The Road to Resilience: How to Transform Tragedy into Compassionate Action with Natalie Rainer

Right before we started, I just lit a little candle for Jonah to kind of like call her in to this conversation. I acknowledge her here with us. On Saturday, august 13th 2022, two friends were riding bikes on a Saturday morning when they were hit by a drunk driver. A dear friend and beloved community member, Jonah Holland, was killed and Natalie Rainer was seriously injured. Today we get to talk to Natalie about how that day changed her life, how yoga has informed her, healing grief and forgiveness, and how we can take action against traffic violence. I am so grateful that we get to talk to Natalie today and I'm honored to share this conversation with you. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to how the Wise One Grows. Today we have one of the most resilient and strong people I've ever known in my whole life with us today and I'm so excited that she gets to share her wisdom with us. But before we get started, let's just take a moment to land here together with 3D breaths. So just take a moment, wherever you are, to notice where your body makes contact with the earth. Know that you're held here, maybe let the shoulders soft and down the back, take a big breath in, fill your chest, fill your belly and exhale. Let it all go Again. Inhale, exhale One more, inhale and exhale and return to the sensation of the support of the earth beneath you. You can slowly open your eyes as you return to this space. So today we have Natalie Rainer with us, and Natalie, among many other things, is a yoga instructor, wellness coach and cyclist based in Richmond, virginia. She's passionate about making wellness programming and practices available to all people and takes pride in her current field of nonprofit program administration. In 2022, she survived and recovered from a near fatal accident, inspiring her to create resiliency. Yoga. Natalie hopes sharing her story of survival will inspire others to reimagine their own potential. Natalie, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for inviting me. So, those who are listening, natalie and I first met when we worked together at Project Yoga Richmond, and I mean, she's always just been a badass, someone who is so good at setting goals and making them happen. Like I remember, you would come into work with your planner, your color coordinated. Here's my goal, here's how I'm going to achieve it. Like broken down into sections. I will never be that organized. And as the we shared, natalie was in a really horrible biking accident where a drunk driver tragically killed our dear friend Jonah and severely injured Natalie on their morning bike ride. And I remember when I first heard about the accident and kind of pieced together what happened and as I kind of heard about the condition you were in, there were a lot of emotions and I distinctly remember feeling like Natalie can get through it, like I just like I remembered your planner and I was like she will recover. I just know that like if anyone is gonna have something this horrible happen to them, she is the person who's gonna like kick ass in this recovery and face the challenge, cause you're someone who always does that. Thank you, yeah. So I kind of wanted to lean into today, the first time we kind of got to talk together after the accident you shared with me about how your yoga practice played such a huge role in your at that time. We were talking about when you were in the hospital immediately recovering, and how it's continued to impact you. So I was kind of wondering if you feel comfortable sharing with listeners what it was like when you first woke up in the hospital that day and kind of realized the horror of what had happened, and how did your yoga practice support you in those early days.

Yeah, so I woke up. It was totally bizarre. I had been asleep for days, actually since the accident happened. So I was medicated in kind of a slumber, I was sedated, but I was also intubated. So I had a breathing tube that was kind of literally strapped onto my face and it was going down my throat just to support my lungs, because I was heavily sedated on fentanyl, which can be dangerous. So when I woke up, basically they had decided that my breathing was strong enough to happen on its own. So I woke up when they decided to basically draw down the drugs and let me wake up. And so I kind of woke up as the pain medication was wearing off and yeah, and then I kind of my eyes opened and I couldn't speak. I had like this thing on my face and my wrists were restrained to the bed to keep me from like pulling, like I had. You know, I had IVs in my carotid arteries, so I had a lot of. I was on life support and they didn't want me to like wake up and panic and pull. So I kind of woke up. I didn't know where I was, I didn't know why I was where I was. I couldn't speak, I couldn't move my hands and I was in extreme, extreme pain, but I did see my family in the room with me. So my first moments were literally full of just panicked. Like me trying to communicate and I'm gonna smile and giggle a little bit while I share this, even though it was very intense I asked for like a pen and paper, and so we have like these sheets where I was like scribbling questions because they were gonna pull the breathing tube out. But it doesn't happen, you know immediately. So I was awake already and I was like scribbling questions on this paper and my family were answering the questions. So that was what my first moments were like just trying to figure out what happened. You know the paper. There's a lot of things like do my bosses know what happened? Of course, that was like the first thing I always think of, like I'm not at work right now. Do they know where I am? But also, you know, like, which bike? That's like scribbled on the paper. A lot, a lot of questions. And actually months, months later, after I was able to meet the EMTs who rescued me that day, they actually told me that I was asking which bike, which is kind of funny, think about it. Yeah, where's the bike? Where is it? Is it okay? Which one is it? But so then, of course, they told me what happened and they explained to me that Jonah and I had been in an accident. And then I asked about Jonah. They told me that she hadn't made it, and that's when, kind of that phrase that became a rallying cry. Just you know, I don't really know where that came from, but in some ways I feel like it was almost like I was like a vessel for that energy of just saying, like, well, I'm gonna just have to live for Jonah. That was basically the first thing that I thought of when they told me what had happened to her. So, yeah, the first moments were just so frantic. And then, you know, after the breathing tube came out and I was able to speak more, I really had to come to terms with what had happened to my body, because I was in a world of hurt I had experienced. You know, at that point none of my orthopedic surgeries had been completed. So I had a horribly broken collar bone, both my hip sockets were broken, six of my ribs were broken, my face Like I had some broken bones in my face here and then, of course you know, my skin was all ripped up, so that was super painful, and then also my abdomen had been cut open for some life saving surgery in the emergency room. So that was totally disembodying, just like the whole experience. It was, like you know, I can so distinctly remember those days in the ICU. I spent about a week and a half in the ICU and I can just remember, you know, kind of imagining that I could leave my body there and just like go back to my life. That it was almost like I was in a little bit of denial of that. No, like this is the body that I'm in and I have to stay in this body. I can't just get a new one, or just you know, I can just think about like wanting to go to Target and just wanting to do like my regular habits. You know, just like thinking. Like you know, I can just leave this body here and just go do something else, because at that point my body was basically not usable for anything. So I would say the first moments were just brutal. And then, you know, you asked about how the yoga practice really helped me through those times. I think the big thing and the easiest way for me to connect to the yoga practice through the whole experience was with my breath. And so, specifically in dealing with extreme pain, you know, the only thing that I could really control was my breathing, and so I could sit there and just do box breathing. I could sit there and just make sure that I was breathing. And then, you know, I had monitors and a bunch of you know electrodes attached to me that were showing me my own heart rate and my own respiration rate, and so it was interesting to kind of have this computer monitor feedback of my stress level that was like just right there for me to see, and I realized that I could really use my breath to bring my heart rate and my respiration rate back down into that kind of parasympathetic state, even and especially when the pain was just like so intense. I couldn't really speak, I couldn't really find the energy to communicate. All I could do was just breathe and just keep my eyes closed and just focus on, you know, staying present in my body. And then the other thing I would say is, you know, just treating people with kindness. I think it's really easy to, when you're dealing with extreme pain, to kind of let that overwhelm who you are as a person, and the yoga practice teaches us that we can slow down and we can really think about what we do, what we say and how we treat each other. We can really choose to treat others from a place of values and with intention, and so you know, just the yoga values of kindness, like loving kindness meta was pretty much on my mind a lot, when the nurses would come in and do like wound care on me or you know, like they needed to like roll me onto one side or the other and I was, you know, something broken on this side and then something broken on that side and just so they're helping you but doing very painful things to you. Yes, yes, and just saying thank you for that, you know, just letting them know, like, greeting them with their names when they come into the room and just letting them know that, like in this room, we're going to be kind to each other. And like I couldn't really control my treatments, I couldn't really control, like literally couldn't even use my dominant arm to do anything, so everything had to be done for me. I had no controller or the situation, but I could control the way that I treated other people, which ultimately kind of created a bubble of like good energy in my hospital room space, and treating my nurses like the human beings that they are and showing them that I'm grateful for what they're doing for me. I just felt like it really made it possible for me to build really strong relationships with them, and they cared for me for about a month. So you know, when you see somebody pretty much every day for a month, you do start to develop a bit of a relationship and I really felt that keeping my yoga values in the forefront of my mind helped me to make the best of the situation that I was in.

I, before we did this interview, I was thinking like I might have to like check on how Natalie's doing emotionally during this conversation, but I was like already tearing up during the beginning of that. So thank you.

It gets easier to talk about. The more I do. I think that these, like conversations about traumatic injury and traumatic accident and just trauma in general, like this is emotional stuff. There's no two ways about it. But I think you know what I've learned through this whole thing is that, like, all people experience trauma at some point in their lives and you know, there's no point in really comparing Like my trauma was worse than theirs or different or whatever, it doesn't really matter. I think all of us experience emotional chaos at some point in our lives and so, ultimately, this is what connects us, and so, like when I am vulnerable and I share something that was deeply traumatic or painful for me, other people feel more comfortable sharing things that were upsetting or deeply traumatic or just really shameful or vulnerable or just secretive about themselves Is that a lot of folks find that the vulnerability is something that puts them at ease in their own vulnerability, and so, for me, sharing about this experience and sharing about the more emotional parts of it have been cathartic, because not only have I been able to unpack it each time, but I've been able to build connections with other people who share things with me that helped me to see the world in a better or clearer way.

Yeah, as you're saying that, it just yeah, it just really sounds like you're speaking to acknowledging this sense of common humanity. And when we are authentic, that becomes clear. And I would imagine and I wonder if this was your experience was like, was having that common humanity something that supported your ability to be kind to others when you were in such extreme pain, Because then it was no longer just about. This is my pain, I'm the one suffering. It's like we all have pain. We are all suffering in different ways, in different spectrums, and we can meet all pain with kindness, whether it's mine or yours or someone else's.

For sure. I shared a room with another patient for a little bit and she was pretty obnoxious. There was just a curtain between us and I was in a really bad place, like my pelvis hadn't been fixed, my leg was in traction, and so I was just in a really hard, hard time, like I had been moved out of the ICU into the trauma ward. It was loud, she was loud, she was having all these people come into the room and, yeah, I really had to dig deep to find patients for that and understand that that's how she is healing from her experience. And then when I moved out of the hospital, I moved into a skilled nursing facility which was actually a nursing home, and I was surrounded by other patients who were 30, 40, 50, 60 years older than me and kind of moving towards the end of their lives, which is an emotional experience in itself. And that was such an eye-opening experience because everyone in there is going through something really hard and I could really tell the folks who were going to come out of it were the ones who kept their attitudes positive and took the time to build connections with others. You could really watch some folks retreating into solitude and others leaning more into connection with other people, and it became very clear to me that that was also going to be a part of making my experience better and my healing go better was to lean into being in community with other people, because they just have so much to teach you and there's so much encouragement in communities of physical rehabilitation that we can cheer for each other. I was relearning how to walk in the same room as 80-plus year olds who were relearning how to walk after falling down and breaking their hips, and we're at totally different stages of our life, but in this moment we're in the same place and so we can share that together. We can cheer each other on and gosh, it was just so heartwarming, it was so healing to be in community with them.

Yeah, I'm so happy to hear about that element of community that you were able to find in that space in such a surprising way too. How did you maintain a positive attitude, like when everything your world is rocked, you're in so much pain, like I feel like I can be a pretty solid person when I, like, am able to take care of my things and my routines and like what I need to do to feel quote unquote okay. But in the moments when, like, my physical health is off and I'm just out of all of those things, I find it's so hard to maintain that attitude. So what helped you keep that with you?

Well, I think. Well, I'll start by saying I don't think I always maintain a super positive attitude.

You wouldn't be human if you had Right.

I think that I think I just knew that if I just did everything that I could do in that moment, that that's what I could do right that like I couldn't really control everything, but I could like. For example, you know, the first day that I had a PT session in the hospital, they wanted me to get out of bed and it was so unbelievably hard for me to do at that time because I could not move my legs at all without help, so I literally had to have somebody move my legs to the edge of the bed in order for me to even try to, for the first time, like use a walker to stand up and put weight on my pelvis. That was broken, repaired, but broken. And I had two choices there I could mope and resist and, you know, just wallow in the negative aspect of what I was going through, or I could just do my best and forget the rest. And I think that has really you know I don't know if that's something I would call a mantra, but it's definitely a mindset that I come back to each day is that like I'm just gonna try my best every day and that's what I got? Like I can't do it a hundred percent every time. But, like, if I show up and I try my best for that day, that in a way, you know that is helping move me forward. And so, you know, with PT it can be really hard mentally and physically and may not go super well, but, you know, following the instructions and listening to what they were telling me to do and just trying and putting in my best effort because I felt that if I just tried my best each time that it would get better, like things would incrementally get better and turns out that was true. So I know that. You know this experience I'm talking about is very extreme. Like having a broken body is not something that everyone will go through in their lives, but I do think that that mindset is something that I apply to my daily life, even now. You know, I wake up some days and, like, I go to work and I just try my best and I don't always do a super awesome job, but I show up with the attitude that I am gonna be, you know, a productive part of the team that day and just be honest and vulnerable with the people around me of saying, like you know, I'm sorry that I'm not doing really well today, but I am here and I am gonna try the best that I can. And ultimately, I think another way to explain it is I've been reading this book called Atomic Habits, and so good, so good. And he's talking about this like attitude of just like 1% better, just like you know, just like a little bit better each day. You know like and for me I can kind of tie that back into you know, silly stuff like junk food, right, just like the urge to snack at work, especially around like three o'clock in the afternoon when things are starting to get kind of boring and I'm like starting to like look for goodies in the building. And the idea is like well, you know, I can get down on myself for being in that habit again. Or I can just say to myself well, you know what, I'm just gonna do 1% better today, and then tomorrow I'll be 1% better from then, and then the next day I'll do just a little bit better. And so he explains it as the way that compounding interest works with money. Is that like, if you just get just a little bit better each day, like over time, it's much better. And so I think I only just read this book in this way of phrasing it, but I do think that that is pretty close to the mindset that I had when I was laying in that hospital bed was just like you know, today I can do five leg lifts and that's it. That's all I can do. I can only lift my leg five times, or even just that first time when my surgeon was like let me see you lift your leg, and it was like no, like I tried my best, didn't come off the bed at all, but I did try really hard and like that in its own was enough. And I think back on this quote somewhere maybe it's a Satya Dananda quote, or maybe it's a Anayingar quote but just saying that, like on the path of yoga, no effort is wasted, right, like every effort moves you towards where you are headed, so it doesn't have to be the biggest, most beautiful, exciting accomplishment today. It can be small, and then tomorrow can be another small accomplishment and it can continue that way, and just the effort of moving yourself in that direction is part of the practice that is getting you further towards the goals. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so it sounds like that, like in those beginning phases it was so much about this is what I can control. Like I can't control these external things, but I can control how I am responding to what's happening right now. And then I really like I'm hearing you say that it's like 100% is gonna look different every day. You know like, as long as you are showing up and trying your 100%, that's enough. And it reminds me of like another verse from the sutras that's like it's like letting go of the attachment of the fruits of your labors. Like I'm gonna show up, I'm gonna put in the work and like the end result and what it looks like isn't what matters. It matters that I'm showing up fully here in this moment, the best that I can.

Yeah, totally.

So when you kind of came out of you were from the hospital to the rehab facility and then you kind of made it back to your apartment in more of like quote unquote, normal life, I feel like that has I don't know. The more, the closer I think people get to death, I feel like the more it changes life. So I'm curious about like how was there like a culture shock, like what changed for you in the way you engage with the world after that experience?

Gosh, that's such a good question. So when I left the rehab facility, it was like really short notice. Basically, what happened is I went to my eight-week checkup with my pelvic surgeon and he gave me permission to put weight on both of my legs, and so I went back to the rehab facility and demanded to walk. I'm going to walk today.

Yeah, I mean.

I just knew that the only way that I was going to get back into my life was to leap out of that bed and leap out of that wheelchair, and at that point I had not been able to put full weight on both of my legs. So I'd been doing all types of PT, but all of it was laying down or sitting down, and so when I got permission to stand and walk, it was like like a racehorse just leaping out of the gates and I asked for crutches. I started crutching around and I asked the physical therapist to help me practice stairs, because that was a big factor for me going home, because my apartment is on a second story, so I had to be able to get up the stairs to just get inside my house, and so I was so fixated on that from the moment that I was given permission to walk that within like three days I was, I went home, I checked myself out of that rehab facility because I knew that the pathway forward for me was to get back into my life as soon as I could, and so I. When I returned home, it had been two months since the accident and I came home to my apartment and my dad let me drive my car. So it was like from the moment I left the rehab facility like I was back into my life. I just was injured and I think that it was such an intense change all of a sudden that I was full of energy and I was really excited to get better and I was really excited to, honestly, to exercise. I just wanted to be back into my active routine. So I got home into the apartment. I had to, you know, kind of figure out how I was going to exist here in the apartment by myself while Brian was at work. So, like just you know, I had to make little adjustments here, like having food in the house that was easy for me to cook, because I couldn't stand very long. I was getting really exhausted just standing. So, you know, we kind of set it up in here so that I could be by myself for most of the day. But I had my crutches and I had my outpatient physical therapy appointments at sheltering arms and I could drive. So I would, you know, wake up. And it's interesting just to kind of see, like if I step outside of myself and I look back on who I was in that chapter I spent about I was in here in the apartment rehabbing at home for a month before I went back to work. So for a month I was just waking up, having breakfast, going to PT or going to the gym. And I'd go to the gym and do my recumbent bike which was something I was allowed to do and I would lift like a little bit of weights with like small weights because I was so weak, and then I would just find safe ways of being out in the world, like, for example, at at the grocery store they have those handicap scooters that you can scooter around the store, and so I would go to the store and I would scoot all around the store and just you know, talk to people and move really slowly. I think that's one of the biggest things that came out of being in physical rehab. For that month was just that when you have no reason to rush like I didn't have to go to work, I didn't have to go to school, the only thing I had to get to was my PT appointment. So after that I booked those early in the morning. I'd be done for the day and I could just move about as truly as a disabled person, right working with a handicap, a temporary handicap. I had a handicap parking pass so I would park real close to the front of the buildings and crutch myself inside, but moving through the world just kind of slowly and really intentionally because I needed to be safe. So my movements were slow but also my pace was really slow and I would like sit on benches and like just look around and take it all in and take my time and, you know, go to the gym and take a shower in the handicap shower and sit on the bench and just take the longest shower that I wanted to, and just slowing down was so it was liberating and it it helped me to really reconnect with, reconnect with people who are maybe in a similar situation to me, particularly with disability and handicap accessibility. I was aware of those things before, but when you're on crutches or ultimately I graduated to walking with a cane everything like distances, seems so much further, like just from the card at the front of the store, just seems like monumental sometimes. And so it gave me the opportunity to see the world from somebody else's perspective, where I have, for up until that point, been in a really able-bodied situation in my life and then having this chapter of being like totally not able-bodied and having to navigate the world and move super slow and like use the handicap stall in the bathroom and like use the handles on the side of the stall to like carefully lower myself onto the toilet, which is not something that I was ever used to doing and then having to do that for, you know, a month or two really helped me to see the world through a different lens. And then also just having that time and that space to just exist, and that's all I had to do was exercise my body, stay safe and exist, and it gave me the opportunity to get back into the hustle and bustle of the world on my own pace before I had to go back to work, which ultimately was my choice to go back to work but it was an opportunity to just move slowly and intentionally and figure out what is the direction that I want to move in going forward.

I remember you saying that when we got coffee, like you're like what is everyone brushing for? Yeah, that was like I think this, this theme of really slowing down and like you're saying, like moving with intention, both physically and mentally, and then I this part is is I hadn't really heard from you so much, but like the, the threads of community, that kind of like carried you through this.

Like getting back in community, being background people, is such a key component of that healing process yeah, I mean, you know, just going to the grocery store and you know, I was starting to practice my walking by walking through target, like, literally, I would just go to Target and I had a crutch and I was crutching myself around the store and, you know, it's like 10 30 in the morning. There's not very many people there. The workers are there, though, and, like you know, how often do you just like stop in the middle of the cosmetic aisle and just have like a pretty lengthy conversation with the person who's stalking the shelves, and not for like in, not about the products that are there, but just like how's your day, how's it going? You know, and I think a lot of people were very curious about my situation, because I'm young and I was pretty physically limited in my mobility and what I was able to do, especially in that chapter of rehab I was just so weak, and so I was very frail and vulnerable, but I was getting stronger each day, and so when people would look at me with curiosity, I would just be open to telling them about what happened to me and be open about talking to them about what I was doing for rehab and just taking the time to have those conversations. They were just so valuable and people would tell me all types of stories about injuries that they had recovered from or similar things that may have happened to somebody who they know or you know, experiences that they've had in traffic that made them nervous, and it was just an opportunity to spend time with other people who maybe I wouldn't have ever taken the time to talk to that lady in the cosmetic aisle but because I didn't have anywhere else to be and I felt like connecting with other people was part of the healing process.

So we have been talking a lot about the, like physical recovery element. There are obviously like a big, a lot of emotional elements to this recovery process too and if you feel comfortable, like, do you mind leaning into what that emotional process was like for you and how I guess maybe the connection that you have, this deep connection that you have with Jonah from this experience, because she's such a key part of it yeah, so I think, in order to kind of talk about the emotional recovery, I have to start with where I was before the accident.

Really, you know, I pre-accident was just all about exercise and just being super active. The reason why I was riding bikes with Jonah that morning is because I had a premonition about something on that morning. I was supposed to be in a mountain bike race that morning and I just had this really bad vibe about I thought the bad vibe was about the race and so I didn't go and I texted Jonah instead and so we went for a ride that morning instead. But I feel like maybe I even need to rewind it even further than that, because I turned 30 about two months before the accident and on my 30th birthday Jonah was there at my party and I was just telling her that I felt like something was coming, like I felt like my life was going to change and I didn't really know what that meant or how that was going to play out. And in my mind I was very much like you know, I'm going to be 30. I'm going to be just like so much more sophisticated Like 30. What is?

that from 30?

30 and thriving yes 30, 30 and thriving, like I kind of had this mindset that like my life is about to change for the better, like I am going to change as a person. And I told Jonah that and you know, we had maybe the deepest conversation I've ever shared with her that night, where she was basically telling me about the chapter of her life that she was in, which was very much independent, single self-exploration. She was figuring out who she wanted to be and the things that she valued, and so it was interesting to hear that from her, that she also felt like she was going through a metamorphosis, and so we went for the ride that morning and I guess ultimately the bad premonition was not about the mountain bike race. It's hard to say that. I like knew it was coming, but I could tell that something was coming. So for the weeks that I was in the hospital I was just so focused on physical recovery and just trying to Survival.

Yeah.

Yeah, just trying to get through every day in one piece, which was a lot of work. It was so much that had to be done for me and you know I wasn't just laying in that bed all day. I was being carted around the hospital building, having MRIs and CT scans and all types of X-rays and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There was so much activity around just keeping my body in a healthy place. And then when I landed at the rehab facility, that was the first time that I had really. You know, I had a room to myself and I didn't have people coming in and out to do all types of testing on me all the time, and so that was like the first time that I had to actually like land and really think about my situation. And at that point I was in a wheelchair, so it was really hard emotionally to picture myself ever able to be as active as I was before, and so there was definitely a period of time where I was questioning a lot how is this recovery going to go, and will I ever be able to get back to being who I am physically? But it was a lot of unpacking, like internalized ableism within myself, like even the idea that, like, if I'm not able to do X, y and Z, does that make me like less than? Does that make me like a broken version of myself? Or can I find myself even in a future where my body is not capable? And I can just think of this moment where this phrase came to me. It's just like everything is workable. Like I didn't know if I was going to be able to walk, even though the doctors, from pretty much from the moment I woke up and they told me, oh, your pelvis is broken, I was like oh man, I'll never walk again. Like I'll never walk, I'll never ride a bike, I'll never do yoga again, especially with my collarbone on the first thing. So I thought I'll never handstand again, which was like a thing for me because I had put so much just personal energy into getting there. And the doctors were like we can fix it, you're going to be fine, like you are actually going to make a full recovery, and they would tell me that and I just had to get to a point myself mentally where I could actually accept that. And so once I was able to get into the PT clinic and start exercising again, I realized that this is really good for me mentally. This is really good because what I'm doing is I'm reconnecting with my body and there's so much nerve damage around the surgical incisions. They're like there are literally parts of me that are still numb from this whole thing. And so rebuilding connection between different parts of your body and starting to have brain body communication again was emotional. I mean there were times when I remember my first day of outpatient PT. My dad took me over to sheltering arms and they're so nice and they're welcoming me and everything. But they had to assess that day like what I could and could not do with my body and its current state and like I was in tears. I mean I was just crying because the day before my accident I ran six miles Like it was no big deal and like the day of our ride, jonah and I were planning to ride like 40 miles that morning. We were so fit and then to be kind of ripped down to a state of like can't do anything for myself. There's so much unpacking of what I already mentioned, the ableism, but definitely coming to realize that you know what, even if I can't, I mean I just remember saying to myself like even if I'm in a wheelchair for the rest of my life, I can find a quality of life in that that, like you know, I can still have really meaningful relationships, I can still do good work for the community, I can still like exercise in whatever way is appropriate for me. I can still find activity and community and excitement no matter, what is the outcome?

Yeah, it sounds like it required you to really accept and love yourself, regardless of what you can and cannot do.

Totally.

And then using that base to like whatever happens happens again, like letting go of that attachment to the result, but like I'm going to fiercely be here and honor all of me.

Yeah or what, and unpacking a little bit of the like identifying yourself as what you do and instead, more so, identifying yourself as who you are and how you treat other people and how you show up, and so all of those things really tied together for me. And there was all the like trauma. So I did have some counseling. It was pretty limited because, honestly, at the end of all these sessions he would say things to me like wow, it sounds like your meditation practice is like really helping you through all of this trauma. And I'm like, yeah, it is, and kind of realizing that. You know, I went through chapters like at first I was, you know, really depressed. And I remember telling the counselor like yes, I'm depressed, and he gave me this great advice and he was saying well, you know, depression is when you can't get out of sadness. It's when you're like locked in sadness. And so, instead of calling it depressed, like can you be more specific? Like are you depressed or are you disappointed? Are you depressed or are you embarrassed? Are you depressed or are you lonely? And so he would kind of like just that prompting there really helped me to realize that actually using really accurate wording about what I was feeling was really helpful for me, because then you know, we tell ourselves these stories like all day long inside our heads, and so if you're telling yourself all day that you're depressed, well you might actually become depressed, but telling yourself instead, like naming exactly what you are feeling in that moment, really helped me to come back into like a clear perspective of like all right, this experience is going to be every single emotion possible. I'm going to experience every single emotion and I came to realize that grief itself and particularly when we're talking about Jonah, you know there's a lot of survivor's guilt that goes along with me surviving in Jonah, not or? I still sometimes catch myself saying, like you know, if I had not chosen that route, we wouldn't have been out there that morning. And so I still catch myself in moments of like blaming myself for what happened, in a way and you know, just kind of trying to be really clear about what I was naming helped me to realize that grief in itself is every single emotion, like grief is not just sadness. Grief is also, like you know, thinking about Jonah and how she was such a brave and badass person Like a lot of people don't know this about her, but she swam the Alcatraz Channel swim, like she swam in the Pacific Ocean in frigid water to Alcatraz or from Alcatraz I don't know which direction they do but like I would never do that, like I'm such a wimp compared to her, like she was so brave and so badass and like so grief can also be like me thinking about her and being inspired, or me thinking about her and like smiling or laughing or feeling hopeful or feeling, you know, giddy at times, or all of these things like grief is not just one emotion, it's a whole package of emotions, that is, it's totally all acceptable, like all of it is part of it and it's okay to feel all of that. We should, we should feel all of those things. And so when I was going through counseling, I started in kind of this like depressed place and then I moved into a very angry place where I was just like really, really pissed at the driver who hit us and just feeling a lot of anger. And the counselor told me you know, like anger is also acceptable and that's a chapter that you need to go through as well, and so it's good that you're finally able to feel anger. And then, you know, moving into later chapters of forgiveness and acceptance and hope and possibility and kind of this whole like globe of emotion and allowing for all of it and not being really trying to make sure that I wasn't putting expectations on myself for what I should and should not be feeling at any given time.

Yeah, thank you for so beautifully speaking to the fullness of grief in that way and when you were talking about there, I think this is. You, through this process and through all of your life, have continued to do so many awe inspiring things, and I think one of the most profound ones that maybe hasn't gotten enough voice in my opinion is the way you have cultivated compassion for the person who hit you and killed Jonah, and I was wondering if you would share, like how did you get to that place of extreme anger and justified anger for someone who was driving drunk to a point where you were able to give them a gift at the end, and the way you navigated the legal situation. How were you able to give them compassion and cultivate that loving kindness within yourself?

Yeah, well, I think one of the biggest things that helped me get to a place of forgiveness was, once again, the yoga practice. And coming back to what are my values, and particularly with yoga and us Western yogis. Like we didn't grow up in the yoga practice, we chose this, we choose to seek this practice, and that's also totally valid. I love that phrase that friends are family, that we choose, that we can. Actually, it's totally valid to decide what you want in your life, and I want the yoga values in my life. I choose to live a life that is guided by the principles of yoga, and one of those principles is non-attachment. And so I really came to a point where I realized that holding onto anger is a form of attachment and it doesn't help me. It does not help me, it does not serve me, it doesn't serve the people around me, it doesn't serve my community, it doesn't serve anybody for me to be in anger. You know, occasionally it's fine to go in and out and to feel emotions, but to be locked into and to be holding onto anger does not serve me. So I think that was the first realization that I came to, and then, just going back to this idea of meta, just loving kindness. I looked back on my own life and I thought about who I had been as a young person. Right, the driver who hit us was 18 years old and you know, when I was 18, I was not making great decisions. I had a lot of growing to do to get to where I am today, and I'm so grateful that the yoga practice has been part of that. I think I started practicing, I think, the summer I was like 17, I kind of like dabbled into yoga for the first time. It really wasn't a huge part of my life until I was in my 20s, but you know, as an 18 year old gosh, I don't think I could say that I was like a better person than Jeffrey, who's that's the name of the driver who hit us. He goes by Ford. Actually, that's his nickname, ford. I don't think I could say for certain that like I'm like somehow morally superior to this young person who ultimately just made some really, really poor choices. And then also, I thought about how Jonah has a son who's the same age and I kind of thought you know, what would she think about all of this? How would Jonah want me to move forward in my life. Would she want me to be an angry, bitter person? And the answer is no, I don't believe that she would. I think what she valued so much was serving the community, and I really believe that the best way that I can serve our community is by showing up and being vulnerable and spreading the notion that having compassion for other people can actually heal a lot of the issues that we are experiencing collectively. We are so disconnected these days from each other and the antidote is meta. That's just a straight Buddhist practice, right that, like we talk about the Four Noble Truths, like the first truth is that life is freaking hard, life is suffering and there's like nothing that you can do to avoid that, and so what you can do is to actively and intentionally cultivate positivity and cultivate kindness and service to other people and find a Dharma purpose. And so I realized at some point that you know what do I want for Jeffrey? What is the result that I truly want from all of this? And I just realized that I just want him to grow and change as a person himself. I just want him to experience redemption and personal growth in the way that I have experienced that through my life, from the time that I was 18 until today. I want that for him because I want that for everybody. And if I'm being true in saying that I believe that all people are equal and I believe that all people are connected and I believe that all people deserve the same love and kindness and respect and opportunity in life, well then I have to apply that to Jeffrey as well. I can't remove him from that just because he did something regrettable to me. So I realized that I couldn't truly practice loving kindness if I wasn't finding loving kindness for him as well, and I want his future to be bright and I believe that if I can express forgiveness for him, imagine the forgiveness that he can find for himself. That if I want him to have a positive future when he comes out of prison which I want for all people who come out of prison I think all people who serve time in an incarcerated situation deserve to be able to come out having pain, time for their crimes and live a life that is positive and productive and full of beneficial relationships. And if I want that for him, it has to start with the way that I project energy onto him and the way that I treat him and the way that I talk about him and the way that I address him, and so letting him know on his sentencing day, telling him in person that this is what I want for you I want you to grow and change as a person, because I want that for everybody and you're not separate from that. Telling him that to me felt like it was giving him the latitude to find that personal growth himself. That not that he needs my acceptance, but that hopefully having my acceptance will make it easier for him to seek personal growth himself. And I also believe that I plan to hopefully build a relationship with Jeffrey Ford he goes by Ford Hopefully to be able to write to him or hopefully I have some other interesting projects coming up that I think I'm hoping to incorporate his voice into and I'm hoping that he'll be open to sharing his voice and his perspective on everything that's happened. But I really felt that I couldn't be true in expressing love and compassion for all people if I wasn't feeling intensely love and compassion also and forgiveness for him, because he's just a person, he's just a young person who made poor choices.

Thank you. Thank you so much for speaking so wholly and beautifully to the need of meta and loving kindness and this deep sense of common humanity at the root of the way in which we live and engage with one another, and something you have kind of weaved in and you said it in that last bit. For a while there was about community and I didn't catch on to this until the end but, like you're right, jonah, was all about community and I think that is just such a beautiful way in which you are continuing to share her life in this new form through that and through the fierce compassion you're sharing with Ford and his life and then the communities we're cultivating and engaging with. So thank you for the ways in which you're helping so many people who are listening feel this sense of common humanity and the ways that it can relate to what they're experiencing and the ways that you're actively living in a way of compassion.

Well, I think also it's not limited to me, right, and there are so many, many, many, many people who love Jonah so much and I just I want to take a moment to, you know, make it possible for other people to also feel that they are carrying on Jonah's legacy, that it's not just me, it's each and every one of us, that everyone who loved her and felt connected to her, we can all live our lives in ways that make her proud and that uphold her legacy, and that we can all feel connected to making Jonah proud. That's not something that just belongs to me, it's all of us, and we can all feel a deep connection with her as we move about in the community and care for each other in the ways that she did for other people.

Thank you for that reminder. I know that a lot of people who are listening right now might be driving and since that is like a traffic violence is like a root of this conversation today, do you mind sharing, just like for someone who's driving right now, for anyone who drives ever how can we be more responsible on the road? How can we take care of each other?

Well, I think, ultimately, we've got to start by just taking a moment to acknowledge that all people are people and that all people deserve to feel safe and in harmony in their communities. That's step one. Yeah, we have got to find a way to become connected with each other. Once again. There is an epidemic of reckless and distracted driving. Right now it is I can't even really express how alarming the rates of traffic violence are becoming and I think, ultimately, if we care about living in communities that are safe and equitable, then we have to make that happen ourselves, collectively and individually, and it starts with acknowledging the humanity of the person in the car in front of you or behind you or around you, or the person on the bike, or the person who's walking or running. Those are people. They're not objects in the road, they're humans and they deserve to feel safe and respected too. That's the future that I want to live in. I want to live in a world where we can move about in our day and show respect and compassion to one another through every moment and every interaction. But I do think we've gotten to a place in society where it's very commonplace to avoid eye contact and to avoid speaking to people who we don't know and you know just personally, I choose to seek out those connections, I choose to say hello, I choose to say good morning, I choose to make eye contact with people to let them know that I see them and I honor them and I appreciate them as my equals. I think that how we can be better on the road is to treat each other the way that we want to be treated. It starts with not tailgating, it starts with not speeding, it starts with not texting, putting the phone down, just put it down. When I drive out there, I see so many people who have a phone in their hand, like right here, while they're driving, and that's terrifying, right, because it's literally disconnecting us from one another. It's putting something in between so that we're no longer connected, and I don't know how that can be changed with government intervention alone. I think that has got to come from us, in our hearts, that you know, if we want to live in safe, equitable communities, we've got to make it happen ourselves. I think that, with the shared eco trauma that we are all experiencing right now with global warming and climate change, you know our future is starting to be pretty bleak, and I still believe that we have an opportunity to at least extend the climate viability. Maybe we can't reverse it all the way, but I believe that we can make changes now that can make our living situation at least better than it could be if we continue on the trajectory that we're on, and that future looks like less car travel. That's what that future looks like. That looks like more bike lanes and more public transit and more, you know, tiny little vehicles like scooters and bicycles going from point A to point B, but that is not going to be possible for the average person until we have improved infrastructure. So right now, those type of ideas they really only apply to some people who live in areas where there are safe modes of transportation like bike lanes, crosswalks, flashing lights, bus, rapid transit. It's pretty limited in who has access to those things, and I believe that our government is starting to see the value of investing in more projects like this that create equitable and sustainable transportation for more people. That's our future. So if we want to have safer communities, if we want to have cleaner air, if we want to have an environment that supports us as humans, we have to support each other and we have to support and manifest what we want to see in the world as individuals, and it starts with the way that we treat each other when we drive. It starts with the choices that we make whether we hold the door for other people, do we make eye contact? Do we say hello? Do we interact with our elected officials? Do we vote right? Do we show up? It all starts with how do I show up, how do I interact with the community around me? From the micro interactions of just little things like using your turn signal when you're driving, so people know your intentions all the way to you know the big things like activism. I think we've got to start by acknowledging that each one of us has a part to play in the future and we really have to step our game up and show up for each other if we want to make positive change.

Thank you so much for all of that and for yet another reminder of, like, this key component of seeing common humanity in all that we're doing. Yeah, before you go, will you share with people listening how they can continue to support you the work that you're doing? I know you have some exciting things that you're starting up, so I want to hold some space for you to just share that so people can support you.

Yeah, thank you. So I started blogging recently and I have a website. It's resiliency, yogaorg. So that's kind of the hub for where all my future endeavors, particularly surrounding the yoga practice, will be announced. I have quite a bit of writing on there and I think a lot of people can really resonate with my story and they want to read about it. And it's there, it's all there. I've laid it all out. I really haven't kept anything secretive, like I really wanted to share all of this because I think that my story can help others. And then I've been doing some public speaking engagements. There are more coming up in the future, which I'm very excited about, starting to kind of lean into the idea that you know I have a Dharma with a capital D, and the Dharma that I have is that I can use my voice to make positive change. I can share the story and hopefully make waves of change. And then the other upcoming thing that I have is that I'll be starting up yoga for cyclists again in January. So that's really exciting. I've teamed up with Blue Ridge Cycle Reenrichment at Libby Mill to offer Wednesday night yoga for cyclists starting. We're either going to start on January 10th or the next week. We're still trying to get the space kind of perfected for the group, but we'll be announcing that on Facebook and on my website, so that's something to definitely look out for. And then, of course, you know, the work that I do every day at SwimRBA is a way that people can continue to support the community, and when I think about people kind of staying connected with me, I really think about less about me as an individual and more about my values and and what I think we can do together to make our community better place, and so people can always find me at SwimRBA. I offer wellness coaching sessions there for folks who are interested in how they can improve their wellness through aquatics, specifically because we are an aquatics nonprofit. But you know, I try to touch on some yoga topics in there, even if I have to kind of hide it under some non-yoga language. And so, yeah, I think people can continue to connect with me through the work at SwimRBA and on my website and then hopefully people can make it out to the Yoga for Cyclists. We plan on collecting funds to support Richmond Cycling Corps, for that class will be a donation based class that will support the efforts of a nonprofit in the cities, east end, that makes cycling accessible for kids who are trying to overcome poverty. So that's, that's the future for me. And then there's some other exciting things. I can't really speak on yet because they're still in the works, but all of that I will share with you all on my website and I will have the links to your website and all the things you mentioned in the show notes.

So be sure to check that out so we can continue to support this deep sense of community and common humanity. Natalie thank you so much for thank you being who you are and sharing so openly and vulnerably.

Thank you for having me on the show, and I love you too, and it's always a pleasure to have these really deep, mindful conversations, because I think that this is the type of connection that's gonna help us move forward. Yeah, I agree.

If you are in Richmond and would like to practice with Natalie, you can join her for Yoga for Cyclists. There is a link in the show notes that will share all of the information with you, and I also invite you to consider making a donation to RCC Richmond Cycling Corps where they make biking programs and outreach accessible to you. There's a link in the show notes to support their work as well, which is the organization that all of Natalie's work supports. If you haven't already, you should totally join the Dream Team. The Dream Team is an amazing group of listeners who support this podcast and make it possible every month, and you can join for as little as $3 a month. You'll support the podcast. You'll get a special handwritten postcard from yours truly and a shout out in an upcoming episode. If you aren't able to financially support at this time, it would mean the world to me If you would consider following this podcast on your favorite streaming platform. Believing a review. They make a world of difference and sharing an episode you love with a friend so that we can continue to learn and grow together.