‘Is it warm, or is it just me?’ the woman asks before taking a swig from her water bottle then removing a scrunchie from her wrist and tying her hair back. ‘I never know these days. My thermostat’s on the blink.’
‘Mine too,’ Niamh says. ‘But it is warm. Very warm, in fact. I think they’re going full hot yoga with us.’
The woman turns to look at her. ‘I’m Deirdre,’ she says. ‘I’m hoping to save my sanity this weekend. But today is testing it a bit.’
‘And I’m Niamh. I’m not sure my sanity can be saved at this stage but I’m willing to trust the process. I think.’
‘Attagirl!’ Deirdre says. ‘Sure, all we can do is take it slow and not be afraid to ask for help.’ She winks at Niamh and smiles.
‘Advice for the ages,’ Niamh replies.
‘Indeed. We’re all in this together, aren’t we? Ah, great!’ Deirdre says, throwing her hands up in frustration. ‘I’ve gone and bloody done it now.’
‘Done what?’ Niamh has no idea what it is Deirdre has or hasn’t done.
‘Only gone and managed to get that bloody song fromHigh School Musicalstuck in my head!’
Niamh peals with laugher as Deirdre starts singing ‘We’re All in This Together’, before joining in herself.
‘My God, that song! All those songs! I don’t think my daughter remembers any of them any more but I’vePTSDfrom watching that movie on repeat when she was wee!’
‘Same!’ Deirdre says. ‘Troy Bolton still lives in my heart!’
The two are still laughing when Eimear, yoga instructor, walks to the front of the class and claps her hands to signal the session is about to begin.
Niamh takes a deep breath and reminds herself that she doesn’t have to get it done perfectly. She just has to do her best. Take it slow and not be afraid to ask for help, she thinks, before mentally adding, ‘And don’t beat yourself up when it isn’t perfect.’
A sense of calm, and of not taking herself too seriously, descends on her as she winks at Deirdre and starts into her poses.
Maybe this break will be exactly what she needs to give her some sort of clarity, just as Peggy says it will.
* * *
Two hours later, Niamh feels like a new woman. The yoga class was everything she had hoped it could be and the body-positive meditation session had been surprisingly emotional.
Yes, she had found herself shedding more than one or two tears as she lay on her mat in the darkened room listening to the class leader talk her, and all the other women, through a meditation which made her stop and think of all her body has endured over the years and how her body ‘is evolving into total maturity’. Niamh much preferred that description over any other she had heard about the ageing process.
‘How lucky are we to be bringing our bodies to where they were always meant to be?’ the class leader had said in a soft, almost whispered voice. ‘The end goal was never to just reach adulthood. It was never simply to journey through the reproductive cycle of life, or about whether or not we became mothers, chose not to, or had that choice taken from us. Our bodies are not about the babies we have or haven’t carried. Rest your hands on your lower stomach and focus on the very centre of what we are told defines our womanhood. Our wombs may be a part of our journey, but they are not our final destination. They are not who we are.’
Niamh had heard sniffles around the room and had felt comforted by them. There was something so incredibly freeing and unifying about crying in a safe space, in the comfort of a dark room surrounded by women who know what it is like to live in a changing body but not yet know how freeing it will feel once the changes have passed and the new chapters have begun.
Change, Niamh realised in the dark, as her tears joined the beads of sweat she was shedding, is inevitable and it’s not always comfortable, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad.
She listened and cried as they journeyed through their bodies, accepting and thanking their stretch marks, their wrinkles, the grey hairs and, yes, even those rogue wee bastards that started to sprout on their chins once they hit forty and seem to be multiplying almost daily.
‘In the spirit of this session, we can thank them,’ the class leader had said with a hint of humour, ‘but it’s okay to tell them to take a day off every now and again. It probably won’t work, but it might make you laugh and see our bodies seem to have an in-built sense of humour too.’ Niamh could hear the smile in her voice.
‘Our bodies were built to mature. Like fine wine. They were built to become softer, and rounder. Our hair to become greyer. Our wrinkles deeper. Our eyes more wizened. That they do all these things proves the one thing that really matters in this world – it proves we’ve lived. We’re still living. We’re embracing a body that is no longer tied to childbearing. We’re embracing an era when we can pass our wisdom, and wit, onto others. Most of all, we can pass that on to other women. Our friends. Our daughters. Our granddaughters.’
That’s when Niamh felt her heart contract just a little. A granddaughter. She knew, of course, on a logical level that she did not and could not know the gender of the baby her daughter was carrying, but in that moment in the quiet, empowering space of this retreat she suddenly felt it so very deeply in her bones that this baby would be a girl.
She’s sitting now with Becca and Laura at lunch and it feels as if she has this little seed of hope in her. She doesn’t want to say anything though. She’s scared that if she opens her mouth and dares profess that she feels better, something will come along and whip that happiness right out from under her feet.
Her body – her nervous system – has made a fragile peace with itself for once.
For now she’ll just hang on to it and enjoy listening to her friends talk about how much they too enjoyed the session. They have two hours now, to shower and then eat lunch, before they will take their group walk up to the waterfall later.
‘Hark at us being all outdoorsy!’ Laura grins. ‘Who would’ve thought it?’
