by Tracee Stanley
How did I find myself in my bathroom naked, covered in egg yolk, banging on a drum, screaming and shouting at the top of my lungs? I had just cracked a raw egg over my head. And I had never felt so powerful and fierce. As I stared at myself in the mirror, I saw clarity and resolve in my eyes. I felt free. I knew I had released a power in me that was ancient.
Years of doing spiritual practices led me to this point of self-initiation that marked the moment I resolved to take back my power. It was a ritual, a reclaiming of a part of me that I had forgotten. The power of my deepest self was waiting to be revealed, renewed and nurtured.
School bullies
The face looking back at me in the mirror wasn’t much different from that of the eleven-year-old who had stood in the junior high school bathroom in Huntington, New York, several decades earlier covered in broken eggshells, streaks of bright-yellow yolk dried against my dark brown skin. Three girls had just attacked me on the school bus. They didn’t like the way I wore my hair, the way I spoke or the way I dressed. They didn’t like anything about me. And they had been diligent in making sure that I knew it every day of the school year. From the first day I put on my first pair of thick eyeglasses in the third grade, I had been bullied. I became used to the name-calling— ‘Olive Oyl’, ‘Four-Eyes’, ‘Ugly’, ‘Stick Figure’ — but there was something different about these girls. They wanted to physically hurt me.
The day before what I’ll refer to as the ‘egg incident’, one of the girls watched me walk onto the school bus, turned toward me, and said loudly enough for everyone to hear, ‘Why do you wear your hair like that? It’s ugly!’ She was mocking my natural hair that was awkwardly styled in an afro that had been locked in curlers the night before.
As I gathered my things to get off at my bus stop, there was a lot of whispering and snickering. I had a foreboding feeling in the pit in my stomach that something terrible was about to happen; they were planning to do something to me, and I heard a voice say, ‘Watch out for them’.
The ‘egg incident’
The next day I thought about trying to get out of going to school, but I knew I would only be putting off the inevitable. So I got myself ready. As I walked the half block to the bus stop, I felt like I was watching myself in a movie, getting ready to walk the plank. Every step was in slow motion and terrifying as I imagined what they might be planning. I wondered if this would be the ‘sticks and stones’ that I had long feared.
As the bus arrived, the creaky doors opened like the mouth of a shark waiting to swallow me. I climbed the steps and noticed that the three girls who usually sat at the back of the bus were up front that day. They all smiled strangely at me, as if to say, ‘It’s alright, don’t worry’. But my nervous system knew better, and my heart began to race. I braced myself as I noticed the only open place to sit—one seat behind them. The whole bus seemed to be in on whatever was about to happen. Even my friends wouldn’t make eye contact. Then it happened. They jumped me, attacking me — one from behind and the other two from the top, smashing raw eggs into my hair as they cackled and called me names.
No one on the bus did anything, not even the driver. I saw the driver look back, but he just kept going. I tried to protect myself from their blows to the head and face, hoping to keep my glasses from being broken. When I finally managed to kick the biggest girl off me, I hit her in the head. She looked surprised and then returned to her seat. It was over. I was covered in raw eggs, and they seemed satisfied with the job they had done.
Channelling Cleopatra
When we arrived at school, I made my way to the nearest bathroom. There I was, one of the youngest seventh graders in the school, standing in the bathroom feeling humiliated and shamed. I had never experienced this kind of public embarrassment before. I still had to make it to my homeroom class. In my imagination, everyone in the entire school had now heard what had happened and was waiting to laugh at me in the big, circular lobby where they hung out before homeroom.
I needed a plan. At the time, my mother was studying Egyptology, and I had been reading her books on the subject. I decided that I would pretend I was Cleopatra, dressed in her finest jewels and robes. I cleaned as much of the egg off as I could; I walked out of the bathroom and down the hall toward my class. I held my head high, shoulders back and chest lifted, as if I was walking through my kingdom. I was Cleopatra. I kept my gaze forward, not looking at anyone. I could feel the stares and snickers, but I ignored them and managed to make it to my class.
During homeroom, I was called to the principal’s office. To my surprise, the bus driver had reported the incident, and the principal wanted to know which girls had jumped me. I wouldn’t tell. I needed to keep my mouth shut and not risk another attack for telling on them.
Lasting effects
The egg incident changed me. I started sitting in the back of the class. I stopped wearing my glasses, even though I couldn’t see the board to take notes. I started turning in my homework late or not doing it at all. I was dropped from Honours English and was barely passing French — my two favourite subjects. I gave up playing the clarinet and violin. I stopped being the little girl who loved to learn and excel in school. I was shrinking. And most disturbingly, I started obsessively pulling out my hair, an anxiety condition known as trichotillomania that was misdiagnosed as an infection of hair follicles. The misdiagnosis allowed me to hide my hair pulling for years.
The events of that day were traumatic and had a ripple effect throughout my life that I didn’t understand until I began to practice and study the teachings of yoga. Yoga began to slow me down enough to understand that my life decades later was very much being informed by the pain of the past. The egg incident created what is known in yogic teachings as a samskara, an impression or imprint. Everything we experience in life creates an imprint; in the journey of remembering our true nature, this is a concept we should explore and understand. We will take a deep dive into these concepts and how they shape our lives in the next chapter.
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From
The Luminous Self: Sacred Yogic Practices and Rituals to Remember Who You Are © 2023 by Tracee Stanley. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO.
shambhala.com.
