A Morning of Remembering: Yoga, Lineage, and the Unexpected Opening of My Heart

Today, I went to yoga.

I didn’t expect anything unusual — just movement, breath, and a moment to be present. But the teacher played the most incredible music, and something inside me cracked open. Before class even began, I had been beating myself up for all the ways I felt I had contributed to the struggles in our family. My mind kept circling back to my dad, my grandmother, my mom, my uncle, my grandfather — the entire lineage on both sides.

The memories were heavy: the beatings, the harshness, the belittling, the way children were “kept in their place.” I remembered the early days of Reiki, when I was told I spoke too sharply, too intensely. I saw the threads connecting everything — the patterns passed down, the wounds inherited, the misunderstandings absorbed.

It all came rushing back.

The Lineage That Lives in the Body

During class, I had a flashback to a recent track meet. I saw a mother there — overweight, exhausted, worn down by life — and I recognized the hurt she carried in her body. Instead of leaning in, I pulled away. I didn’t help her feel comfortable. I didn’t ask who she was cheering for. I avoided connection.

And in that moment, I realized: I have done this before. I have pulled away when I could have leaned in.

Not because I didn’t care — but because I was overwhelmed, scared, and still carrying the weight of my own family’s pain. I was so focused on my internal storms that I forgot how much community matters. How much people matter. How much we matter to one another.

The Beach I Wouldn’t Let Myself Visit

My son asked me recently if I had gone to the beach — one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, right here where we live. I told him no. He knows how much I love the ocean.

But I said I didn’t deserve to go.

Not because I wanted to suffer, but because I felt a responsibility to heal what I now see so clearly in our lineage. I felt I needed to stay with the work — the clearing, the understanding, the unraveling — before allowing myself the comfort of the beach.

I know healing isn’t about deprivation. I know suffering isn’t required. But sometimes the weight of karmic patterns feels so real, so present, that the heart insists on staying with it until it shifts.

Yoga: The Moment Everything Broke Open

So I went to yoga. I stayed present. I listened.

Each track of music brought up more memories — more hurts, more wrongs, more longing.

I longed for a mother who understood me. I longed for a father who could see me. I longed for the childhood I didn’t have.

I remembered the rage, the scolding, the instability, the fear. And I felt the truth: these patterns still live inside me. They shape how I show up as a mother. They shape how I respond under stress. They shape how I love.

I lost my balance in a pose. I fell. I cursed under my breath.

And I realized: This is the work. This is the healing. This is the lineage asking to be cleared.

The Call That Changed Everything

After class, I walked to my car and — without thinking — called my dad. The same dad I often avoid out of fear. The same dad whose presence has always felt unpredictable.

I cried. I told him I loved him. I told him I wished life had been different.

We talked about the Fourth of July, about the hole in my heart, about the things he did and the things I did. And then he said something I have never heard from him in my entire life:

“You can’t change the past, but you can build your future right now. I love you, Jennifer. You can do it. You work hard for that family. You get it done.”

His voice was clear — crystal clear — not slurred, not foggy, not distant. It was like speaking to a different man. And in that moment, I knew something had shifted. Not just in him, but in me.

A Rebirth in Real Time

I wiped my face — tears, snot, everything — and walked into my house with a new sense of strength. A new sense of purpose. A new understanding of what healing really is.

Healing is not perfection. Healing is not bypassing. Healing is not pretending the past didn’t happen.

Healing is remembering. Feeling. Acknowledging. Clearing. Allowing.

Healing is lineage work — womb-of-creation work — the kind of work that shifts consciousness itself.

As I see the beatings my grandmother gave my dad, the ones my mom gave me, the ones my dad gave all of us in his alcoholic rage, I understand: I am not separate from them. I am not above them. I am not “better” than them.

I am them. And they are me.

And now it is my responsibility — and my privilege — to shift it all.

Just another day in paradise, as Phil Collins would say.