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Checking Our Baggage
Anneliese and I meet at the hotel mid-morning on the first day; we're already late, so there's no time to catch up. We make ourselves mint tea—I figure I'll save the truly ascetic hot water with lemon for later, once I've warmed up to my new liquids-only existence—and carry our mugs into the mammoth meeting room. Hundreds of people sit on padded wooden chairs or lounge on the carpeted floor, mesmerized by a beautiful white-haired woman on a raised platform at the front of the room. "Yours is the only world you can work with," she's saying.
I study my fellow attendees as Byron Katie, who goes simply by Katie here, dialogues with a middle-aged Latina who resents her father for treating her mother so poorly. In our early 30s, Anneliese and I are among the youngest in the crowd, which is 70 percent female but still astonishingly diverse. I spot thousand-dollar handbags and faces overrun by plastic surgery, as well as more Birkenstocks than I can count. Some people sniffle, some silently cry, others sit with their eyes closed or gaze straight ahead. Not being able to talk to Anneliese is torture, but we settle for passing Post-it notes back and forth.
"Wonder if there are any celebs in disguise here," I write.
"Totally. Is that Jenny McCarthy?"
I peer around.
"In the back, with the black glasses," she scribbles.
"She has a 'Jenny' name tag! It has to be!" I then try to recall anything Jenny McCarthy has ever been in, but can't. Still, I'm impressed.
"I'm hungry. Bring on the juice," I jot a while later. When we talked by phone a few days earlier we agreed to do the juice fast for as long as we could. The event website explained that participants would be given a "12 oz. goblet of complimentary juice (organic whenever possible)" three times a day, as well as an endless supply of hot herbal tea and "pure spring water." I initially packed a bottle of merlot and a jumbo bag of pretzels in my carry-on bag, but then decided that this approach was less than admirable. I was already regretting that decision.
"Me, too! When do we get the goblet?" scribbles Anneliese. "Do you think there will there be a stampede?"
When Katie breaks for "lunch" at 1 p.m., we follow the masses to a nearby room where tuxedo-clad waiters pour bright magenta and grass-green mystery liquids into tall glasses. We ponder aloud which one we should choose before realizing that most of the people in front of us are walking away clutching a glass in each hand. Score! We both snag a pink and a green.
Back in our room, we slowly suck down the liquid between bouts of nonstop chatter. I snap photos as we pose artfully with the juice, which is surprisingly palatable. Time flies, and soon we're back in the conference room, listening to Katie query a woman who believes that if she were thin, she'd be "good enough." Anneliese and I frequent talk about our body-image issues, and our ears perk up. Soon, we find, we're both reaching for tissues.
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