Gang gang! As promised, here’s the story I told at my 50th birthday party.

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I’ve never been much of a yoga girl. But if there’s a body of water around, you can bet I’m gonna put my body in it. 

So in February last year, when I went to the grand opening of this new sauna and cold plunge place attached to a yoga studio 10 minutes from my house, it wasn’t because I was excited about “getting on the mat” or whatever people call it. 

A bunch of my mutual friends, including several people I knew from my public health days, were friends of the owner, whom I’d met a few times before. Cate had always been very nice, but I regarded her with some suspicion: We’d gone to the same snooty high school, and I’d heard she’d swanned through it as a “cool girl.” In my mind, anyone who’d liked that place needed to be kept at arm’s length.

In any case, the opening was so mobbed with parents and kids that I could immediately tell it wasn’t for me.

But over the next few weeks, a bunch of those mutual friends kept inviting me to kiki in the sauna and I couldn’t say no: I was freshly laid off and hungry for social contact. According to my math, buying an intro month package would save me a few dollars on the schvitz, so I did.

The studio was much nicer without the crowds. The sauna was a balm, and I pushed through my hesitation to try a couple of yoga classes. At the first one, more than half of the women in the room had grey hair, and I cried a little when the teacher sang to us at the end.

By the end of the month, I really wanted the place to work. I was legitimately sad I couldn’t be part of it, but people not receiving paychecks don't get to have fancy memberships.

Cate left me a voice mail asking for feedback – something she was doing for all monthly members, she said, new business and all. I didn’t return her call, but she followed up over email a few days later. I replied that the place was great, but I couldn’t afford to stay on as a member, what with my unemployment. 

She responded: What if I worked a couple hours at the studio every week in exchange for unlimited yoga and some sauna time? Again, I cried a little. I was still unemployed, but now I had somewhere to go.

Do you remember what was happening in the spring of 2025? Working in public health felt like waiting in line for the guillotine. The new administration was savaging public health institutions, laying off people en masse and bragging about it to noisy arenas with cartoon-villain swagger. Because so many public health people in Atlanta knew Cate, swarms of them were suddenly showing up to the studio, shellshocked.

I already knew many of them, and got to know more. I showed them where to find the bathrooms, worked alongside them, unrolled my new yoga mat next to theirs. 

In fact, I started unrolled my yoga mat a lot. It wasn’t my first time, not by a stretch — but I’d never gotten as much out of the practice as I did now. For the first time in ages, I was moving regularly because I actually enjoyed the movement. In every class, I could feel my body and mind being soothed, or strengthened, or both. 

By mid year, I realized: I’m a yoga girl.

Six months ago, one of my favorite teachers started teaching a Pilates class. Gross, I thought. I’m drawn to yoga for how it makes me feel while I’m in the class. People do Pilates for how it makes them feel afterward. I’m not a Pilates girl, I said.

I think you know where this is going.

Not only am I a Pilates girl, it turns out I’m also a Cate girl. Watching someone I thought was just a cool girl start a business motivated so deeply by love and generosity and care for her community and for her family, and run it with such compassion for herself and for others, has been its own lesson.

Even though I’m definitely not a “start my own thing” girl.

…

;)

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