Call Her

Twenty years ago, someone handed me a little piece of paper with a woman's name and phone number on it. I had absolutely no idea that piece of paper was going to change my life. Of course, being me, I promptly put it somewhere safe and proceeded to do absolutely nothing with it for months.

At the time, I was wandering around this world pretty much blind. Not my eyesight, although apparently that would come later. I mean in my mind. I didn't really understand myself. I didn't understand why I was where I was, how I had gotten there, or why I couldn't seem to find my way out.

I was also extremely overweight! One day, I ran into a woman I knew and was shocked by how much weight she'd lost. I mean, she looked like a completely different person! Naturally, I wanted to know what she'd done, because whatever it was, I was interested. That's when she handed me that little piece of paper with Berta's name and number and simply said, "Call her."

When I finally did call and made that appointment I fully expected to be given a diet plan, an exercise plan, and detailed instructions about exactly what I needed to do to lose weight. Tell me what to eat. Tell me how much to exercise. Give me the rules. I was ready.

But instead I sat down and waited for her to ask me what I ate or how much I weighed. She didnt do either of those. She looked at me and asked one simple question.

So why are you punishing yourself?

I promptly burst into tears. Not because she'd said something hurtful, but because she'd asked me something no one had ever asked before. I'd spent years trying to figure out how to change my body, and here was someone asking me to look at how I was treating myself.

That was the day I met Berta. I had walked into her office looking for someone to tell me how to lose weight. What I found was someone who would eventually teach me to look at myself, and just about everything else in my life, in a completely different way.

That little piece of paper led to what is now a 20-year relationship. There have been ups and downs, twists and turns, and definitely times when I wandered away. But somehow, Berta has remained a part of my life through all of it. Our relationship has taken many forms over the years. She started as my weight coach, then became my teacher and my friend. We've been boss and employee, business partners, and now I do some consulting work for her. But whatever our roles have been, one thing has stayed the same. She has always been one of the greatest teachers I've ever had.

So why am I telling you all of this? Because the more I write these blogs, the more I recognize just how much Berta has influenced the way I see things. The experiences are mine, and so are the thoughts and stories I share, but so much of how I make sense of them comes from things she taught me over the years.

One of the biggest was learning to question the stories I tell myself. For a long time, I just assumed that what I believed about myself, other people, or a situation must be true. It never really occurred to me that I could stop and ask whether there might be another way to look at things. Berta taught me to do exactly that. It sounds so simple, doesn't it? But when you've spent most of your life seeing things one way, discovering that there might be another way can change an awful lot.

Of course, understanding something and actually living it are two very different things. I am still very much a work in progress. Clearly. I'm 60 years old and somehow finding life lessons in everything from aging parents to mangy gorilla trucks, so we're definitely not finished here. But the difference is that now, when life throws something at me, I'm much more likely to stop and look at it from a different angle. Not always, mind you. Sometimes I still go barreling down the same old road before realizing I've been there about a thousand times before. But at least now I recognize the road.

Berta is a Reiki Master, yoga teacher, and teacher trainer, but I think her greatest gift goes far beyond any of those titles. She has this incredible ability to take something you've probably looked at a thousand times before and help you see it in a way you never even considered. Trust me, you don't have to be a yoga person to learn from her. As much as I've tried over the years, yoga and I haven't quite found our rhythm. But her teachings have reached into just about every part of my life, from how I understand myself to how I relate to other people and how I respond when things don't go quite the way I'd planned. I don't think you come across someone who can influence your life quite like that very often.

I wanted to write this because I think it's important to give credit to the people who help shape us. Berta has been one of those people for me, and I don't know that I've ever really told her just how much. Twenty years ago, I was a woman who felt lost, looking for someone to tell me how to change my body. I had no idea how much more there was to learn about myself.

I'm still learning, and I'm pretty sure I always will be. But somewhere along the way, without even realizing it, I stopped feeling quite so lost. Actually, I think maybe I'm not lost anymore. That's a pretty incredible thing to be able to say. Strangely enough, it all started because someone handed me a little piece of paper and said, “Call her.”

And eventually, I did.

Plot twist...it changed everything

If you're curious about Berta and her work, you can find her at: https://www.therajacenter.com. You don't have to be a yoga person. Trust me on that one.