Last Wednesday I collapsed onto a bench in the lobby of a downtown D.C. office building and cried with my 15-month old child strapped to my back.

Just how the fuck did I get here?

Maybe it was the rough week I’d had.  It began with the previous Wednesday, as stress and tension began to mount over our family’s planned trip up to Pennsylvania to see my sister in law and related family in Pennsylvania.  My husband had been working rather late all week and I was without babysitters. For me, this meant almost non-stop care of a toddler who had suddenly developed the ability to emit blood-curdling screams over just about anything, or for no reason at all. It meant non-stop preparation of 3 meals a day, snacks, and all the accompanying rounds of dishes, and all the accompanying shooing away of two dogs from the baby’s food; all the diaper changes, naps, baths, and bedtimes. It meant walking in a city in 100 degrees plus humidity to the grocery store up a hill while pushing a stroller and it meant wearing her 24 pounds on my back just so that I could get to the gym I had just joined to get an hour of low cost daycare.

And right from all that, on Friday night at a time when I’d normally be relaxing and getting ready for bed, I had to load my normally sleeping baby into a car packed with me, my husband and mother in law for three hours, to travel to a house without baby proofed staircases, to chase baby around all day Saturday when normally, for the first time in a week, I’d have been able to hand her over to my husband and go out by myself for three whole goddamned hours.  That Friday night upon our arrival, Lilah also did something she hadn’t done in over a year—she refused to go to sleep, she just screamed and cried until I finally realized she needed to sleep with me in order to go to sleep in this new place. Needless to say, I was not the shiniest brightest sweetest version of myself amidst my sister in law, her family and friends. On top of everything else, I was now exhausted after a sleepless stressful night, and embarrassed about the commotion others may have heard during the night

A malaise persisted into the early week after we returned. Why? Because I couldn’t stop judging myself. I heard this incessant chorus in my head of naysayers everytime I tried to explain, to make a case for myself, for why I wasn’t my best and shiniest yogi self that weekend. Because I couldn’t bear it if my sister-in-law didn’t like me.  Because I was embarrassed. Because I couldn’t bear it if the world at large didn’t approve of me.  What kind of bullshit yogini was I?  All I saw was FAILURE.  And I continued with these negative, self-valuing thoughts purring so loudly and so constantly that I almost didn’t notice them.  When I did notice them, I berated myself for not being happy and positive and appreciating all the good fortune I have.  I had these feelings and it’s not that I bottled them; it’s more that I just couldn’t face the fact that I had them.

That is, until I traveled by bus with a baby strapped to my back, a bus ride where no one got up to offer me a seat, a 40-minute trip door to door, to this new doctor in this new city for our 15-month appointment. I waited more than an hour to be called. By that time, Lilah was tired and hungry and crabby and I knew we had another 40 minutes of travel home. So I left. I walked out. Then I sat down on the lobby bench and cried.

For the first time, on that bench, I began running through all the unpretty thoughts and emotions I have felt since, I don’t know, my entire life in Colorado since my baby was born?

I was angry. Angry that people wouldn’t give up a seat on the bus for a woman with a 24 lb child on her back. Angry that I couldn’t just decide to go get a haircut or go to the bathroom when I wanted to anymore or go to such and such event because I had to consider the little one constantly in my care. That I couldn’t sleep whenever wherever. I hated all these people who could just do things without anything to hold them back. I was angry….That I didn’t have my body back, or that it was back but my stomach looked “great for someone who’d had a baby” but goddamn it I want it too look great, period, end of sentence, because my stomach was always my best and favorite fucking body part. I was sad about this person lost when I had a baby, this person I’d been before, this person who had energy in droves, time to sit and meditate, time to do yoga, time to see friends, talk on the phone, time, energy.  I missed my car, my doctors in Boulder, and my friend network in Boulder.

I screamed at all the people I heard judging me inside my head, this amorphous group of hecklers who were forever telling me that I was doing it wrong, that everyone else who had a baby was handling it way better than I was and they had jobs and all this other shit that they juggled along with it, and well too.  And by the way, the voices said, you know there are women in other countries, who have to do everything by themselves in conditions you can’t even imagine and they don’t have daycare at their fancy gyms like you do so you are just such an ungrateful failure, you know? They told me to stop breastfeeding if I wanted more freedom because isn’t it weird to still be breastfeeding this much? Why wasn’t I feeding my child more “normal food” like cookies and crackers and sugar and non-organic eggs, wouldn’t life be easier if I just fed her processed food?  Why couldn’t I stop wasting the time I did have on facebook and Olympics video replays whatever else? Why wasn’t I able to make it to such and such yoga event, why couldn’t I get up a the crack of dawn for ashtanga mysore practice, why couldn’t I get up even earlier than that to meditate, Why, Jean, do you need so much goddamned sleep? Why couldn’t I teach more, I mean, really, it’s not so hard, is it to do what everyone else seems to be able to do easily except for you.

Something about that bench, the feeling of a low point, or sadness… it brought me to acknowledge that I was suffering. I suffer. And even that came with the retort, “you call this suffering? Haven’t you seen anything that’s going on in the world?”

Oh, shut up. I was so tired of arguing for my right to feel what I feel, it came to me. Life is suffering. Duh.  The Buddha said it and man, it feels right to me. Suffering is everywhere.  I suffer, you suffer, we all suffer. It doesn’t mater how much money you have, whether you have a child or anything….everyone on the bus is suffering.

The worst of my suffering, though, was in the form of fear of my own feelings and judgment and not trusting myself. Why was I always looking for approval? Why was I always hearing people in my head judging me – whether it be my sister-in-law, m husband, the angry looking commuters on the bus – and buying into it?  When I stopped to think about all those judgmental voices I imagined in my head, where was their heckling script coming from?  Who was writing it?  Me.

I was making a case for myself to this invisible judge and jury for everything I did, said, ate, and I did so not just in terms of my parenting but even my yoga practice.  I had taken the joy out of everything, even my yoga by setting myself up against a scoreboard. I had to practice this much, this way, I had to meditate this much, blah, blah and then when my meditation practice went down the toilet along with baby’s second nap, I found myself just so, so far behind….the yoga was just another race I would never win.  It was the balance beam finals and there were just so many balance checks and man, I had just fallen off the beam completely. What was the point of getting back on?

It’s in many ways a good thing that the Anusara community has had an identity crisis (though I understand others may feel differently) and that a certain piece of the Buddhist community, a sangha that I had some ties with, saw some crazy weird drama, tragedy, scandal, whatever you call it (I’m not suggesting that the tragedy itself was a good thing).  It took awhile for this notion to sink in. For a long time in and around these events I continued to pine for a label, an ideology, a guru, a lineage to call my own, be it ashtanga or Jivamukti or Bikram or Conquering Lion or something for Christ’s sake, to hang my hat on, to make me feel secure. To provide the answers. Because without that, it would just be me.

A combination of questioning my suffering, some wisdom from Sylvia Boorstein and some inspiration from Anita Moorjani brings me now to say…. Yes. Me. My happiness, my joy. Of course, I’d forgotten all about that as I sought approval from the judgmental peanut gallery.

Happiness, Joy.   Oh…right.  Yes. I know.  I know how to take care of my child. I know what to eat to feel good. I know I need 8 hours or more of sleep to feel good.  I don’t need a study to validate that. I know that from years of living in this body.  You might need less.  Duh, you’re not me! I’m not you. Thank God for that.  I know I like to sweat and enjoy a good Bikram or Baptiste power yoga class just as much as sometimes I like the quiet power of ashtanga and Jivamukti. I know I like athletic fun vinyasa classes that are physically hard. I know I like loud music that might not always be considered “cool.” I know I love the sound of my child’s laugh. I know I make the best fucking smoothies. Seriously.  I love ice cream. I know I love my friends.

Here’s where the yoga practice has served me in all this.  Because of yoga, I knew, I knew, that the low feelings on that bench would pass. That the way I felt on that bench would change.  And it doesn’t matter what tradition says it, though Swami Satchidananda’s translation of the Yoga Sutras says it more than once, Buddhism says it, science says it—everything is constantly changing.  Who cares that they say it, because I know it; I’ve felt it. I’ve seen my hamstrings go from wooden stakes to melted butter with five rounds of sun salutations. I’ve gone from afraid to kicking up to the wall in handstand to sticking handstand for quite a while! I’ve seen my body change, change more, and change again.  So I have that comfort, even in my lowest moments, of knowing that the misery would pass, and better yet, that when it passed, something good would come out of it. Those twin understandings are the gift I’ve received from my own yoga practice and form the foundation for how I “manage gracefully,” as Sylvia Boorstein calls it, when the shit hits the fan. Those understandings are what make me want to each yoga.

So what good came out of being a hot mess on a bench?

I know that I’ll get back into some meditation and maybe even mysore practice when I am ready to do it out of love instead of the need to meet others’ expectations and approval. In the meantime, I’m not going to worry about it. I’m going to pursue the things I love and find joy in everyday, instead of the things I think I ought to be doing. I’m through with devaluing my feelings, thoughts and needs. I through with doubting my knowledge, my intellect, my self-worth. I am done with checking my self-agency at the door (thanks Kelly Morris). I’m done with being a puppet of my own fear.

Most of all, I’m done being an approval whore.