher, and we hugged a tight hug for a long time. I still wear the bracelet almost every day. Later, at my going away party, I gave Janet my Sivananda teacher’s training manual. I told her to use it and then pass it along to the next person, who would be one of her students.

  With a heavy heart, I left my students and spiritual family on September 3, 2001. They had fed me holistically in so many ways, making me feel like I was somebody special. But imagining a new life on the West Coast filled my spirit with joy.

  On my way to San Francisco, I flew to Madison, Wisconsin, to be Nick’s date to a wedding. Even though he didn’t consider me his girlfriend, this was a chance for me to spend more time with him and his family. I was certain that they were all checking me out to see if I was good enough. Meanwhile, I was also trying to decide if I would fit into a Midwestern middle-class family.

  Nick’s mom came out of her ranch-style suburban brick house to greet me. She was simply adorable—five foot two inches, brown skin, short-salt-and-pepper hair, and open arms. She gave me a big and warm welcome, with a hug that I returned in a way usually reserved for my closest girlfriends. The family and the house felt warm, but I wasn’t sure that this kind of life would be for me—not that anyone was asking. But this was my time to observe what kind of life Nick came from, and what he might want or expect from me.

  All I knew was that I didn’t want to repeat the life my parents had created and destroyed. I wanted a home, but I wasn’t sure what that would look like and if it would fit my future partner’s vision of home. I knew that I wanted an indescribable feeling of partnership, a feeling of we’re-in-it-together-babe. I had images of washing the dishes and my partner drying them. Cooking the meals and my partner taking out the trash. Looking for ways to make and keep each other happy.

  I watched his parents closely. They had been married for more than thirty years and seemed to still love each other very much. I remember thinking, This is what a normal marriage looks like. That comforted me. I didn’t want exactly what they had, but it was close. His dad and I got along. We had some good philosophical conversations about yoga, and he gave
me an old copy of his Raja yoga book. I was pleased. As for his mom, she was kind to me, but I did feel like our value systems didn’t quite match up. I felt that my quest for self-discovery might seem a bit odd to her. I didn’t quite have the value that family is everything, which I knew was extremely important to her. This made me nervous. I suspect it made her nervous, too.

  * * *

  After the wedding, I flew to San Francisco. I stayed at Nick’s place in Oakland with him and his roommate the first few days. My stuff hadn’t arrived from Pittsburgh yet. Mark, Nick’s roommate, introduced me to people as Nick’s girlfriend. “She’s not my girlfriend,” Nick would say.

  “That’s right. I’m not his girlfriend,” I confirmed, not hurt or anything. This feeling was new for me. His actions didn’t match his words.

  After a few days, I moved into a condo with a woman named Jenny. It was right across the street from my job at the Marin County Health Club (MCHC) in suburban San Rafael. It was a job with the same title in the same industry, but the job’s true responsibilities were the polar opposite of my YWCA position in Pittsburgh. At the YWCA, I was hired to empower women from all walks of life. At the MCHC, I was hired to be more like a hotel concierge. In fact, my boss actually described it that way. I was basically providing clients with top-of-the-line products and services. Everything at the MCHC was bigger and better. The clientele were men, women, and kids who were already empowered by being from wealthier backgrounds. It was in a bedroom community, not in a downtown urban area like the YWCA.

  I did walk to work, but there were no sidewalks. This was not the San Francisco that I knew or imagined. I was living in a place called San Rafael, in the suburbs of Marin County. I wondered: How could there not be any sidewalks? Don’t people walk or run around here? Is this the job, the place, and the city that I prayed for? Did I really visualize this life? The first few days, I put on my heels and slacks, then a simple, yet elegant, solid-color cotton T-shirt. I’d walk along the graveled part of the road to the parking lot. The temperature was in the low nineties. The ground was hot. The grass was dry. You visualized this. It might not feel right, but you gotta stick with it. It’s just new. I tried to convince myself I was doing the right thing.