I Left My Kids To Go To A Three Month Meditation Training In India

This is my story originally published at www.mothermag.com on March 8, 2019.

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The balance between caring for yourself and caring for others is an especially delicate one when you are a mother. In this week’s Mom Talk essay, Kristen Vandivier talks about deciding to leave her one-year-old and three-year-old children in order to live in an Ashram in India for three months, and the clarity it ultimately brought her and her family.

“Searching, searching, searching…”

Frantically, I aimed the satellite phone antenna towards the inky silhouette of the Himalayan foothills, but still this same message repeated. Only a few days before, I was putting my two little girls to bed in Mill Valley, California. Now, I was halfway around the world at an isolated ashram outside of Rishikesh, India, where I would be sequestered for the next three months as part of my Vedic meditation teacher training. The time away I had anticipated, but the idea of not being able to contact them was too much. I suddenly felt the need to see them desperately. What had I done? After all my family went through to get me here, would I have to turn around and go home?