Linda’s Grace
I will try to encapsulate the essence of her support and the impact she had on me…
The first time I met Linda Young, she dropped her granddaughters, Kayla and Landry, off at my preschool acrobatics class. She always was kind, generous, funny and genuinely concerned about how I was doing when she asked.
Shortly after I met Linda in 2008 I started teaching yoga and being that I was in a rural town in Colorado I spent A LOT of classes “holding space” for students to show up one day…which basically meant no one came. One Tuesday morning as I was “holding space” AGAIN, the door opened about 5 minutes before class was to begin and Linda walked in with her entire book club. They were there to do yoga…Linda was a pillar in the community. She extended a form of kindness and generosity to me in that moment that I will eternally be grateful for.
She came to class over the years and continued to support me as I found my way and found my voice as a yoga teacher. She always had questions and dished out admiration generously. She made me feel like an expert before I became one. She believed in me. She cared about my children and had a way of holding them in just the way she asked about them. She believed in love and kindness and compassion and generosity and community and family and all the things that makes a well live human life worth living. And as any good yogi, she lived those things and embodied those things in her daily life.
Linda helped me believe and understand that what I was doing mattered. At one point the local newspaper did an article on me and the 4 generations of Linda’s family that I taught yoga to. You see Linda also recruited her own mom to do chair yoga (in her late 80’s), her daughter Christy and I still had some of her granddaughters in classes.
What an absolute privilege to be embraced and supported by this incredible light of a human!
I haven’t seen Linda in person since 2020. I closed my studio December 2020 and moved to Loveland. This morning before class, one of my longtime students, who also was in the book club Linda brought to me 15 years ago told me that Linda passed away early this morning.
First my heart became warm then hurt as it opened a tiny place of memory so I could once again remember her generosity towards me all those years ago and her incredible act of grace. It poured out of me as tears…
This love thing…it is inseparable from grief.
I had a hard time teaching. The tears kept coming as I remembered her grace toward me.
Through my teacher and through my life experience I have come to know that grace has 3 attributes:
It is something that you receive that you
1) didn’t earn
2) you don’t deserve
3) you can’t pay back
Linda’s trust in me was a true act of grace. I will remember her today by lighting a candle on my alter and talking about her kindness and generosity. She shifted me as a teacher and made opportunities possible for me. She was so humble and her love touched so many. I know that my experience of Linda is only a drop in the ocean of her life and who she touched.
May we all acknowledge those that have bestowed grace upon us in our lives and feel the impact and power of that act. May Linda’s legacy continue to inspire kindness, love and compassion in the world.
May all that are suffering and grieving in the world be supported and held by love today and always.
May our actions, words and thoughts help reduce the suffering of all beings.
Om shanti, shanti, shanti,
Kimberlea
