aparigraha: on how releasing old identities and plans makes space for your true calling to unfold

It was a warm July evening in 2024. I had just finished teaching a class in Raleigh, NC. Locking the door behind me, I slipped into my car, heading toward my parents’ house for dinner—a simple, familiar rhythm.

Then, in an instant, everything shattered.

The light turned green. I looked both ways. I pulled forward.

A blur of motion. A deafening crash.

An 18-year-old ran a red light at full speed, colliding into me with a force that bent the steel frame of my Subaru Outback and left my windshield in a thousand jagged pieces. The glass wasn’t the only thing broken. My spine, my spirit, my plans were each fractured in their own way.

The post-graduation adventures I had dreamed of were gone. My ability to move freely, to teach, to climb, to trust the world’s rhythm—suspended in a haze of pain and PTSD. I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t practice asana. I lost half of my income because I couldn’t teach. And suddenly, my life became a battle not just with recovery, but with a lawsuit that loomed like a storm cloud over my already-weary heart.

I grieved the life I thought I was supposed to have.

But grief has a way of stripping you down to your essence. And when you surrender to its unraveling, what remains is something far more honest.

Fast forward to today—a cool, quiet evening in March 2025. I sit on my balcony, wrapped in a blanket, gazing out at the mountains of Asheville, NC. The air smells of earth and renewal. My body, though it still whispers of what it’s endured, is strong again. I work full-time, run a marketing business, and teach yoga. I love and am loved. I no longer lose sleep over money. My pain is minimal, my spirit light.

How did I get here?

If I had to name it, I’d call it surrender.

The summer of 2024 was a crucible. My healing was made of equal parts meditation and therapy, stitched together with quiet moments of witnessing—of sitting with pain instead of fighting it. With the guidance of my dear friend Michael Johnson, I learned to observe anger without drowning in it, to meet sadness without becoming it. I began practicing aparigraha (non-attachment), first on my meditation cushion, and then in other facets of my life.

I let go of the identity of being an established yoga teacher in Raleigh and instead stepped into the unknown of a new city, one that called me to grow.
I let go of the rigid blueprint of what I thought that my post-grad life should have been and made space for what it could become.
I let go of the heavy emotions that tethered me to the accident, observing them rather than letting them consume my entire being.

And when I peeled back all of the attachments, when I stopped gripping so tightly to what was already gone, I found something profound underneath: clarity.

In that space of surrender, my intuition rose to the surface—soft, unwavering, clear. When the time came to decide where to rebuild, where to pour my energy, where to place my next step, the answer was waiting.

I didn’t force my way here. I let go, and I arrived.