"I love you. Keep going."

"It was nice to see the ease and comfort in your teaching... weaving your own experiences into your teaching... Welcome officially as a Mindful Schools Certified Instructor, Dawna!"

After my participation in the Mindful Schools Year-Long Certification program and submission of my teaching video and other supporting materials, I received the news of my certification two weeks ago in the midst of the most challenging time my family has ever known. The news came without any fanfare or deserved celebration. The irony is not lost on me. 

Even while I continue to share the mindfulness lessons with elementary students, I am struggling to find any ease and comfort in my own life as most everything I know is being challenged. I am finding it painful to be with the amount of fear, sadness, confusion, anger and exhaustion of the likes I have never known before. Doubts about my own skills and wisdom creep in and I lose my way and make mistakes. 

Sometimes all I can do is to breathe, to allow for spaciousness, to wait for the softening, to search for self-compassion, to come back to the breath and the body when I lose my way - again and again and again - and to somehow trust that just this is enough, for me, for my family. I must continue to be courageous and vulnerable enough to share my experiences so that I may find the people who will hold me up - sometimes literally - and bring me comfort when I am without my anchors and drifting away, and think I cannot go on.

This - all of this - is the practice that blesses me and for which I am deeply grateful. The practice, the teaching, the people - friends, family, strangers, therapists, students - all softly impress upon me the words of one of my teachers, "I love you. Keep going."

From one of my mindfulness students | May 2014