A Note from Jessica Taing

My chapter in Vail began on Martha’s Vineyard during the summer of 2019. I moved to Martha’s Vineyard on a whim, after hearing a friend of mine describe what her summers there were like: hot, chaotic, and highly lucrative for hospitality professionals. Without a second thought, I packed a couple bags, folded up my harmonium, and was on a plane to Toronto, where I would eventually make my way down to Martha’s Vineyard.

I remember it being a particularly steamy day on the island, and after growing up in Bradenton, FL, I was ready for a change of scenery and climate. When people ask me what brought me to Colorado, I often share with them my goals of pursuing more education, my lofty dream of leading Yoga on the Rocks one day, or that the Florida humidity simply broke me. What I don’t often share is that I wanted to get far away from my family. I could doctor this reason up and say that I was “pursuing a life that felt autonomously mine” or “stepping into my power.” But the hard truth is that I have always run away from my issues, especially when it came to my family. Sure, those other reasons are true; many things can be true at once. Though if I were to be completely honest with myself, I know deep down that my move to Vail came purely from a decision to get as far away from my family as possible.

I love my family tremendously. Though we have a family history filled with genocide, starvation, poverty, and abuse, I know that my parents did the best that they could when raising me. As the first child, I always felt a huge responsibility for my parents. Growing up, I learned that it was my duty to eventually take care of them. This “duty” eventually transformed into a distorted perspective of my self-worth. While I wasn’t always the easiest child growing up, there was one thing that was consistent: I existed to make my parents happy, not myself. “Life is not about being happy,” my mother said to me one day during undergrad. Now, I continue to set firm boundaries around identifying my self-worth as something that is not determined by other people.

At 15, I developed a dependency on alcohol that worsened throughout college. Alcohol was the answer to every shitty feeling I had about myself, my upbringing, and my future. It nursed the deep childhood wounds that I was never able to fully confront. It both solved and worsened my depression over the years. It was how I ran away. After 3 years of attempting to get sober on my own, I finally mustered up the courage to discuss my issue with my therapist on January 13, 2021.

For the first time in my life, I admitted to someone that I had a problem and I needed help. Two years into my recovery and I find myself reflecting deeply on the appreciation I have for my decision to come to Colorado. While my time in Vail is not completely unblemished, I have been able to find solace in various islands of sanity in the last three and a half years. Many of these moments of solace occurred on my yoga mat, a place where I could completely tune into the shear awe of my body breathing itself.

As I sit bundled up on the couch, with snow softly falling outside of my window, I feel an immense amount of gratitude for my time in Vail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined myself going from the beaches of Florida to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. I certainly never imagined this being the place where I would finally get sober. Although my move to Martha’s Vineyard happened on a whim and my decision to escape to the mountains was purely to, well, escape, those decisions were still steeped in the foundation of my yoga practice. Yoga happens when I breathe, pause, and reflect. Yoga also happens when I feel the pull of my soul to inherently trust my intuition. Despite everything, I still wholeheartedly believe that life is happening for me. After all, the definition of yoga is to yoke, to join together. In Vail, I have fortunately been provided the chance to unite my past with my present, in order to maintain relentless hope for the future.