- My partner left me over the phone while in another country.
- Trying to understand what had happened to my marriage, I went to
Osho 's ashram to find answers.
The schedule seemed oddly businesslike for a notorious sex cult — eight hours of workshops with a lunch break in between. But what did I know? The divorce that had driven me here had come as a surprise.
My partner ended our union over the phone. From another country. While he was at work.
Before he and I had ever met, I'd been to rehab, spent years in therapy, and gotten a grip on my dysfunctional family dynamics. Yet somehow, none of that work had saved me from heartbreak.
Desperate to understand how I'd wrecked my marriage, I decided to try something radically different. I decided to try going to the Osho ashram, where burgundy robes are expected and sexual boundaries are not.
I went in with an open mind
There was more to the place than free love. The self-billed "meditation resort" is a nexus of New Age healing, with therapies you can't find in one location anywhere else. Unwelcome advances would be a burden, but if this was what would finally relieve my suffering, then I'd make the sacrifice. I signed up for a family constellation workshop.
A group technique that explores ancestral trauma through improvisation, family constellation therapy was absolutely something I hadn't tried. The participants in my section had survived genocides and escaped evil regimes. My divorce felt insignificant, but I was transfixed by the group exchanges.
Lunchtime was when we danced.
Joining the sway of maroon robes in Buddha Grove, I'd find Hugh in the crowd. My nose came almost to his lips — if I would've tilted my neck, we'd be kissing. Only Hugh hadn't made a move. Given my anxiety, neither had I.
"I like Hugh," I confessed to my workshop friend Julie, barely audible over the chill lounge soundtrack.
She squinted. I braced myself. Having been raised by a
"You said you weren't going to hook up with anybody."
She was right, but a fling wasn't what I meant. The long days of heart openings, nightly meditations, and craniosacral massages had reawakened my longing for intimacy.
"Besides," Julie added, "what would you want with a public-school boy?"
Julie's insult was a very British swipe at Hugh's unacceptable level of privilege. Though I understood the snark, I didn't see callous disregard in him. In the outside world, the man was a therapist. But in light of Julie's opinion, my interest cooled.
If I hadn't been in a family-therapy workshop, I probably would've missed the significance of this moment. But when we returned and I watched the generational trauma of others unfold, I finally saw my own.
I was raised by a narcissist
"I wish I never had children," had been one of my mom's regular refrains.
"Yes," I'd think, "you'd have been better off without us."
Rather than hurt my feelings, her words stoked my desire to make her life better. My need to please her was so intense, that I agreed that I had no right to exist. There was definitely something wrong with me.
What happened with Julie echoed this exchange — I'd placed her thoughts and feelings above my own. I'd done the same with my ex and countless others, set out to make myself enough to be worthy of their love.
I was years away from realizing that the quest to find and destroy my faults was a hamster wheel. For as long as I sought out external fixes — a revolving door of gurus, teachers, and lovers — I had compounded the "problem." If I wanted to find something wrong, I would.
As an adult child of two self-involved parents, developing trust in my intuition was a long process. It didn't mean blindly following my emotional responses but slowing down and checking in with myself until I felt my preferences.
And when it came to finding a healthy relationship, I started asking, "Will this person be willing to put in the effort?"
Back at Osho, though, thanks to the hours of meditation, thousands of yoga mats, and energy healings I'd already undertaken, I wasted no time in self-recrimination. I even saw the humor. Only I could go to a sex ashram, terrified of lecherous advances, then complain when no one hit on me.
LL Kirchner lives with her favorite husband in St. Petersburg, Florida, where she's completing her memoir, "Blissful Thinking: Overcoming the Wellness Revolution."