The Deep End: A survivor’s reflection on loss, cancellation, and the discipline of not quitting before the miracle.

I don’t believe in the “perfect place” anymore. Every city is a trade: weather for traffic, culture for cost, safety for the edge. I came to California for my mother’s final stretch. Now she’s gone. My partner is gone. I’m standing in the aftermath, asking: Where do I go when the life I built no longer exists to return to?

New York lives in my bones. New Orleans calls to my soul. Sunny So Cal has my ocean. It started with thirty years of devotion—on a Manhattan rooftop, creating Laughing Lotus out of breath, repetition and a lot of heart with my partner and love Jasmine. Then, many years later NOLA. A city pulsing with a rhythm I’d never felt. I found a red brick corner building—a former church needing some serious TLC. We brought it back to life. The Church of Yoga. Not polished, but a donation based yoga center in the 7th Ward.

March 22, 2020. A photo surfaces: I am sitting at the picnic table outside my little house on N Rocheblave Street with two friends. The world had started to tilt, but we didn’t know how far. It’s the last moment before the undertow of COVID. Then the tightening. Pandemic. Pressure. Grief with nowhere to go. Then George Floyd. The air changed.

A contractor’s debris was spilling out over the bin across the street. In another time, a simple talk. In that moment, a digital wildfire. I sent a message. He went online. Just like that, I wasn’t a person. I was a projection. A headline. “Karen.” “White Savior.” No inquiry. Just a story that outran the truth.

Then the dismantling. Not just the building—me. Community, structure, orientation—gone in one sweep. A despair that doesn’t announce itself; it just pulls. I understood, in a real way, how someone stops wanting to be here. But I stayed. Not heroically. I took to the ocean and swam. When I wasn’t face down on the floor, I kept swimming and whispered keep going Dana.

California felt like exile, but it was the clearing. In the absence of everything I thought I needed to hold together, I was finally present. No building to run. No identity to maintain. No performance to give. I walked my mother and my partner to the edge of their lives. That was the miracle I never could have guessed—and the one I’d never give back.

I see it differently now. Not cancellation. Not even loss. A breaking open. The “Church” was never the bricks; it was the practice that made it possible to survive losing everything non-essential.

Now, I rebuild. Not from image, but from truth. Like kintsugi, the art of mending with gold—the cracks are not hidden. They are honored. I’m not polished or universally understood. I’m not interested in approval at the cost of being real. But I am here. Still practicing. Still teaching. Still in the conversation with life as it actually is.

So where will I live… New Orleans, New York, Cali? I don’t know yet. It’s about becoming someone who can stand anywhere without abandoning themselves.

Don’t quit before the miracle. Sometimes the miracle isn’t getting your life back. Sometimes it’s realizing you survived losing it— and you are still strong enough to hold the light.

Dana’s Upcoming Touring, Let’s Yoga: NOLA, NY, NJ + LA

Sun, April 5: New Orleans: Chime Tree Easter Yoga

Fri April 10: Yogamaya NYC : Ride or Die

Sat April 11, Bhaktibarn NJ : Bhakti Explosion

Sun April 12, YogaRenew NJ: Magic is the Medicine

Sun April 19, Light on Lotus LA: Super Sequencing

Blossoming lotuses: The front of the building inspired by Jet Martinez, whose murals I fell in love with on the Fleuvog shoe stores. Painted by Betsy Davis and a whole team of us.

The Dalai Lama, Janis Joplin, Louis Armstrong, Frida and Billie Holiday all done by Stephanie Sidjakov. A group for recovery yoga.

Gracie with her sisters and brothers sharing yoga at the COY! #JOY is right.

I have so many more photos and stories to share here, but this is a good start.
Every day at the COY was a celebration of New Orleans enduring Spirit.

Thank you yogis for the moments, the memories, all that LIFE and Love~