Cori Martinez Blog

I’m Sorry. There’s No Heartbeat.

Posted by Cori Martinez on May 9, 2012 in Cori, Thread of Spirit | 2 comments

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“Though he’s barely the size of a kumquat — a little over an inch or so long, crown to bottom — and weighs less than a quarter of an ounce, your baby has now completed the most critical portion of his development. This is the beginning of the so-called fetal period, a time when the tissues and organs in his body rapidly grow and mature.

He’s swallowing fluid and kicking up a storm. Vital organs — including his kidneys, intestines, brain, and liver (now making red blood cells in place of the disappearing yolk sac) — are in place and starting to function, though they’ll continue to develop throughout your pregnancy.

If you could take a peek inside your womb, you’d spot minute details, like tiny nails forming on fingers and toes (no more webbing) and peach-fuzz hair beginning to grow on tender skin.

Your baby’s limbs can bend now. His hands are flexed at the wrist and meet over his heart, and his feet may be long enough to meet in front of his body. The outline of his spine is clearly visible through translucent skin, and spinal nerves are beginning to stretch out from his spinal cord. Your baby’s forehead temporarily bulges with his developing brain and sits very high on his head, which measures half the length of his body. From crown to rump, he’s about 1 1/4 inches long. In the coming weeks, your baby will again double in size — to nearly 3 inches.”

I was reading about the baby’s current development on babycenter.com. I was ten weeks pregnant.

Nine months prior we had decided we wanted another baby. It took 7 months of dedicated effort. We obviously began to have more sex. It was just like the movies. “Ok, it’s time. You have to come home right now. I only have 30 minutes! Hurry up!!!”

When the pink plus sign showed through the window this time I called Josh right away and told him over the phone. This time we told everyone right away. Family, friends, people at work, I told all my students. We told Kalia and she said it was a boy. She was sure of it. She told everyone about her new baby brother before we ever even had the ultrasound.  She told strangers in the grocery store.

My boobs got big again, I got tired again, I wanted to sleep all the time and I wanted to throw up all the time, but I rarely did…again.

Then, at ten and a half weeks, I started spotting. I called the advice nurse at Kaiser and she was very reassuring. Apparently this happens all the time. Some women spot throughout their entire pregnancy. She asked me all the required questions, which I could tell were required because she seemed to be reading them. She concluded that everything was fine and she confirmed my appointment for the following week. She told me to call back if anything changed or the bleeding got worse.

The next morning the bleeding was not worse. Nothing had changed. Except I woke up crying, so I called Kaiser again and this time I lied.

I said the bleeding was worse. They gave me an appointment for two hours later. I took Kalia to her pre-school and called Josh. He asked if I wanted him to meet me there and I said yes, even though I felt a little silly. I was torn between a gut wrenching fear and the more likely probability that everything was fine. He met me in the waiting room and came into the doctor’s office with me.

The doctor walked in wearing thick dark glasses, a light blue button up shirt and khaki pants under his white coat. He smiled. He spoke slowly, moved slowly, took his time to say hello and check in.

Once my feet were in the stirrups he asked if I had been bleeding more than this. I smiled sheepishly, caught.

“Well, not exactly, I guess I may have overreacted.”

Apparently everything looked fine, still intact. This was a normal amount of spotting and there was very likely nothing to worry about.

“As long as you’re already here though, we can do an ultrasound. Just to reassure you” he said.

Josh took my hand. Our one and only ultrasound when I was pregnant with Kalia was a disaster. The technician was either in such a rush or so against our decision to have a naturopathic doctor who was going to deliver the baby at home that he spent less than three minutes giving the ultrasound. Two minutes and fifty four seconds to be exact, we recorded the whole thing. Then he said he didn’t have time to make a determination about the gender. I cried afterward and wrote him a letter. I told him that he appeared to have forgotten the opportunity he had to be part of some of the most special and memorable moments of peoples lives; the first time they hear their babies heart-beat, see the shape of their tiny little arms and legs. This was a moment I had looked forward to since I was a little girl. I told him he had stolen that from me.

This doctor continued to take his time.

He rolled the computer screen closer to me, so Josh and I could see it well. I looked at Josh and back at the monitor, so full of love for this moment. There he was, Kalia’s brother, our baby. The doctor traced his arms and legs and head with the pointer, until we could fully make out the contours of his little body swimming in the grey and white field. I touched my belly, wanting to reach out and stroke this tiny being that was inside of me.

The doctor had been talking, telling us about what we were seeing, what he was seeing. Then he stopped. He quietly asked his assistant to turn down the lights so he could get a closer look at something. He examined the screen closely for a moment and then he looked right into my eyes. I had looked away from the baby too, when he stopped talking, and was looking at him already.

“I’m sorry.” He said. “There’s no heartbeat.”

I heard the words but the translation in my mind and body of what they meant seemed to happen in slow motion. There’s no heartbeat.

I could feel the process of my body sinking and some unknown force rising up from my chest, into my throat, and gradually changing the expression on my face. My lips parted and I could feel the tightness that comes when you are just about to cry… but I was waiting… maybe he’d made a mistake.

“I’m so sorry.” He had to repeat. The sound of his voice and the look in his eyes were a promise to me. This was not a mistake. Oh my God.

The tears came.

He handed me a Kleenex and said that he would give us a few minutes alone. Josh was sitting on the exam table with me now, his arms wrapped around me. Neither of us said or did anything else, other than cry. For me it was the kind of cry where your whole body participates; hands covering a contorted face, eyes squeezed shut, shoulders slumped and shaking. The sobbing stopped only long enough for me to gasp for air. Josh had tears, but he wasn’t crying like that. The doctor came back at some point.

We had some options. I could have a D&C to remove the fetus from my uterus, I could take pills to induce a miscarriage, or I could just wait. I didn’t know how to decide. The doctor was apparently going to hand me some more Kleenex, but instead he said, “Oh my God I’m out of tissue. I feel like such a jerk. This is the worst day.”

For a moment I felt sorry for him. He looked so sad. I wondered what other news he had delivered that day. Or was it just this? I was surprised by his lack of distance from the situation.

“It’s ok.” I said. But then I started crying even harder. That was actually the absolute LAST thing I wanted to hear, even if it was meant for someone else. Clearly, it was NOT ok. The next thing I absolutely did not want to hear was,

“Don’t worry, you can always try again.”

Thankfully, this doctor knew enough not to say that, but many other people over the course of the next few months did not.

I sent Anne Marie a text message: Please cover my classes. There’s no heartbeat.

Almost two years after I sent that message to Anne Marie, I got this text from her. “The baby didn’t make it.” Now, along with many differences, we have this loss in common.

Obviously we aren’t alone. Women have miscarried babies for as long as they have been getting pregnant. I just didn’t know about it until I had miscarried my own. Now people began to share the stories, which were apparently reserved for the inside crowd. I heard them over and over again for weeks. This is why you’re not supposed to tell anyone you’re pregnant until the second trimester. Because the chances of losing the baby during the first three months are greater than any newly pregnant woman wants to face.

Except, then what? You lay around miserable for who knows how long, crying, and it’s a big mystery why? I didn’t mind that people knew. I didn’t even mind that much when I would see someone I hadn’t talked to in a long time and they would ask me how the new baby was, or how I was handling two kids, or something else like that. Except for Kalia. I wished I had never told Kalia.

Josh left his car at the hospital and drove me home. I crawled into bed. Kalia stayed with my mother-in-law, happy as could be to spend extra time with Grandma, oblivious she no longer had a brother. I sent a bulk text to most of the friends in my phone. The baby has no heartbeat. Please don’t call, I’m not ready to talk. All I wanted to do was cry.

I kept picturing the baby and the future that no longer existed: the birth, the clothes, the relationship between him and Kalia. The doctor had never actually said the baby was a boy, but I had taken to referring to it this way based on Kalia’s determination.  And my own instinct, maybe. I cried over lost soccer games, lost sleepless nights rocking and nursing, lost family vacations with two kids fighting in the backseat. I cried over a whole lifetime…lost, because that’s how it seemed to me in that moment.

I thought about the feeling I have when something horrible happens to someone in a movie, and how even though I know I don’t ever want it to happen to me, I become deeply curious what it would be like to feel that kind of pain or fear or sadness.

This is what I was thinking about when I made the decision to wait. This was a painful situation I would never wish upon myself, or anyone, and I was drawn toward experiencing it fully. I noticed I didn’t want it to go away quickly, I didn’t want it to be over. I wanted to cry and I could tell that I wanted to imagine the lost future with this baby, even though it seemed only to bring me more pain. Waiting seemed to be the thing that would most allow that.

So I waited.  And cried day after day in my bed.

A week after seeing the doctor I woke up with something like a memory from during the night. It was as if I’d had a long conversation with the baby. I didn’t remember the conversation, but I had a new understanding as a result of it.

I realized that this was always the way it was going to be. Never a toddler. Never a teen. Always only this. And when we both got exactly what we needed to give and receive from the other, we were going to go our separate ways.

Now it was time. It was the day before Halloween. I got out of bed and took Kalia to get a costume. She was going to be a princess this year, same as last year, and the year before.

When I pulled up to the costume shop blood began to pour out from between my legs. For nearly a week I had laid in bed crying and there was never more than very minimal spotting. This was a massive amount of blood. What if I didn’t go to the doctor that day and I wasn’t expecting this to happen? I felt relief, grateful to be prepared. I told Kalia calmly,

“Honey, we can’t go get your costume. I’m sick and I need Daddy’s help. We have to go home right now, I’m sorry.” Her response was truly miraculous.

“Ok Mommy.”

I drove home and called Josh from the car. He came out and got Kalia. I made it into the bathroom, where I remained for a couple of hours. I didn’t know it would take so long.

And I didn’t know there would be so much blood.

It was especially messy because I had this aversion to flushing the fetus down the toilet. So I held my hands in the stream of blood that continued to poor out of me. Whenever a large clot came out I examined it. To be honest, I don’t know if it was my imagination or not when I believed I was holding the baby in my hands. I put it into a box I had prepared in advance. I wondered if I was crazy. Is this what crazy people do? But I couldn’t imagine just flushing it.

Eventually the bleeding slowed enough for me to put a pad on and some new clothes. I washed my pants and underwear under the water in the bathtub, which ran red for several minutes. I cleaned the blood from the bathroom floor and counter and sink. I had to rinse the washcloth several times. Josh came to the door and asked me if I was ok. I meant it when I said yes, although the cramping was intense and also unexpected. When I came out I just went to bed.

I woke up for Kalia’s bedtime. I crawled into bed with her and Josh. She began to talk about her brother. She had big plans for him. She was going to teach him how to carve pumpkins.

“Kalia. I have to tell you something, honey.” I pulled her into my arms. Josh took one of my hands.

“Your brother isn’t going to be born.” She looked at me, confused.

“What do you mean?”

I remembered how I didn’t comprehend this news from the doctor when he said it to me the first time either. And I remembered the moment of understanding. My heart broke a little more as I waited for this moment to come for her.

“He wasn’t strong enough to be born, so he left my body.”

Tears welled up in her eyes and began to spill over. She began to sob in such a familiar way.

“But I want him to be born, Mommy! I want to hold him!” She lay next to me and cried. I was silent. There was nothing more to say. I watched her and was overwhelmed by an intense love for her.

I felt something else too. I had miscarried a baby today and now I held my husband’s hand and our daughter as they experienced this loss with me… and somehow I was at peace with it. Kalia kept crying for a while longer. She had more questions later, but this night she didn’t ask them. Josh ran his fingers through her hair. I knew she would be fine. We all would be. To me, this is how the presence of God feels. -Like everything is going to be fine. I softened into an unarguable trust in life, and whatever it may bring. I felt right then that it was my own willingness to know God that could make everything sacred and holy. Everything. Even this.

Recently someone said to me “women connect through sharing their stories.” This blog is is my story. It’s part memoir, part teaching, part journal and personal exploration, and part just a place to connect with the world of both human and spiritual beings.

Among other things, I am a yoga teacher, and please know that independently the posts in this blog are not an accurate reflection of who I am or what I hope to teach today. Please read from the beginning and all the way through for a more complete understanding of my message, starting with the first post: About This Blog.

Please…please…please…use the comment section!

 

God is Quiet

Posted by Cori Martinez on May 2, 2012 in Cori, Thread of Spirit | 1 comment

Recently someone said to me “women connect through sharing their stories.” This blog is is my story. It’s part memoir, part teaching, part journal and personal exploration, and part just a place to connect with the world of both human and spiritual beings.

Among other things, I am a yoga teacher, and please know that independently the posts in this blog are not an accurate reflection of who I am or what I hope to teach today. Please read from the beginning and all the way through for a more complete understanding of my message, starting with the first post: About This Blog.

Please…please…please…use the comment section!

 

It is quiet, even though I can hear the occasional car that drives by on the street outside my suburban house window. I can hear them from in front of me, and also from the left and the right. The leaking shower faucet drips, drips, drips, streams for one, two, three seconds and then goes back to dripping. The hot water heater, the house heater, the laptop computer all hum. The dryer ticks, even though it’s not on.  A motorcycle drives by. Another car. The walls moan as they settle and shift and settle again. A dog is barking far away. A bird chirps right near the backyard window. There’s the whisper of my exhale.

I go inside and hear my own thoughts. Planning, working, dreaming. Doubt creeps in, there’s too much to do, I could never do that, someone else could do it better. I still have so much to learn first. There’s too much to learn. I should be a better mom. I should clean the house and be a better wife. I should have more sex with Josh. I shouldn’t have left that half eaten apple on the counter. Why am I always so cold? I should turn the heat up. I shouldn’t turn the heat up, it’s already at 70 and that’s just ridiculous. Think about the environment, think about the money, but I’m so cold. I’m such a wimp. My feet are cold and I have socks and boots on. I shouldn’t have my shoes on in the house. I don’t like to wear shoes in the house. But I’m cold.

I go inside a little further and I notice. There’s some space, where it’s quiet. It’s the space where all the noise seems to rise up from, every inner voice and every outer sound. But before it becomes the sound or the voice it’s part of the silence. I can rest in here and be part of that silence too; I can stay as long as I want. I could stay forever but I know that soon I will forget that I am this silence and I will rise up out of it with a loud important voice that needs something, wants something, and I will become the voice instead of the silence. At least that’s what I’ll believe.

But for now I swim in the silence. I stop and float. I look around and listen to the world from here. The voices are still there, the world is still turning, I can even get up and do the dishes, or not. I could call someone; I could do anything and keep resting in this silence. It isn’t a place to retreat to; it’s a place to connect more deeply to everything, to everyone. It feels like the only thing that’s truly real.

This is what I now call God. This silence that is in me, that is more powerful and real than anything else in my world. This space where anything could happen and it would be ok, more than ok, it would be right. 

How My Screaming, Crying, Sleeping Baby Taught Me About Meditation

Posted by Cori Martinez on May 2, 2012 in Cori, Thread of Spirit | 1 comment

Recently someone said to me “women connect through sharing their stories.” This blog is is my story. It’s part memoir, part teaching, part journal and personal exploration, and part just a place to connect with the world of both human and spiritual beings.

Among other things, I am a yoga teacher, and please know that independently the posts in this blog are not an accurate reflection of who I am or what I hope to teach today. Please read from the beginning and all the way through for a more complete understanding of my message, starting with the first post: About This Blog.

Please…please…please…use the comment section!

 

One day when Kalia was three months old, she was screaming in my arms. She had been crying for hours, for months actually. She cried the entire first year of her life. This time I was standing in the hallway when I had the thought that I couldn’t take it anymore, that she had to stop crying or I was going to go crazy. I felt anger wash through me and then halt in panic. I wanted to throw her, to give up–on her and on all my own petty, useless efforts to be mother.  No matter what I did, she just kept screaming. I changed my diet, I cut out acidic foods, gassy vegetables, then strong flavors, then dairy, and then when I was eating only rice and eggs I read that maybe I should cut out eggs.  I swaddled her, shhhhed her, sang to her, bounced her, rocked her and still she cried.

That night in the hallway I was nearly defeated completely. What did every other parent know that I didn’t? Why was this so hard? I heard my dad… “babies cry.” My mom had said it too, and my mother in law. I realized… there may be nothing I could do to stop her from crying.

Maybe sometimes my job was not to fix everything and make it better, but just to be there for her in her pain. I took a deep breath and continued to rock her. I felt tethered suddenly, although so very delicately, to a place of comfort and acceptance. There have been so many times since that day when I have tried again, unsuccessfully, to “fix it”.  Those moments when I know it’s not possible, when I accept that it may not be my job, I can be intimate with her in a way I cannot be as the problem solver. This day I held her for over an hour more while she continued to cry.

After crying and crying, when Kalia finally fell asleep in my arms, she’d wake up crying if I laid her down. So for nearly the first nine months of her life, I held her. Tired and sometimes defeated, sometimes overwhelmed by my love, I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of her tiny breath. It was quiet and I sat there in order to feel the depth and clarity of that quiet. This is how I first discovered a practice that had nothing to do with yoga postures or rules of behavior, and how I discovered a place that I could rest in and begin to know a new meaning of God, or spirit, or the universe.

Next Post: God is Quiet

Time With My Dad

Posted by Cori Martinez on Apr 24, 2012 in Cori, Thread of Spirit | 3 comments

Recently someone said to me “women connect through sharing their stories.” This blog is is my story. It’s part memoir, part teaching, part journal and personal exploration, and part just a place to connect with the world of both human and spiritual beings.

Among other things, I am a yoga teacher, and please know that independently the posts in this blog are not an accurate reflection of who I am or what I hope to teach today. Please read from the beginning and all the way through for a more complete understanding of my message, starting with the first post: About This Blog.

Please…please…please…use the comment section!

 

There had been very few moments where I felt him to truly be my dad since the day he left when I was nine. I wasn’t angry, it’s just that ever since he leaned over my bed, told me he was leaving and kissed me goodbye, he didn’t seem to know how to keep being my dad. And I didn’t know how to be his daughter.

One time when I was a freshman in high school I had a huge fight with my mom and I asked my dad if I could live with him. I think my mom let me do it to teach me a lesson. My dad had a lot more rules, but he didn’t really talk about them, he just fingered a large knife and suggested to the boy that stood on the doorstep that maybe it was best if he didn’t hang out with me. So I moved back in with my mom after two weeks. My dad and I didn’t spend much time together before or after that.

Now he was about to walk me down the aisle.

I let tears well up in my eyes and I said, “I don’t think I can do this.” The moment I heard my own words, I knew they weren’t true. But they made me need my dad, made him have to step up and be my father and say the thing, whatever it would be, that would make it ok to walk. I don’t even remember what he said, but since I really had no doubts, anything would have worked and it did. I saw tears in his eyes too as he remembered…oh; this is how it’s done.

We walked arm in arm, father and daughter.

A Perfect Blue Baby

Posted by Cori Martinez on Apr 13, 2012 in Cori, Thread of Spirit | 2 comments

When I found out Kalia’s due date, August 20th, would make her a Leo I laughed. I figured, it’s been ten years, this must be a sign that it’s time to let go of my grudge.

Joe was 19 or 20, with dirty dark skin and messy brown hair. I watched him for months, hoping he’d look my direction and I made out with him in the car the first time he did. Unfortunately, he was on his way to New York for the summer but we talked on the phone almost every day while he was gone. He wrote me three love letters.

He was going to come see me straight from the airport when he got home. I waited up all night but he never came, never called, until the next afternoon. He had met a girl on the airplane and they had this instant amazing connection.

I cried for days. My mom told me it was because he was a Leo. It had nothing to with me. Leos are passionate and flighty and change their deepest dreams and desires in an instant, she said. I held a grudge against Leos from that day forward.

So I was certain Kalia wouldn’t be late. Only a day or two later would make her a Virgo. Even before I began to teach about a “Friendly Universe” I trusted that life was caring for me; guiding me to let go of my pain.

But August 20th came and went.

I had been pacing my neighborhood for weeks. A month earlier I had shown up at the doctors office in a panic because the birth of a thirteen pound monster baby was all over the news and since I’d had only one ultrasound early on…how could we be sure this baby wasn’t going to be thirteen pounds? In Home Depot I got another sympathetic look in every aisle. People told me I was huge, they said I must be having twins, the biggest belly they had ever seen. People will say anything to a pregnant woman it seems. The doctor wrapped the measuring tape around my stomach and back. She said it was an optical illusion due to the petiteness of the rest of my body… turns out the measurements showed on the small side of average.

I thought I figured it out then; never tell a pregnant woman she looks huge. Many years later my very petite friend was pregnant with twins and I was driving to visit her in Berkley. She was 8 months pregnant and I coached myself in the car, do NOT say you look huge, do not say you look huge. I thought the optical illusion factor might shock me and I wanted to be ready. I over-prepared though because when I saw her what came out was, “Oh! You look much smaller than I was expecting.”

She snapped at me that the babies were healthy. She explained later that she’d been struggling to gain enough weight during the pregnancy and that this had been an ongoing concern. So I revised my philosophy; never comment on a pregnant woman’s size and always tell her she looks absolutely beautiful.

I have a picture of myself on my due date in a bathing suit, standing by the boat launch at the beach park less than a mile from our house. I appear to be doing a magic trick in order to stand upright given the size of my belly compared to the size of the rest of me. Although I was sick to death of hearing it and literally thought I might punch the next person to say so… they were all right. My belly looked HUGE.

That day Josh and I piled into a 2.5 person Kayak along with our new friend Katie, our dog, and my giant belly. The waves, the dog and the fact that we were over capacity in the kayak led to a capsize in the middle of the ocean. We flipped. And I was grateful for all the chaturangas (yoga push-ups basically) that made it possible for me to hoist myself back up into the kayak sideways, with no ground to jump from, while quite possibly carrying two thirteen pound babies in my giant belly.

Katie was here to cover all my classes at the yoga studio for 6 weeks. She was staying in the ohana (studio apartment attached to our house) and that night she cooked stir fry with olive oil, cashews, cauliflower, broccoli, and soy sauce. It turned out she had IBS and cooked pretty much the same dinner for herself every night. Food finally smelled good to me. I still think of her when I recreate that meal.

Five days after my due date I went into labor and TWO DAYS after that, Kalia was born.

I was home and I asked the homebirth doctor after 19 hours of back labor if I could go to the hospital. She said no, it’s too late for that. You can do this, she told me. But she stalled again when I asked her to check how far I was dilated. Every time she checked for the past 15 hours, nothing had changed.

When it was finally time to push I gave it everything I had and I was done before the baby came out. I started to cry. I really thought I couldn’t do it anymore. I tried to give up, as if I had that choice, and my mom told me “Just ONE more honey, you can do it, just one more.” I couldn’t bear the thought of believing her if it wasn’t true.

I turned to Jacquie, my doctor, and asked her, is it true?

This is the only one that matters, she said.

I understood and these words saved me. Let go of everything else that has happened, don’t worry about what may happen next. Just be right here, right now, in this moment. I took a deep breath and I pushed again and again…and again, because no, that wasn’t the last one.

She came out with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, but I didn’t know. It happened so fast. Jacquie had spun her around in the water to unwrap the cord, Josh said, and put her right into my arms. Later I saw the photos of me holding a dark blue baby and I cried.

Thank you God… thank you, thank you, thank you for letting her be okay.

And this is only the beginning? I stared at the picture of the perfect blue baby in my arms and panicked…I can’t do this without a higher power to believe in, I thought. I needed there to be a God, I needed someone to pray to, someone to lie down on the ground and plead to. I was supposed to be responsible for this innocent baby girl, for the rest of my life, and the realization was hitting me hard in the gut that I was helpless; anything could happen. So much was going to happen that I couldn’t control. I wanted God’s help. I needed it. What I never could have imagined on my wedding day occurred to me now: I needed God’s blessing.

But what the hell did that even mean? I didn’t know what to think…but for the first time in my life, I started to pray.

Present Time Check-In

Posted by Cori Martinez on Apr 12, 2012 in Cori, Thread of Spirit | 0 comments

I just wanted to say hello actually and share some thoughts about writing this blog.

One thing I have noticed as I write is that who I am in one moment often has absolutely nothing in common with who I am in even the very next moment.

Our mind habitually sees things as static truths: Good or bad, right or wrong, like or don’t like, this way or that way. But things are not just black or just white. “All things are large. All things contain multitudes.” (Adapted from Walt Whitman)

I also think that whenever there is one thought, feeling or perspective, the opposite is very close by and will certainly surface at some point. For example, if I am plagued by something then I will also experience moments of pure joy and freedom. If I question my love for someone or I question myself then there will also be a deep knowing.

We can only recognize one thing by the experience of it’s opposite.

As I write about my life in this blog I am aware of writing about moments and people and situations from my perspective in one particular moment, and this in no way defines the ultimate truth or even my own perspective a moment later. Sentences on the page, just like our thoughts, can so easily be perceived as static truths…but they aren’t.

What I love about writing this blog is the opportunity to share that people are not how we see them to be; we are not how others see us; we are not even how we see ourselves. We are what we see as well as the opposite.

So I hope you won’t get the idea that if I write about feeling sadness or struggle that I have lived a sad or hard life. Likewise, if I write with a negative view of someone or something, it is not the full picture of them. It never is, one way or the other. I have just lived, and things have just been, and the way each moment was expereinced remains a matter of constantly evolving perspective.

I also hope to show that what we assume about others, and often compare ourselves to, is never the whole truth.

We all contain multitudes…and we are more alike than different.

So next time you have a thought that something or someone is static: good, bad, rude, right, wrong, or whatever, consider that they are more than that; that they are what you see as well as the opposite. And consider that you are too: what you see in them as well as the opposite.

Thank you all so much for your comments, your support and your interest in what I share through this blog!

Namaste,

Cori

Next Post: Perfect Blue Baby

Being A Yoga Teacher

Posted by Cori Martinez on Apr 3, 2012 in Cori, Thread of Spirit | 13 comments

Recently someone said to me “women connect through sharing their stories.” This blog is is my story. It’s part memoir, part teaching, part journal and personal exploration, and part just a place to connect with the world of both human and spiritual beings.

Among other things, I am a yoga teacher, and please know that independently the posts in this blog are not an accurate reflection of who I am or what I hope to teach today. Please read from the beginning and all the way through for a more complete understanding of my message, starting with the first post: About This Blog.

Please…please…please…use the comment section!

 

Yoga teachers (and anyone who wants to be a good person really) should definitely recycle. And if they are feeling rushed while cleaning out the fridge and they throw a glass jar with leftovers into the regular garbage, they should immediately cover it up with other garbage, hope no one sees and then feel guilty afterward.

They should be healthy and in good physical shape, although how they look should not be important to them. They should not spend too much time getting ready or looking in the mirror. They should not dye their hair, spend too much money on makeup, or shop in chain department stores.

They should never go to Wal-Mart.

They should be friendly, forgiving and considerate of others and their circumstances. They should never get irritated at other drivers, store clerks, telephone sales people, or anyone, really. (Although cigarette smokers could be the only exception to this rule-sorry smokers!)

When driving, they should always stop for someone waiting at the end of a crosswalk to cross the street. If they are in a hurry they should avoid eye contact until it’s too late to stop and then pretend to have just noticed the person a moment too late and appear sorry for not seeing them sooner; soon enough to stop.

They should always give money to homeless people, especially because they should not care about having their own material wealth, because money should be of very minimal importance to them.

They should be in healthy, loving, satisfying relationships and be skilled at communicating with honesty and patience at all times.

They should eat organic foods only; no white flour, processed foods, sugar, caffeine or alcohol. They should shop only at health food stores, always bring their own bags, and if they forget they should stuff everything they can into their purse and carry the rest out in a giant pile in their arms and hopefully not drop anything. Actually they should definitely not drop anything because they should be graceful most of the time.

It is okay to be vegetarian, but ideally vegan, unless they begin to shrivel away and they are tired all the time, then eating grass-fed, free range, organic meat is the only acceptable option. Under these circumstances, however, they should feel very, very guilty for taking the life of another living being for their own selfish purposes.

They should not watch TV. Especially not shows with violence or high levels of personal drama.

They should be grateful for every moment, seemingly good or bad, and see the beauty in each and every life experience.

They should not need to take vitamins because they should get all the vitamins they need from their whole foods, healthy diet.

They should have a daily asana, meditation and pranayama practice. In fact, they should wake up at 5am every morning and practice for at least 2 hours, then wash out their nasal passages with warm salt water using a netti pot, drink some warm lemon water and then eat some vegan stew for breakfast, prepare their fresh organic salad with dark leafy greens, raw veggies and home grown sprouted grains and fermented cabbage for lunch and plan to pick up some colorful fresh fruit at the farmers market to make a protein smoothie for dinner.

If they get pregnant and have a life or death craving for deep fried zucchini and ranch dressing from Hot Dog On A Stick in the mall, they should beg their husband to go inside and get it for them while they hide in the car, because they should not be seen eating such crap.

They should be very organized; because of course their outer environment is a reflection of their calm and clear mind.

They should not need the love and approval of others to be happy and they should be fully available to give love and acceptance to everyone in their lives.

They should not put anything in life before their yoga practice, ever.

They should be so passionate about sharing the gift of yoga with the world that they should never charge for teaching it because that would not be true to the spirit of the practice. At the same time they should make sure to wear organic cotton clothing, made locally by a small company who donates their profits to charity.

And if this gets complicated because they can’t figure out how to buy $95 organic yoga pants, volunteer teach, shop only at health food stores, and give their money to the homeless (and of course other very important causes) they should just go on for years and years feeling guilty every time someone suggests that charging money, making money or wanting money is not yogic. The guilt is fine, good actually, because guilt is just a sign that we are not living in accordance with our own deepest values, so the guilt that seems to be eating them alive will actually, eventually, lead them to doing and teaching real yoga and living a truly spiritual life.

These are the tried and true rules for yoga teachers (and all good people really), which I knew with total certainty not to be true but still, for some reason, tried constantly to follow for a very long time.

Who wrote these absolutely ludicrous rules? I did of course. I wrote them and I tried to follow them. Then I judged others and myself on our inability to live up to my own expectations. Then I tried harder. Often I was aware of the ridiculousness, the hypocrisy, the contradiction. But even as I laughed at it… I was plagued by it.

Next Post: Perfect Blue Baby Coming Soon

We Still Fought. Would A Baby Help?

Posted by Cori Martinez on Mar 27, 2012 in Cori, Thread of Spirit | 4 comments

Recently someone said to me “women connect through sharing their stories.” This blog is is my story. It’s part memoir, part teaching, part journal and personal exploration, and part just a place to connect with the world of both human and spiritual beings.

Among other things, I am a yoga teacher, and please know that independently the posts in this blog are not an accurate reflection of who I am or what I hope to teach today. Please read from the beginning and all the way through for a more complete understanding of my message, starting with the first post: About This Blog

Please…please…please…use the comment section!

You’ve heard the saying before, right? “Wherever you go, there you are.” My first encounter with Josh when he refused to clock me out was an indicator of the sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle battle that would exist between us from that moment forward. We may have been on a honeymoon, we may have been living the dream life, we may have loved each other very much…but we have always fought.

Now he didn’t think my piles were cute anymore. Why couldn’t I just put things away? Why couldn’t I just finish what I started? Why would I leave the last two goddamn dishes in the sink without just finishing the fucking job?????

I wanted to, I swear. I wanted to be organized and respectful and have a happy marriage where my husband wasn’t disappointed in me.  But it was hard. Sometimes I picked up my piles with resentment. Is this the only way I will ever be good enough for him? Pick up the stupid pile of paperwork, put the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher, hurry get my clothes off the bathroom floor, hurry before he sees.

Then he would complain about the pile on the dresser. Whatever. I can’t do it. I will never be able to be like his mother who worked full time and then spent every other waking moment taking care of the housework, the cooking, the bills, everything always taken care of for her children and her husband. Forget it, I’m not interested. It’s just not possible for me. This marriage is never going to work.

But then later he would pull me toward him in bed and turn me around so that we fit together. Every question I had about whether or not we should be together would disappear. I never wanted to be without this man, without this warmth at my back, these arms wrapped around me. Even when we fell asleep some part of us would keep touching. His hand on my stomach or my leg over his back or our ankles intertwined.

I read once that if you recorded a couple at night and watched how they slept together, you could determine if their relationship would last. Touching while you sleep is a good sign. During those times when I feel the most distant in our relationship, the most concerned that maybe this isn’t going to work after all…I reach over with my hand or my foot in the middle of the night and make contact, hoping that it will help. And it feels in those moments, like it might.

It’s shocking but true. When things got challenging we actually wondered if having a baby would help. I know, crazy right?

Except I didn’t know if I wanted kids. A woman once told me, with tears in her eyes, “It’s the first time you will ever know what it’s like to truly put something else before yourself. You might not think of yourself as selfish, you might think you put other people before you all the time, you might think this…until the day you birth your first child. Only then will you know that you have never wholly put anyone or anything else before you like this.”  She was sinking into love when she said it, surrounded by something untouchable to me. I pictured her every time I asked the question, every time Josh asked, do I want kids?

Her image was not the thing that made me long to be a mother, it was actually the thing that made me fear it the most, that made me want to turn the other direction and run from a future where I would no longer have the freedom to put myself first.

But I was curious. I love to know what people are talking about, to understand why they feel or act the way they do. Sometimes when I watch horrible things happen to someone in a movie I wonder…What would it be like to feel that kind of pain or fear or sadness? There’s a desire to feel it for myself, to understand fully. And so sometimes I’d say yes, I do want kids, let’s do it. Then he’d say no. And just when I started to think he was right, he’d change his mind. But it was always moments too late, I was already afraid again, sure I didn’t want kids anymore.

One day we both said yes on the same day and just like that we started to try.

Can you believe this is how I first learned about ovulation? I knew nothing about it until I read my first book on trying to get pregnant. I had gone to a clinic three different times as a teenager, worried about some sort of STD because no one, including the doctors at the clinic, had ever told me that “Cervical fluid that resembles ‘egg whites’ is a sign that you are near ovulation or are ovulating.”

We began to have more sex. A lot more sex, and we fought a lot less. Was it the sex or the excitement of doing something new, of creating a whole new life for our selves? My mom would say the sex. Josh would say the sex. My mom is always telling me that sex needs to be a priority in my marriage. She says if I’d rather sleep, watch a movie, work, or be alone then my priorities are fucked. She says, “If you’re too tired because you worked so long, you might as well get a divorce because if your job is more important than your marriage, your marriage is over.” Josh says it relieves his stress and if he’s less stressed he won’t get so irritated at me.

For seven months we had a lot of sex. Not just when I was ovulating either, because the “trying-to-get-pregnant-sex” was a reminder that I actually really enjoy having sex with my husband.

And for seven months I peed on sticks. One day I woke up and my boobs hurt. I thought it was a sign I was going to start my period. I wasn’t even going to bother peeing on another stick only to find myself staring at another pink minus symbol. I felt a little bit of relief. Suddenly I didn’t feel so sure I wanted a baby anymore. I had a good life, with freedom, and opportunity for selfish indulgences. A few days later I still hadn’t started my period and I had one stick left, still sitting on the bathroom counter. Josh was watching TV in the living room when the plus sign appeared in the window.

I inhaled and the breath got stuck inside me. My mouth hung open as I slid my back down the bathroom wall. I was part smiling, part bewildered, part excited and part in total disbelief. I sat there on our newly remodeled bathroom floor for at least 5 minutes before placing the stick on the edge of the bathtub and walking out into the living room.

The words wouldn’t come out. I stood there staring at him and I just kept repeating myself  “Um, uh, I’m, um, uh….” Finally, “I’m pregnant.”

We were happy.

We only told our parents and two or three of my friends, since the official rules state “Do not tell people you are pregnant until you’ve reached the second trimester.”

So I was pregnant. Holy crap.

My boobs got big and I got tired. I wanted to sleep all the time. I wanted to throw up all the time too but I rarely did. I envied the pregnant women who actually did throw up every day because I imagined that they at least would feel better afterward. I, on the other hand, felt miserable all day long.  I tried keeping crackers by the bed, eating hard boiled eggs in the middle of the night, toast before getting up, snacking all day long, sucking on lemon candy, drinking fresh ginger tea and sparkling water. I read every Top Ten Tried and True Tricks for Managing Morning Sickness article I could find and then I just laid on the floor of the yoga studio and moaned.

The smell of cooking, the thought of eating, the sight of nearly every kind of food made me want to vomit. At work I pretended to be fine, or if it was really bad I said I had food poisoning. I only had to put on a serious show for the few hours a day when I taught classes. The rest of the time I hid behind the curtains and avoided the world.

At home Josh took care of me. He cooked all the food, did the dishes, told me to rest or go to bed. He rubbed my feet, my head, my back.

When I was eleven weeks pregnant a student asked me if I had gotten a boob job. Although I still had seven days before reaching the safety zone, I decided it was time to make the announcement and told my Saturday morning class of 25 students. “I want to let everyone know…I didn’t get a boob job!”

The truth is I felt tired and tortured by food throughout my entire pregnancy. Sorry to the newly pregnant women who may be reading this, but while there were certainly good days and maybe even a good week here and there, it’s possible that you could feel nauseous for nine whole months.

Next Post: Being A Yoga Teacher

The Dream Life

Posted by Cori Martinez on Mar 20, 2012 in Cori, Thread of Spirit | 10 comments

Recently someone said to me “women connect through sharing their stories.” This blog is is my story. It’s part memoir, part teaching, part journal and personal exploration, and part just a place to connect with the world of both human and spiritual beings.

Among other things, I am a yoga teacher, and please know that independently the posts in this blog are not an accurate reflection of who I am or what I hope to teach today. Please read from the beginning and all the way through for a more complete understanding of my message, starting with the first post: About This Blog

Please…please…please…use the comment section!

I met my husband when I was 18 years old. 16 years ago. By then I had already…BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. I did so many things before my 18th birthday that I just can’t bare to mention in this blog.

The point is I had already lived a bit by the time I met my husband, 18 or not.

For the record, I also graduated high school with honors. Plus, in my junior year of high school I lied about my age to get a full time job as a restaurant manager at the biggest restaurant in our small town. I was on work-study so I could leave school at noon everyday to go to work.

The “mentionables” are the reasons most people didn’t know about all the trouble I was getting into on the side.

Anyway. I often think I had to do all that stuff so I could feel okay about marrying someone I started dating so young. That way I’d never feel like I missed out.

And I almost never do. Josh is the love of my life. Early in our relationship he let me paint his toenails purple. Some people think this is weird. But to me it said, “I’ll do anything for you.” And when he took me home for Christmas that weekend with his toenails still painted it said “And I want my family to know exactly how I feel.” I took the whole thing as a very romantic gesture.

In high school he collected comic books and played Dungeons and Dragons, but he also had a girlfriend. I don’t imagine he was the hot topic in the girl’s locker room then, but by the time I met him there were a few girls trying to get his attention.

He is five years older than me, 6ft tall, with dark curly hair and big dark brown eyes. He smiles more with his eyes than his mouth and he doesn’t say much in a group. He talks more one on one, so I remember feeling special when he talked to me.

The first time I noticed him he was working behind the bar at a restaurant where I was waiting tables. There was a computer behind the bar that you could clock in and out from, but there was also one in the dining room. I didn’t feel like going over to the dining room so while talking to a friend I asked him if he would clock me out. I was used to being able to ask for something with a smile and get what I wanted. He barely looked at me. “I’m busy.” He said. “Clock yourself out.” I was shocked. And that’s when I noticed; he’s kind of cute!

We hung out for six months without kissing. He brought me flowers, took me on picnics and bike rides and stayed late into the night talking while he rubbed my legs. Soon after our first kiss we had our first argument. I told him it didn’t seem like it was going to work out. He looked at me like I was crazy. “What are you talking about? Just because we have an argument, you think we have to break up? What about working through it?” He shook his head and laughed. Breaking up because of an argument seemed so ludicrous to him that he didn’t even take me seriously. His parents have been married for 40 years. Mine, obviously, are divorced.

Five years later he asked me to marry him. We had been living together for four years. I came home and the house was spotless. Fresh purple Irises were on the table and he had made dinner. Over a bottle of champagne he told me that his stomach hurt. (I knew he was going to propose and it didn’t bother me a bit that it appeared to be making him sick!) I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him.

I, of course, said yes.

We shipped a houseful of furniture, both of our vehicles and everything else we owned to the Big Island of Hawaii without ever even seeing it before. We were full of hope and trust and adventure, with big plans to start a commercial mushroom farm with my Mom and her new husband, Bob.

The first month it rained 36 inches, which is A LOT. We had read to expect 10-15 inches of rain there in Hilo, the wettest city in the world. At first it rained all the time and we wondered… what have we done? But then the sun came out and our new life in Hawaii was amazing.

Josh was driving and one or two people, whoever had come to visit, were in the back seat. The sky was light blue and white and the sun rested on the water… or it was pouring down rain so hard we might have to pull over and wait. It still rained a lot sometimes.

We were on our way to the beach, or to a waterfall, or a tide pool. Maybe to the warm ponds, where steam vents from the flowing lava below open up into the bottom of a pool of salt water, making the water naturally about 90 degrees. We’d find sun somewhere, because now we knew it was never far.

There were towels in the trunk with one ice chest full of food and the other filled with beer. There was a rainbow, the smell of gardenias, plumerias and salt water.
Cardinals were in the parking lots; feral cats were everywhere. Flying termites and cockroaches no longer sent me screaming.

After the beach we dusted black sand, or white, or maybe green sand from our feet; green if we had been to the beach where the waves crash against lava filled with green crystals.

We were going to cook dinner. Or go for Thai food at Naung Mai. I ordered spring rolls with a side of large green leaves of lettuce, mint, cucumbers and sweet chili dip. I wrapped the lettuce around the crispy fried spring rolls and piled the mint and cucumbers inside.

We drank mai tais. Josh made the mix from scratch. We found lilikoi on a vine by the waterfall, guava from a neighbor’s tree, fresh pineapple juice and sometimes fresh squeezed oranges. It was $4 for an orange. It was $8 for hummus. I returned the $7 yellow bell pepper.

Our best friends moved with us. Sometimes they lived with us. Sometimes they had their own ocean view apartment on the side of the highway. Once a cockroach crawled into Carlos’s ear and twice Josh got bit by a centipede. The flying termites swarmed our kitchen if we turned the lights on at night. So we cooked in the dark, or by candlelight. We didn’t have curtains so we woke up with the sun… and the neighbor’s rooster.

This was life our first six months in Hawaii. We were living our honeymoon, even though we weren’t married yet. And if it was possible to find “happily ever after” by taking a trip, moving to a certain part of the world, being in a relationship, having the right job…then I was set for sure.

A few months later we bought a house and a few months after that I opened my first yoga studio, Yoga Centered.

Next Post: We Still Fought. Would A baby Help?

I Got an A in Yoga. But I Cheated.

Posted by Cori Martinez on Mar 11, 2012 in Cori, Thread of Spirit | 7 comments

Recently someone said to me “women connect through sharing their stories.” This blog is is my story. It’s part memoir, part teaching, part journal and personal exploration, and part just a place to connect with the world of both human and spiritual beings.

Among other things, I am a yoga teacher, and please know that independently the posts in this blog are not an accurate reflection of who I am or what I hope to teach today. Please read from the beginning and all the way through for a more complete understanding of my message, starting with the first post: About This Blog.

Please…please…please…use the comment section!

 

Psychology of Hatha Yoga was a four-unit class and we were allowed to take it twice for credit. When people ask me how I got into yoga, my honest answer is “It seemed like an easy A.”

I am ashamed to admit that I did get an A. Both times. Because the first time I cheated on the final, a karma yoga project. Karma is the law of cause and effect. Karma Yoga is basically about doing good stuff so that good stuff comes back to you. I kept intending to start my project, but the week before it was due I found myself borrowing my friends five-year-old daughter so I could take pictures of her in yoga poses and claim that I had been teaching her yoga for months.

I had a picture of her balancing on one leg in Tree pose and another doing Lions Breath- tongue out, eyes wide. As I passed the pictures around the circle I told the group her mom had needed a babysitter and so I had agreed to watch her free of charge and teach her yoga. As I spoke, I had the thought “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Did I even have a good intention? I was really just trying to get an A. At least I felt bad. Would I still go to hell? I didn’t even believe in hell…and it tortured me.

Although this isn’t yoga teacher resume material, I became a yoga teacher. I teach yoga teacher trainings.  I teach the ethics of yoga and the ethics of teaching yoga and I cheated on my first karma yoga project. This has given me ammunition when my mind begins to fear not being good enough. It has helped that fear to grow.

This may seem a little Poly-Anna to some people, I know. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who cheated in college. I bet half my classmates cheated on that same Karma Yoga project. But this is just one of the bullets I’ve collected over time. Each little (or big) action or thought that is not in alignment with my own deepest values gives me more ammunition to doubt myself.

Eventually our guilt and fear and need for external approval become the foundation of our lives. This is exactly how the road to hell is paved, but we don’t have to wait to die to get there. We are living it to the degree that we have created it…now.

Now I see both heaven and hell as a part of life. Our actions lead the way to one or the other.

Anyway. I learned a lot in those classes, but I didn’t fall in love with yoga until my first Bikram class. I got a different kind of A. But I still cheated.

I loved Bikram Yoga from the very first moment. I loved the heat, the sweat, the teacher saying my name.

“Beautiful arch, Cori.”

“Very nice, Cori”.

I pushed a little harder because of it, though I tried to appear calm and serene.

There are mirrors lining the walls of most Bikram Studios. I looked at myself in the mirror: Young, thin, flexible, strong. I smiled knowing the teacher had noticed.

“Beautiful opening, Jennifer.”

“Very Good, Jim.”

I wanted to hear my own name again. What about me? So I pushed harder.

The teacher was cute in her stretchy black shorts and tiny little top. She had a strong curvy body. I looked back again at myself in the mirror. I looked different. My legs were too skinny. My nose was too big. My skin was too white.

This experience influenced me as a teacher. Knowing the effort I applied in order to be recognized, approved of, admired even, and the results of seemingly succeeding or NOT. I was left mistakenly believing I had to be something specific in order to be loved; I had to be approved of in order to be happy, to know my own beauty and to love myself.

When I teach I don’t call names and I rarely offer praise, especially regarding the aesthetics of a pose. Once a student asked me to do it. She said it would be nice to hear. I suggested that she didn’t need me in order to know for herself that she was opening, glowing, beautiful. I suggested that it didn’t matter what I said about that anyway, it only mattered what she knew to be true. I shared my experience and I told her I didn’t want anyone to depend on me, or use me to determine their own value or view of themselves.

We don’t find love or happiness even in the kindness of others, we find it only in ourselves. We find it when we love others no matter what they do, when we see beauty in the garbage, in the pain, in the suffering. Then we notice we love ourselves too and it’s unconditional. It doesn’t need anything from you…and that makes us closer because I can love you and ask for nothing in return. I can see you and accept you and love us both no matter what.

So I don’t call out “beautiful” when I teach, but I’m not saying that this is the best way to teach. I’m just saying this is how I do it and why. I’m also not saying that this is my philosophy in all aspects of life. I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve told my daughter she was beautiful. But we’re talking about teaching yoga postures here and yoga is a system designed to reveal that we are so much more than this human body, personality and mind; a system designed to free us from our ego, beliefs, attachments, and in so many ways, our desires. I also know the yoga teachings that inspire me the most don’t place the body as any more or less important than the pure essence of God. So I could praise, or not. Either could be done while honoring the spirit and intention of yoga. I just notice that I don’t because of my own experience.

 Next Post: The Dream Life