"It's Mom"

I just heard a great story from one of my amazing students and she gave me permission to share it. Sarah (not her real name) is a beautiful yogini with a wide open heart. Over the last few months her practice and the sangha of our small yoga community has served to help her deal with the loss of her mother.

On the 4th of July Sarah was riding her bike on a country road in Door Country, WI with her husband. She had been going to Door County often to settle her late mother's estate and prepare her house for sale. As she rode she was crying, missing her mom. She was remembering how her mom loved dressing up on holidays. She was imagining how her mom had dressed for past 4th of Julys, fully decked out in red, white and blue right down to the manicure. As she was remembering this and noting her own lack of patriotic colors she saw, lying in the middle of the road a red, white and blue lei. She stopped to pick it up. Her husband stopped with her.

While she was standing there crying on the side of the road with the lei in her hands, a monarch butterfly landed on her. Her father had a special fascination with monarchs so, since his death years before, they have been a symbol and reminder for her of her father. "Look!" she said. "My dad sent someone to give me a hug."

Here, she paused for a moment and told me, "I wouldn't even tell you this if my husband hadn't been there. I wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't seen it too."

Just at that moment, on that quiet country road, a car drove by. It had a personal license plate. It said...

It's Mom

True story.