This month’s Woman Crush Wednesday is devoted to Tama and her pet rabbit, Lola.

They helped me heal in an unexpected way when I was sick and weak, wandering through a Southwest desert.

Here’s the story:

I had just left my ex and devoted the last four months to therapy, support group, and recovery. I was tired of thinking about abuse. I wanted to gorge on inspiration, love, and light.

So I packed my bags and booked a plane ticket out West. I planned on hiking in the saguaro desert by day and drinking in the starlit sky by night.

“This trip helped me heal!” I imagined my future self dreamily declaring.

But I wasn’t prepared for my grief to follow me. I cried constantly at my friend’s house where I was staying; I couldn’t sleep.

Neither of us felt prepared for my fragility. So three days into my trip, she delivered the bitter blow: I needed to find another place to stay.

Ashamed, I booked an Airbnb and immediately moved into a fiber artist’s cottage. Tama’s bookshelves overflowed with volumes on tinctures, weaving, and hiking trails of the Southwest. Her pet rabbit, Lola, scampered around the red and teal house during the day, unfazed by my incessant crying.

Tama is a fiber artist, Nia instructor, and yogi who approached creativity from a holistic perspective. Her home studio overflowed with colorful felt patterns, yoga mats, and all sorts of wearable art. It was my first up-close-and-personal look into an artist’s life, and the healthy mind-body connection her space encouraged struck me. Even my guest room had yoga mats, and she invited me to put them to use as much as I wanted.

My body finally caught up with my grief, and I got sick. Tama brewed teas to reduce my fever and invited me to sit with her on her couch. I told her how I had come to the desert to find joy, and it wasn’t. fucking. working.

Tama encouraged me to engage in gentle, mindful exercise as I healed. Despite having taken dance classes after college, I was a beginner when it came to yoga. When I shared this with Tama, she invited me to dance for her.

Normally, I feel super self-conscious dancing for anyone (Unless I’m in a bustling dance class where I can hide in the back, I prefer the solitude of an empty dance studio). But I had just learned a beautiful dance in my contemporary dance class back in Durham, and I felt the strong urge to share it with Tama. (My dance instructor, Shaleigh Comerford, set the choreo to the heartbreakingly beautiful song, “Song for Zula” by Phosphoresence.)

I credit Tama with making me feel comfortable enough to expose this side of myself. With her prompting, I cast my self-consciousness aside, turned the song on, and felt my creative soul come back to life.

My time with Tama was an initiation: from victimhood to survivorship, from feeling chained to my grief to learning how to gently coexist with it. Tama was an angel, mother, and muse all at once. She taught me how to hold space for my pain.

On my last day, Tama gave me her dog-eared copy of Women Who Run with The Wolves, a book I had snagged off her shelf and started reading in between coughing fits. It would later become my spiritual roadmap—the ticket out of my “stuckness” into soulful living. I’ve read it cover to cover twice now and sent copies to friends during their own life crises.

Tama’s warmth and graciousness towards me, a stranger in her house, helped me heal.

Who is a stranger you’ve encountered that forever altered your path? How did they hold space for your pain or fear?