Aparagriha.
2020 has been a series of beautiful and devasting moments lined up like dominos, toppling one after the other.
It began with one of the deepest heartbreaks I have ever experienced. I applied for my dream job, teaching and community building work in Eastern Kentucky. It was THE job I have been trained to do, in the place I desperately wanted to be. I did not get the job. Despite “it’s not personal” emails, it was and always will be personal. How can it not be. That was the first domino. Appalachia has rejected me many times, but I finally felt ready, like I was finally the version of me the region needed. I was not, however, what the region wanted. So I continued adjuncting. (For those who aren’t familiar with adjunct work, it is per contract, 2000–4000 dollars per course (20–70 students) if you are lucky. You are not provided insurance or any research/material support. You are not eligible for grants. It’s an abusive system.)
I finally let go of any expectations of working in the region.
I started investing in myself — breath work, writing courses.
I joined book clubs and kept in contact with friends. I started to heal and accept rejection. I started to imagine myself beyond insider/outsider politics.
I joined groups of strangers (virtually) to discuss texts.
I started to write and found good folks to keep me accountable.
I started to see the cracks in the institutions: places, schools, ideas. And rather than allowing them to frustrate me, I looked away, into the horizon and thought about what I want. I learned about faith and manifesting and delivering promises.
I kept holding on to hope that I would be offered a position with insurance. When it was totally clear that was not going to happen, I moved. If I had been offered a position, I would have stayed, but for below minimum-wage pay, staying in a college town far from home didn’t make sense, so I found myself in East Tennessee. While I had technically been in Appalachia in southwest Virginia before moving, my new rural home was far from a university or college town. The difference between the lived experiences of those studying the region or activism or even equity and those living in divided rural communities was remarkable. I allowed this move to impact my writing and work. I returned to listening and observing.
I let go of the things I had learned in university classrooms as truths about the region and began to re-learn what rural life REALLY meant from new perspectives. I let go of expectations about harvest and learned how to can what was grown. I continued to find constant amidst chaos in my body — through fear of Covid, the need for movement, the new routines of living and working in the same space. I returned again and again to yoga.
Yoga has been life-giving. Beyond the asanas (or movements) most folks associate with the practice, I found solace in the breath-work and thought practices. I leaned into the practice of Aparigraha, or non-attachment.
Aparigrapha is the last Yama in Patanjali’s Eight Limbs of Yoga and it calls us to reconsider our expectations, greed, and stubbornness — something I have no shortage of.
When I began to truly let go things began to show up — Opportunities. Friends. Dreams. My voice. Contract jobs with projects I believe in. Writing opportunities. Connections. Hope.
I’ve joked with friends that when I moved kittens showed up — something I had hoped for in the college town for 5 years. But it’s true. Mallie and Trixie now keep me in constant company.
When I say “let go” I do not mean I do not care, but that I can observe. Myself. The world. The dominos. I can respond rather than react. I do not have to have the regions approval or a tenure track job — those things are constructs that will change. The teaching parinamavada tells us that ‘everything is in a constant state of flux’.
2020 will pass. I will grow. I will change. I will let go. I will emerge.
You will too.
