Saṃsāra
The place I call home has broken my heart. So what do I do now?
I don’t delude myself into thinking that any of my subscribers are refreshing their inbox on the first of each month, desperate for my little musings about life in the Hudson Valley. Still, I like to be consistent, because I truly am grateful to all of you who read this newsletter.
Spring is approaching, and to be honest, I had no idea how to write a post this month. I still don’t. Because I am in crisis. The business that Sam and I began working on over eight years ago, the one that we ran for seven years in Beacon, New York, has closed down. We had very little notice, and so our clients and some of our instructors were shocked when we told them we had less than one week to dismantle our business. We were shocked ourselves. The space and the community that we poured our literal blood, sweat and tears into for the better part of the past decade no longer exists. I’m going to sound dramatic here, but The Studio at Beacon was stolen from us. I do not use this word lightly.
We had an excellent buyer and a sale was nearly in place. Our attorneys were reviewing the contracts. Our beautiful fitness community would have continued to thrive, and the best part - I would have been able to remain there. I would train our buyer on our business practices, and I would continue to teach the boxing and cycling classes that I love. Instead, we were blindsided by people we trusted, people who were, in fact, a very part of that community we so lovingly built, and the deal fell through.
To be completely transparent, this is a financial catastrophe for us, but even more than that we’re left wondering: How do we move forward with our lives in a place where we were betrayed? If you’re wondering why I’m writing about this in Hudson Valley Mama, it’s because my life here is completely intertwined with the fitness studio that I owned for nearly all of the time I have lived here. Right now I can’t even drive down Beacon’s Main Street. I don’t want to see the sign in the window for the fitness studio that’s going to take our place. I don’t want to see the beautiful faces of the clients who came to my classes day after day, year after year. I don’t know what to say to them. I feel guilty, and stupid, and terrible. I am sticking close to my cozy friends and family who will let me stare off into space or get lost in my thoughts or say something truly depressing like “I want to crawl in a hole and never emerge.”
If you’ve ever been betrayed by someone you trust, then you understand that it rewires your brain entirely. I feel naive and foolish. I lie awake at night second guessing every conversation. Every text. I berate myself for being transparent and trusting and generous. But then I think, “No. I don’t want to be a person who hardens her heart.” I want to be kind and trusting. I want to believe that people are inherently good. I want to forge ahead with the life we’ve built here in the Hudson Valley. This is our home.
This is not to say that we have not been embraced and loved by our incredible community. We’ve been spoiled with beautiful flowers and delicious treats. Friends have taken me out for meals and drinks and let me endlessly lament. They have helped me emotionally, and they have physically shown up, carrying bags of trash and dismantling equipment and just being there, reminding us that we’re not alone. In every crisis or trauma I’ve experienced in my life, I have been fortunate; the people I love have always carried me through. This situation has been no different.
As the weather finally starts to show signs of turning—it’s been a brutal winter here—I am spending more time outside. For seven years my workouts have been built into my daily life, and now I have to rethink my fitness life. Walks by the river are a chance for me to quiet my brain and calm my anger. I am looking forward to spring.
I turn 40 next month. On April 1st, actually. And though I’d like to cancel it altogether because the timing couldn’t be worse, that’s just life sometimes. We learn lessons the hard way. The timing is never quite right. Our ducks are not, in fact, in a row. But we still have to show up. Live and laugh and love. UGH.
I’m starting a new chapter here in the Hudson Valley. I don’t know what that looks like. I don’t know how much of this sadness and anger will remain with me, or for how long. I cry alone in my car a lot lately, and I’m not ashamed to tell you that. I’m not ashamed to write about these emotions that have been physically overpowering. I know many of us have been feeling overwhelmed by life these days, whatever we may be facing. It’s okay to talk about it.
I’m grateful for my boys who want to play a terrible song or need a snack or tell me to stop talking because they’re trying to watch the Dog Man movie and I’m too loud. I’m grateful that, while I feel like my world has been upended, they’re still just them, and they need me. I’m grateful that they still want to snuggle. I see the bigger picture. I do.
Sam and I have been talking lately about grief. Our bodies don’t know, when we grieve, whether someone has died or someone has hurt us or maybe, simply, that our lives have not worked out in the way we had hoped. I can make space for what I’m mourning while also acknowledging that my family is healthy and that I am loved. I can slowly unravel these emotions and allow myself to feel them.
I’ve been listening to Monica Lewinsky’s new podcast Reclaiming. (I’m a fan of hers and I highly recommend checking it out.) On my drive this morning—on my way to try to get college students to engage with me on discussions of literature—I was listening to her episode with tech journalist Kara Swisher. Near the end of their interview, Swisher was recalling the death of her father when she was five years old, and she talked about entropy and syntropy as two contrasting forces. She said: “As everything is destroyed it is created … Everything is on its way to something else,” and I thought of the concept of Saṃsāra, which speaks to the cyclical nature of change in religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. When applied to the theory of karma, it is the cycle of death and rebirth. This is all part of my journey here on earth, here in America, here in the Hudson Valley.
Thank you for being a part of it.