This past weekend we celebrated Thanksgiving for the 5th year in a row with close friends.  I didn’t grow up with a traditional Thanksgiving being in Zimbabwe and all, but I still feel the pull and importance of being surrounded by those I love at this time of year.  Here’s the tricky bit: we have lived away from family for the past 9 years, and for me, basically my entire adult life has been spent traveling to see my sisters and my mom.  I know I’m not the only one; this is becoming more the norm.  As the world becomes a smaller place, our “blood family” spreads out in many directions.  

This is a beautiful thing, because it feels like we are more of a global community, but it’s also hard. It’s hard having to adjust to 9 hours time difference with part of the family, and 6 with the other.  It’s hard to hope to see each other for a handful of days each year. Over the past 9 years, the hardest part for me, has been raising my kids “on my own”.

My saving grace, besides skype, facetime and imessage, has been my community.  There is a saying that it takes a village to raise a child, and as a fledgling parent, I wholeheartedly agree.  I need help! I need emotional and physical support daily, to make it through the gauntlet of parenting.  Had I not found an amazing group of friends here, there is no way I would be here to write about this.  People talk about community all the time, but when you actually have to learn what it means to live in community – to be the support system to those around you, and to trust in the support of others yourself, it makes this concept real.

My gratitude this Thanksgiving (and truthfully, daily), goes out to my “foreign family”.  The fellow parents who have spent hours listening to my worries about my kids, who have taken my children to school, and fed them lunch, the ones who have offered emotional support when I feel like I’m failing…again! My yoga students who have over the years become dear friends of mine, and who help inspire me to live to my fullest and encourage me to be my better self, the people I work with and live around… These are the things I hold onto most.

This is why I’m all about connection.  Because out of these intricate connections comes the web of support that has held me up and held me together when I have been so far from my family.  This creation of trust is a gift to us all. It’s part of my daily practice of yoga (union).  One of the things I strive for in my classes, is to encourage and build on this incredible community.  We laugh and chat together, we socialize and serve together.  In this way, we stop compartmentalizing our lives and who we are to fit into certain circumstances.  We tie together the complex wholeness of who we are and allow things to overlap in that messy and yet totally awesome way. We show each other our whole selves.  We learn to trust. We learn to help and we learn to let others help us.

I am so grateful…Much love to you all.  Thank you for being my village!