We All Deserve a Village

When we opened the doors of Blossom Yoga in Cheyenne in 2016, I knew I was opening a yoga studio.

I didn't yet understand that I was beginning a chapter of my life that would stretch me in ways I could not have anticipated, introduce me to some of the most wholehearted people I have ever known, and teach me something I had not yet fully understood about what it means to be human:

We are not meant to do this alone.

Blossom Yoga was originally founded in Laramie in 2008 by one of my early teachers, Emily Brown. At the time, Emily had recently moved to Laramie after several years of living and training in Boulder. It was the height of the recession. She was young, unable to secure a loan, and had to piece together whatever resources she could find to open the doors.

As she recently reflected on those years, she wrote, “not opening the studio never felt like an option.”

There is something about the beginnings of Blossom that feels both improbable and inevitable. Emily opened a studio because something in her knew it needed to exist. She could not have known exactly what it would become, just as I could not have known what it would become when we eventually opened Blossom in Cheyenne.

She wrote that once the doors opened, what followed were some of the most enriching and fulfilling years of her life. She came to understand that Blossom was about far more than yoga. It became a place for self-reflection, support, collaboration, and deep community.

I was fortunate enough to be one of the people who learned from Emily during those early years.

Years later, I found myself helping carry forward something she had started.

I did not do that alone. I opened the Cheyenne studio with Miguel Chen and Emilie Comeau Chen, and the three of us have each shaped Blossom in different and important ways. Emilie, in particular, has become one of my closest friends and collaborators—a soul friend whose presence in my life extends far beyond the walls of the studio. I am deeply grateful that this work brought us together in the first place.

That is a strange and beautiful thing to contemplate. I don't think I understood at the beginning that I was stepping into something with a history—a living thing that had already been shaped by the people who had loved it, taught in it, practiced in it, and gathered there. I was simply building a career and trying to figure out how to run a business.

And what a career it has been. Owning and operating Blossom has given me a meaningful career that has stretched my skills and experience in ways I never knew were possible. In retrospect, the breadth of it makes surprising sense given the winding path of my education and work: anthropology, anatomy and physiology, yoga, teaching, facilitation, leadership.

I have gotten to be a teacher, but also a business owner, employer, mentor, curriculum designer, event organizer, problem solver, community builder, and, more times than I can count, a person who has had to figure something out that I had never done before.

Running a small business has taught me things no degree could have taught me. It has taught me about money and margins and payroll and leases and spreadsheets. It has taught me how to make decisions when there isn't a perfect answer. It has taught me that being responsible for other people's livelihoods carries a particular kind of weight.

But perhaps most importantly, it has taught me how to practice empathy in a completely different context. It is one thing to practice empathy as a yoga teacher—to listen, to notice, to make room for another person's experience.

It is another thing entirely to practice empathy while also being the person who has to make a decision. Owning a business has required me to hold competing needs at the same time. To listen without always being able to give someone what they want. To understand that people bring their own histories, circumstances, hopes, fears, and needs to the same situation. To remember that I don't always know the whole story. I haven't always gotten it right. I don't think any of us do. But Blossom has given me countless opportunities to become a more thoughtful human being, and I am grateful for that.

And then there are the people.

Blossom has connected me to wholehearted people—people who care deeply about what they do and about the people around them. Teachers who show up with generosity and integrity. Students who keep practicing through joy, grief, uncertainty, aging, change, illness, celebration, and all the ordinary circumstances of being alive. People who have become colleagues, friends, mentors, collaborators, and, in some cases, something that feels very much like family.

I expected to teach people yoga. I did not expect to become part of so many people's lives. And I certainly did not expect Blossom to become part of the fabric of so many lives in return. That is the part I didn't see coming. Over the years, I have watched people find one another at Blossom. I have watched friendships form. I have watched people walk through hard seasons with the support of others. I have watched teachers care for their students and students care for their teachers. I have watched people who might never otherwise have crossed paths discover that they belong in the same room.

I have watched a yoga studio become a village.

And I want to be clear about what I mean when I say that.

Blossom is not an exclusive club. You do not have to identify as a yogi to belong here. You don't have to know Sanskrit or be able to touch your toes. You don't have to share a particular set of beliefs, have a certain body, be a certain age or gender, or see yoga in the same way that someone else does.

Everyone is welcome.

Wherever you are in your relationship with yoga—or even if you aren't sure what that relationship is yet—there is a place for you here.

We invite people across differences of gender, age, beliefs, background, experience, ability, and circumstance. And we invite people with different ideas about what yoga is and what they hope to find in it. For some, it is physical practice. For others, it is a way to quiet the mind, explore themselves, find community, move through grief, become more at home in their bodies, or simply have a place to be for an hour.

There is room for all of that.

Maybe especially because there is room for all of that, I have come to understand Blossom as a village.

Emily wrote about this when she reflected on her years at Blossom:

“Blossom Yoga was built on what I believe to be true about the human spirit: when we come together and share the qualities that make us strong, compassionate, and uniquely ourselves, we elevate one another. Together, we create something greater than ourselves.”

I think I understand those words differently now than I would have years ago because I have seen it happen. I have come to believe that community is not an extra. It is not something nice to have if we happen to have the time or energy for it.

It is part of how we survive. And more than that, it is part of how we thrive.

We need places where people know our names. Places where we can show up imperfectly. Places where we can be witnessed and supported. Places where we can contribute something of ourselves and receive something in return.

We need a village. And perhaps one of the greatest privileges of owning Blossom has been helping to build one. Not alone, of course. Never alone. A community is made by the people who show up. The teachers who teach. The students who practice. The people who sweep the floors, answer the phones, organize the events, make introductions, bring a friend, stay for a conversation, check on someone who has been absent, offer a ride, make a meal, sit beside someone in grief, celebrate someone's growth.

A studio is a building. A business is a structure.

But a community is made of people choosing, over and over again, to participate in one another's lives.

That is what I have come to understand about Blossom. And that understanding has changed me. Emily wrote that she feels deeply honored to have had Blossom in her life, and even more proud that it continues to embody the same values today. I feel that deeply. There is something humbling about carrying forward something you did not begin.

Emily opened the first Blossom in Laramie in 2008. I was one of the students who walked through those doors. In 2016, Miguel, Emilie, and I opened a Blossom in Cheyenne. In between those two moments was a whole lot of life, and since then there have been thousands of moments that none of us could have planned.

I don't know that any of us could have imagined where that first opening would eventually lead. But perhaps that is part of the magic. We don't always get to know what something will become when we begin it. We only get to decide whether we are willing to begin.

Nearly a decade into owning and operating Blossom, I am profoundly grateful that I said yes. Grateful for the career I never could have designed on paper. Grateful for the ways this work has stretched me. Grateful for the lessons in leadership, empathy, responsibility, and humility. Grateful for Miguel and Emilie, for the ways we have built and carried this place together, and for the friendships and collaborations that have grown from it. Grateful for the people who have trusted me, challenged me, taught me, laughed with me, cried with me, and built alongside me. And especially grateful for the village. Because I think that is what Blossom has taught me most of all: that none of us is meant to thrive in isolation. We need one another. We are better when we bring our different strengths, experiences, gifts, and imperfections into the same room.

We deserve a village.

And, if we are fortunate, we can help create one for someone else. Emily described the feeling of Blossom in her years of ownership as “magical.” I understand why. Not because everything has been easy. It hasn't. Not because we have built something perfect. We haven't. But because there is something extraordinary about watching people come together and make one another's lives a little more possible. That is the gift of Blossom. And it is one of the greatest gifts of my life.