Yoga teacher Tatiana Forero Puerta, author of Yoga for the Wounded Heart, shares what she’s learned about trauma, clearing emotional patterns, and finding a vision for the future.
If at the age of 20 you would’ve asked me to imagine my life 15 years in the future, I wouldn’t have been able to give you an answer. I couldn’t see my life in those terms. When I looked into my future then, I simply saw a field of blackness; my potential was not just obfuscated—it was inaccessible. This is what trauma does: It blinds us. One of the effects of deep suffering, especially during childhood, is that it can rob us of our vision.
I lost my father back in my homeland of Bogotá, Colombia, when I was eight years old. The last time I saw him, he knelt at the doorstep of our apartment and gave me a tight squeeze, consoling me as I cried. He assured me he would be back from his business trip in three days’ time, but on his way home his car was hit head-on by a drunk driver. My father and three of his co-workers lost their lives that night. He was 36.
The last time I saw my mother, I was 14. I held her and stroked her balding head, and when I kissed it, I remember feeling as though I were kissing a baby’s head; it was so soft, so innocent. My mother, emaciated and childlike after a short, brutal battle with pancreatic cancer, took her last breaths in my arms. She was 40.
Facing Childhood as an Orphan
After my parents’ shocking and premature deaths, I was transferred to a foster home where the child abuse became so severe that my sister and I were eventually removed, only to be returned to the same place a year later. These profound and destabilizing experiences in my youth became the framework for my identity: Tatiana, the orphan. Tatiana, the girl without a home.
By the time I hit my early 20s, I had lived in and out of nearly 30 different homes, unable to find grounding. I felt isolated, and I had no idea what to do with all my pain. What was more is that when I looked into my future, all I could access was my parents’ deaths. I could not picture a reality where I would get to live beyond the years that my parents were given. And, at 22, as the anniversary of my father’s death approached, I subconsciously wanted to ensure that his fate would become mine, and I attempted to take my own life.
[To read the rest of this article by Tatiana Forero Puerta, click here.]
[Photo of Tatiana Forero Puerta by Carlos A. Soto.]
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