I told my wife to SHUT UP!!!
For the last several days, I’ve been on edge. I’ve felt snappy, irritable, short-tempered—especially with my wife. On Monday, we had to step away from a project we were working on together because I was agitated and having trouble focusing. Then, the following day, I snapped again—and told her to shut up. Something I have NEVER said to her in our 16 years together. NEVER.
It shook me.
That moment was my wake-up call to pause. To stop and reflect on my reactions over the past few days, and to ask myself where they were coming from.
The issues are in the tissues, and our bodies often recognize our despair before our conscious minds catch up. That’s what was happening with me. The grief anniversary was approaching. My nervous system remembered, even if I wasn’t tracking the calendar. When I finally made that connection—when I asked myself, what’s really going on here? —the answer came quickly: This is the week I lost Johnathan.
My body knew. My heart knew. My mind was avoiding it.
That awareness brought me to the edge of a spiral—the familiar terrain of self-blame, regret, should haves, could haves, and “what ifs.” But this time, as this sacred week approaches, I return to a practice that has quietly held me over these last few years: yoga.
Ahimsa, the first of the Yamas in yoga philosophy, means nonviolence. While it's often interpreted as refraining from harm toward others, I’ve come to understand that one of the most radical ways we can practice Ahimsa is through how we treat ourselves—especially in moments like these.
Self-blame can be subtle, but it is violent.
It creeps in when you least expect it. In the quiet moments, whispering doubts and rewriting stories. It can distort even the deepest love and turn it into a weapon toward self.
Practicing nonviolence toward myself is a daily act of grace. It’s choosing breath over blame.
Presence over punishment. And it’s trusting that healing does not mean forgetting, nor does remembering mean suffering.
Ahimsa “asks us to step lightly, to speak gently, and to treat ourselves and others with compassion.” It’s not just about the absence of violence—it’s about the presence of love. Practicing Ahimsa invites us to listen to our bodies, to trust the truth of our emotions, and to soften the harshness of our inner narratives, our wild edges. It’s a way of honoring life—not just others’, but our own.
Ahimsa reminds us to pause.
To choose compassion.
To acknowledge our pain without attacking ourselves for feeling it.
It invites us to hold our sorrow with gentleness instead of judgment.
The pause is where healing begins.
In that sacred stillness, I can hear the truth beneath the noise:
That I loved my son with all my heart.
That I did the best I could with what I knew at the time.
That his pain was deep—and so was my love.
And that both can be true.
As we learn to dance with grief, one of the hardest things to do is move forward from the place where we lost our loved ones. It can feel like we're leaving them behind—like continuing to live, to love, to laugh, somehow dishonors their memory. But Ahimsa teaches us that healing isn’t selfish, and rest isn’t weakness. It teaches us that honoring our sorrow is honoring our loved ones. And that returning to joy is not betrayal—it’s reverence. It asks us to be gentle with ourselves in the moments we fear we’re forgetting. To be tender with the ache that says, If I let go of the pain, I let go of them.
Grief is not linear. It is ever evolving. And building tools that allow us to move with it—not against it—is how we alchemize loss into something sacred.
Ahimsa is one of those tools.
A compass that points us back to love. To presence and grace.
With deep reverence,
Lisa
