The Light that Leads You Onward: My story

The year was 2021. The world had shifted in ways I couldn’t ignore, and I no longer recognized my place within it. The teachings I had once embraced no longer felt like they belonged. The ways I had shown up as a teacher—methods that once felt rooted and true—seemed out of place in this new reality. I had to face an uncomfortable truth: I could not simply continue as I had before. Could I still teach with integrity in this system? Was there even a place for me here?

This was more than self-doubt; it was a reckoning. A necessary, humbling, deeply unsettling reckoning.

For ten years, I built my life around teaching yoga, pouring my energy into a business that, in the end, wasn’t ever going to be mine. I had given over my best ideas without control of their direction. I struggled with integrity, with business tactics that felt hollow, with broken promises. I questioned my place in it all. I questioned how I could teach within this new context. And so, I left.

I reinvented myself. I took good jobs—jobs that paid the bills, jobs that taught me new skills. I met incredible people. And yet, something always felt off, like I was running full speed in the wrong direction.

I still practiced. Every morning. I tried to fit the teachings I loved into the despair I felt. I tried to apply them to the harshness of this new world we all were thrust into. And yet, I convinced myself that teaching wasn’t viable anymore, that whatever part of me had thought making a career as a yoga teacher was a good idea was naive and silly and whatever spark I had to share was gone.

After all, the “real world” was unrelenting. The “real world” offered little room for looking at the sky or poetry or going slowly or contemplation. The “real world” was coming for me, like it or not, everything around me seemed to say.

I convinced myself that my value was in what I could produce for the companies that paid for my existence. I started to not care about my existence. I fought thoughts of not wanting my existence at all.

2023. A demanding job. A promotion. The weight of responsibility. I told myself that security was the most important thing. That "hard worker" was my identity. That pushing through was the only option.

And then, and then . . . everything stopped.

Within a few weeks, I underwent major surgery and had my first COVID infection. My body changed profoundly—and I never fully recovered. Every morning, I woke up feeling like I had a flu that wouldn’t go away. Pain pulsed through me, like a single, unrelenting bruise. I tried to push through, but eventually, I collapsed.

Not even my “hard worker” self could save me this time.

Months passed. Then a year. Diagnoses piled up. Treatments failed. Days blurred together in pain so intense I couldn’t sleep, read, or leave my bed. At first, I fought it, bitterly. Then, I accepted it. I surrendered the identities I’d clung to so desperately. I accepted my lack of any fixed identity. I accepted an uncertain future. I accepted that I was not in control (nor could I ever be), no matter how much of a “hard worker” I tried to be. I recommitted to the spiritual path and the ancient practices that had given my life meaning and purpose.

And then, and then . . . somewhere in that darkness, something stirred.

A pull in deep meditation. A thought while staring at bars of light of afternoon sun that filtered through my blinds. A kind word from a dear friend on a rooftop garden that sparked an idea. Tiny pieces forming into something new.

The yogis describe awareness as light. And there it was—a quiet light within me, growing, guiding, urging me back to practice. Urging me back to study, to learn as if for the first time. Urging me onward.

In the last days of 2024, I sat with a friend and asked: What should I do with the limited time and energy I have? Even in my state, can I still contribute to this world?

I let the question float there, unanswered at first.

The answer came in dreams, in moments looking at the pink winter sky. It came through the poets, Eliot’s “HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME" (1) echoing in the blur of the early morning. HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME. HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME. Insistent. Waking me from my stupor. “There will be time, there will be time . . . time for all the works and days of hands that lift and drop a question on your plate. Time for you, and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions before the taking of a toast and tea.” (2)

I started to look in a new direction. I started to hear my own voice again, now a crone’s voice. I liked it better that way, wizened and brave. The voice of a survivor. Its message was insistent, despite the seeming impossibility of starting again. Now is the time. Now is the time to put whatever you have on the table, however humble, however imperfect.

Why me? What on earth gave me the right to teach?

I might be an imperfect vessel in many ways, but I’ve been lucky to have studied with brilliant teachers, to have met wise and committed students, to have friends willing to explore life’s most existential questions with me. I’ve been fortunate to be able to devote a lot of time to receiving teachings that slowly started to feel alive and relevant again.

And so, despite my whole situation, I felt I had something to offer. Perhaps something to offer to those who, like me, had faced heartbreak and loss and chronic pain.

Onward Light was born from this reckoning and whatever wisdom came from it. It was built from an acceptance and even within that acceptance, a hope. It is the light that led me onward in those darkest days and still does, even as they have lightened a bit. It is born from my story of losing my way and the light that led me to find it again.

It’s my story, but my hope is that parts will resonate with you. It is my hope that it has broken my heart open in the best way so that I can hold a braver space for you than I could before. My hope is that we can move forward together, in a new way.

I move forward with gratitude. With a deep love for these ancient teachings and their ability to ease some of the suffering in this world. With a commitment to continued study, always, with fresh eyes and an open heart. With a new paradigm—time as as spiral and not an ever ascending line. The things you love, who you truly are, they always come back around in some way, if you’re paying attention.

Onward Light exists to nourish a community of seekers, of teachers, of friends. Because we don’t do this alone. We need each other.

So welcome—or welcome back.

I’m so glad you’re here.

Citations

(1) Eliot, TS, “The Waste Land.”

(2) Eliot, TS, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”