by Saeeda Hafiz
Then I fell asleep, not waking up until the plane was about to land. I stared out of the window, wondering, “How am I going to do this next part of my life?”
I got home. I went to work, and then I caught a nasty cold. I called in sick. I don’t remember what day it was exactly, but the coughing and sneezing got worse. I took a common cold medicine, diphenhydramine, the drowsy kind, to suppress the cold symptoms. It knocked me right out. I slept for a long time. I turned the phone off. When I started to wake up again, I popped another pill. I fell right back to sleep. It seemed to be an easy and innocent way to not face my life.
Eight hours later, I woke up again, groggy. This time there were messages from my boss. “Saeeda, I know you are out sick today, but I could really use your support right now.”
I couldn’t face her requests, and this time I took two pills at a time. I hazily eyeballed those pink pills, thinking, “I could keep taking these pills, adding one more pill each time I wake up, and then it will be all over.”
I stared at the pills and my phone. More messages from my boss and from Nick. I looked up at the stucco ceiling, and then I hazily looked around my room: the desk with the small black lamp, the photos, the old carpet, the bathroom door. I reviewed my life with pills in hand and thought, This next slumber could be the end of me.
Then I was mysteriously transported back into that Washington, D.C. hotel room, with Buddy standing in the doorway saying, “Hey! Wake up! I wanna know, what sustains you when all else fails?”
“What?”
“I’m serious….I wanna know, what sustains you when all else fails?”
I sat up in my bed and said to myself, Remember, Saeeda? You said the present moment is what sustains you. How true is that for you now? What do you choose to do? You owe no one anything. So what if you will appear to be a loser in the eyes of your boyfriend, his family, his friends, and the MBA friends that you admire? So what if you look like a failure to your friends, family, previous colleagues, and yoga and food students? So what if they admire you? Remember, they admire you because you practiced being true to yourself. What’s most important is that you remain authentic to your journey and earn approval from yourself.
I pushed the pills away. I got back under the covers and said to myself out loud, “I am not dead. I am not worthless. I am not afraid. I am just tired.” Then I started laughing a little bit, “That’s funny. Just tired.”
I sat up, lotus-style, with the covers surrounding me like a Buddha, and started to repeat a chant that Kathy had taught me:
I have nothing to need, nor hide from, nor fear
I am whole and complete right now and right here.
I repeated this chant while sitting like a Buddha. I wouldn’t lie back down until the stupor of the pink pills wore off. Those words soothed me.
The next day I woke up and realized what I needed to do.
I stopped the highly caffeinated black tea. I had rested deeply, undrugged. I started to feel like myself again. I looked into the mirror and looked at myself as a loving mother would.
I went into work and said, “Judy, I am sorry that I have not been available for you or this job. It’s not working out for me.”
“I know. We need to figure out a mutually beneficial exit strategy,” Judy said with compassion.
I left her office feeling free again.
I knew that I might look like a failure to just about everybody I knew. I started to understand more of what my siblings might have felt like during their personal struggles—the embodiment of pure shame and worthlessness, whether real or imagined. It is a rabbit hole that is hard to climb out of.
Shame, and the projected shame of what I thought others might be thinking, consumed me—from the inside out. There, at that edge, was where I really understood how shame could be an express portal into a downward spiral.
I told myself that I loved me, no matter what. I started going to the yoga mat again, doing sun salutations. I did a version of the sun salute that was the most humbled and submissive to a higher power. I went back into the kitchen and started with basic brown rice and steamed veggies. Brown rice is the one food that is the closest to our blood’s sodium and potassium ratio, and it felt healing. I did these simple techniques and, just like they had in the past, they cleared my mind and body so I could see my self again. I didn’t like what I saw, but underneath the physical appearance I could contemplate my deeper, more genuine self. That self said to me, I love you, for you. Stay on your path, your authentic path.
CHAPTER 19
Oakland and San Francisco
FROM MID-JANUARY 2002, I walked back into the Marin County Health Club every day for six weeks. I was sure that everyone had his or her version of what had gone wrong with me. I didn’t try to explain or blame anyone. I let people tell the story they needed to tell, but I paid no attention to them. At this point, I couldn’t take on one more person’s version of who they thought I was.
On the outside, I must’ve looked my worst—weak and stupid. But to myself, I looked like a young woman who had entered into the darkest part of her life, but didn’t let her light go out.
In March 2002, I finished up my work at the MCHC and packed up my belongings from my Marin condo. Stacey from Atlanta was then living in Oakland on Lake Merritt, and she agreed to help me move my stuff to my new one-room sublet in an Oakland house with some college girls. I moved from Marin—surrounded by the aroma of pine trees, the sight of deer, and the touch of the hot sun beating down on my skin—to a neighborhood that had a sprinkle of the homeless, granola-crunchy Berkeley types alongside some professional white liberals, and some hip black folks.
Stacey and I picked up the first box together, a long and awkward one. I was holding my end a little bit clumsily. I couldn’t really get a firm grip. Stacey was strong and focused on her end, like a professional mover. We carried the box to the car. “Slide it to the right, so we can fit the other stuff in more easily. That way we can make fewer trips,” she said.
“Like this?”
“Yep,” she replied. The hot sun glared down on both of us.
I moved my end in the way she said. Stacey had an eye for how things fit together. We walked back into the house, where it felt remarkably cooler, to get more boxes. Before we picked up anything else, she said, “You know…” She paused. “You know, you need to do better.” She paused again. “You need to do better in your life. You can’t…keep…”
I interrupted her and said, “I know. I know, Stacey. I feel the same way you do about me. In January, I…” then I looked down at the floor, not knowing if I should tell her my secret. Then I blurted out, “…I tried to kill myself over not being able to do better.”
“Oh, Sy…I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Nobody knows.”
“I feel like a heel.” Then she opened up her arms to give me a hug.
I walked into her arms and said, “No need for you to feel like a heel. I understand where you’re coming from. You care.” We hugged for a while.
We continued loading boxes. Stacey made sure the car was packed tightly. She was right. We only had to make two trips.
This period must’ve been painful for those who had watched me live my life, just as it was painful for me to live it. I don’t know how others learn to integrate trauma and drama into their daily lives and still find a good way to navigate forward, but I had to learn how to do it for myself. I understood on a human-soul level that no one else could do it for me.
Once I was visiting my friend and yoga student, Liz Berlin, a Rusted Root band member. Her son was a few years old and he was sitting on the toilet, trying to poop.
“Mom, help me. Poop for me.”
“I wish I could, honey, but you have to poop for yourself.”
She and I chuckled. She was right. He had to poop for himself, just like each person has to live life for him
self or herself.
Life had become much clearer to me. No one else can live this life for you, even if you are living the life someone else wants you to live. You still have to live it.
So from March 2002, I set up a new daily schedule for myself. Each morning, I set my spiritual intention, then I went to the mat to do yoga. I ate a whole grain breakfast. I planned the day’s dinner menu. I still ate with Nick four nights a week. I looked for a job. I napped and I wrote. I worked on writing my book. I took it all in stride, even though I was sometimes fearful and sad.
I still don’t know the exact feeling of shame that pulled my brothers and sister into their drug-addicted and alcoholic lives, but I do understand how they might have felt defeated every time a negative thought entered their minds. I felt it when those thoughts entered my mind. Which was why, during this time, I made sure I ate whole grains at least twice a day. The whole grains kept my brain chemistry balanced—a nice opposite action to the two bags of Awake tea I had been drinking just a few months before.
Today science is coming out with new studies showing how yoga and whole foods help to heal various traumas like PTSD. Scientists are starting to identify how traumatic memories are being healthfully managed in the brain by our participation in yoga, eating well, and meditation. These three activities help glands in the brain like the hippocampus, amygdala, pituitary, pineal, and hypothalamus process experiences more healthfully. They help reduce the fight, flight, or freeze triggers and calm down the nervous system. I didn’t know it at the time, but each and every time I ate well, practiced yoga, and meditated, my brain was being rewired. I felt refreshed.
So I made sure that I practiced the basics—wholesome food and a healing yoga practice—when I had thoughts of people saying things like: Saeeda’s nice, but not for our Nick. What kind of woman doesn’t go home for the holidays? What the hell happened to her? She left Pittsburgh, got a job in the Bay Area and is now unemployed? Guess she’s not hot stuff after all. Did you hear about Nick’s girlfriend? Her job? What’s wrong with her? It didn’t work out. What a loser.
I also made sure to call my “home base,” Dr. Victoria Butterworth. Tory was the one person who had the time and the historical knowledge about my past to help me create a safe place to put my life’s puzzle pieces together all over again. My work with her would help me reconstruct the life that I wanted to live.
For six months, I followed my simple, self-imposed schedule. I finished a very bad draft of my book, but it felt great to just write it out, warts and all. As I wrote down my experiences, I learned that writing was also a teaching and healing tool for me. I could see even more clearly the power food and yoga had in my life. I could see I wanted a job that would empower others to take care of themselves on a basic level and challenge me to live a holistic, healing life. To borrow the old adage, “The teacher teaches what she needs to learn the most.”
For four months, I sent out countless résumés. I decided to not care much about status, title, or money. Instead, I was looking for proper fit. I went on a lot of interviews and received lots of rejections. I rejected a few jobs, too. I kept up my routine, using yoga and whole foods as my way to stay grounded.
I also didn’t follow my grandfather’s philosophy. I wanted a job I would like. I knew it was a luxury for me to be able to choose. But I felt that, since I didn’t have anyone to support outside of myself, I could choose the right job that matched the path I wanted to travel.
By August 2002, I had found a job with the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). I was elated that a public school district thought that my background in holistic nutrition was a good fit for their Nutrition Education Project team. I wasn’t a registered dietitian, physical education teacher, farmer, or restaurant chef, but my holistic nutrition and yoga background appealed to them. This was SFUSD’s first year of putting together a diverse team of food and physical activity educators. They wanted us to collaborate in new ways toward getting low-income kids eating more fruits and vegetables, thus helping to eradicate the growing epidemic of childhood obesity.
* * *
I started being invited to speak at meetings called SSTs, or Student Success Teams. These were meetings that the school staff held for at-risk students, with an emphasis on the whole child.
Each student’s name was written on the board with columns highlighting his or her strengths, weaknesses, actions for improvement, and a few other descriptive words. A social worker led the meeting, but the room was filled with each child’s parent(s) and teacher, the school nurse, the principal, and me—the site nutrition coordinator.
In these meetings, I told the parents why it is important for their children to have breakfast, and how that simple action impacts learning.
A funny thing started to happen in these meetings. I’d hear the team leader say things like, “Dad didn’t show up for the meeting,” or “We also need to understand that the mother has reported that he beats her,” or “The kids seem to be raising themselves. It’s hard for [a fifth grader] to listen to us, when at home she is the adult,” or “We need a mentor for this kid because her mom is in and out of treatment programs,” or “We have our work cut out for us, but we have to help these kids rise above their circumstances.” The list went on. It started to feel like I knew each kid personally, because each one somehow was a reflection of someone in my family—or a reflection of me.
I wish I’d known about Child Protective Services (CPS) when I was in elementary school. I don’t know if I ever would have called them on my parents, but I would have wanted to. I smile a knowing smile when I hear of kids who actually do call CPS on their parents. Kids know when things are not right, and they want it to be right. Kids just want to survive and have an environment where everyone can thrive.
It wasn’t easy working with kids and their families from low-income and poverty-stricken areas. Some families were very troubled, and some were just poor, but this work felt like an authentic and genuine part of my path. It felt like a job that kept me on my own journey toward health and healing. At the same time, it was a job that gave me the opportunity to share with boys and girls who might be growing up in situations similar to my own.
After I secured the job at SFUSD, I moved into another shared condo in San Francisco, at 24th and Guerrero. Nick moved a mile up the street from me with his friends. The day I moved in, I walked to my new corner store. I saw a taxi, a bus, bikers, and people walking on the sidewalks. At that moment, I knew I was home.
Once I moved into the city and felt a little more secure, I started to look for additional work teaching yoga. I was a little nervous about teaching in a region where so many well-known celebrity yoga teachers live and teach. I wasn’t sure where I would fit or if I could fit, but I was willing to try.
I asked myself, Can I teach in this city where all the masters live and teach? Will anyone hire me? Sometimes I felt overwhelmed by insecurities and feared people would hate my classes. I am not a hardcore Type-A yoga instructor. I am not the most knowledgeable of instructors, either. I can’t do all the poses perfectly, and I don’t know all of the Sanskrit names for the postures. I’m not a master at adjusting students, and my knowledge of anatomy is limited.
I recognized my fears, and I put them aside and created a professional yoga résumé with my printed newspaper and magazine clippings. I set up my spiritual intention to attract the classes and the students who could benefit from what I had to give. I knew that I couldn’t be all things to all people. However, I knew that there would be a group or groups out there that needed exactly what I was offering.
I never thought that I would be teaching children nutrition and yoga, especially not in the public schools. But I was willing to humbly start anew and to be a very small fish swimming—and sometimes flopping—around. I was becoming a beginning teacher all over again, grappling with her own humanity, but one who had found a niche in the Bay Area.
I fell in love with the city of San Francisco more and more each day. Starting in the fall of 2002, I had a life that I had never experienced before and never thought was possible. I was doing meaningful work and continued to have deep friendships while making new friends. Life was moving along nicely.
I had become part of a whole with Nick and his family. After the first Christmas with his family, I spent Christmas with them each year thereafter for several years. I could feel the expectations that exist in a functioning family; for the most part, I liked it a lot. But I must admit, it remained odd. I felt like there were unsaid rules of engagement, like, his family accepted me, but still wanted someone better, more accomplished, and less damaged.
Nick and I, living one mile away from each other, often had our meals together. I would sleep over at his place and in the morning I’d make a quick breakfast, like apples and almonds, that I could eat in the car during the morning commute. There were some relationship bumps, but at first they were normal everyday bumps like scheduling conflicts and household chores.
In winter 2003, we decided to move in together, and a profound thought persisted in my head: Perhaps my family’s dysfunctional curse will finally be lifted from my head. This thought made me breathe more easily.
We set up house, but slowly. Here I was again, not knowing exactly how to do this. I simply didn’t know how to function as a live-in couple. While Nick had been married before, it was totally new to me. We started by buying a washer and dryer and a dining room table. We entertained friends with small dinner parties.