How a Daily Yoga Practice Is Helping Me Forgive Myself

The accident compounded the difficulty of quarantine, and it was all my fault.

I took my first yoga class 17 years ago, and it’s been an on-again off-again part of my life ever since. Yoga helped me through two pregnancies, and it’s been something I’ve returned to repeatedly when my mind or body needed a reset. But I’ve never been able to muster the discipline to make it a daily habit. That is, until I shattered my wrist in the midst of a global pandemic.

Let me explain.

It was April, one month into lockdown, and my family was taking an evening walk. It was one of the many improvised entertainments we’d created to fill our suddenly strangely empty schedules. My teenage daughter had brought along her skateboard, and in a moment of hubris I asked her for a turn. This should have registered as a mistake before I’d even stepped on the board — I am notoriously clumsy and my lifelong aversion to physical risk had left me completely unfamiliar with anything in the skateboard family.

I stepped on the board, and it immediately flew out from under me. It was like a Bugs Bunny cartoon — startling and comical in its immediacy. As I fell, I reached my right hand out behind me to break my fall. The kids laughed, and I tried to laugh it…