When Enough Felt Abundant...

This morning I woke with a smile on my face for no particular reason.  The sun was up and bright, shining through the little crack in the wooden blinds finding its way right to the place on my face where my eyes call home.  The light was warm and waking.  Things have neither been particularly good nor bad… It wasn’t an extraordinary morning.  Nothing miraculous had happened.  Life wasn’t suddenly perfect.  It was simply enough.  I’ve just settled in the place of presence.  The moment of right here and right now. And for the first time in a very long time… enough felt abundant.

Four years ago I stumbled across Be Here Now by Ram Dass at exactly the moment I needed it. I was exhausted from treading water, convinced I was failing at everything that mattered, even considering walking away from the life I'd built. The book didn't change my life overnight. It simply asked me one question:

Can you be here?

Life was the same mundane routine every day.  Wake up, wake children, ready them for school, take them to school, try to sell my classes through my little art teaching business, USUALY an ungodly amount of laundry… feeling defeated with house cleaning, grocery getting and meal prepping.  I also knew the heartbreak of yearning.  I specialize in seeing the potential in others. It's my creative superpower. I see possibility long before I see proof. I’m also a diehard empath… which allows me to feel into situations and understand them from the inside out.  I wish I had known that I could extend that same sort of grace to myself.

The me from four years ago believed that walking on eggshells and bracing for whatever walked through the door at 4:30pm was unconditional love.  I didn’t quite understand that unconditional love WAS NOT taking on an incredible amount of stress, grief, anxiety… with a side of control and verbal and emotional abuse. 

I remember one day in particular… an important conversation needed to take place… the man wouldn’t answer calls or text messages throughout the day… and near the time he was to arrive home, my heart was beating erratically and my stomach was in such knots that I thought I was going to throw up.  He walked through the door with a scowl on his face, so I spent the rest of my evening moving into opposite rooms from him.  Eventually, my stomach pain became an ulcer.  My erratic heartbeat never found a diagnosis until about 3 weeks after he had moved out. It just stopped happening.

Honestly, that girl 4 years ago thought that she was WITH the love of her life and things would eventually become more balanced.  What I didn’t understand was that when you partner with someone who has to have ultimate control of every situation as a coping mechanism, and once you allow that control, it never returns to you.  Once control becomes the language of a relationship, one person begins speaking it fluently while the other slowly forgets the sound of their own voice.

But enters, “Be Here Now,” and my thought process began to shift slightly.  The lesson that stuck with me the most was the story of experimentation with mind altering drugs… and then the realization that mind altering can come from meditation and presence without other stimulation. 

Be present.

Observe THIS moment.

How does it feel in your body?

What can you love in this present reality?  Right here, right now?

And then, just like the universe does… a dear friend sent me a meditation track from Baba Ram Dass… It’s titled, “Sit Around the Fire,” by Jon Hopkins, unknowing of my discovery of Be Here Now.

I knew I was an “ember” …I felt it…. The loss of my voice and making myself small turned my warm, expansive fire into a smoldering ember.

I’ve spent the last 4 years fanning that ember into flames.  I landed my dream job.  I’ve managed to be stable and secure on my own.  I’m healing that which is inside of me that has held me back from my own full potential.  AND, I became very aware of allowing others to be responsible for their own growth… for many previous years I sat back and stayed quiet… allowing myself to be treated awfully because my empathetic heart knew where the source of this came about. 

Just because someone has a crappy childhood does not give them the right to control and demean others, which includes yours truly.

What I struggle with now is letting go the past versions of me… the versions that shrank, stumbled, thought that any or all of it was okay.  In those moments, I become my own abuser… I frequently have thoughts about being such a “stupid girl.”  I have to stop and remind myself that I don’t deserve that… not from anyone… including the present version of me that made it through. 

When these thoughts come up, I try to run to a mirror and speak directly to myself at least three things I think are the most amazing about the girl in the mirror. 

I make sure that I am focused on both of my reflection’s eyes.  I take a few deep breaths.  I speak something that I know to be true, “You are beautiful!”  I sit with it for a moment to make sure my body doesn’t flinch.  If it does, I repeat it to myself until it doesn’t.  “I am love.”  “I can do anything I set my mind to!”  “I am kind!”  “I am seen.”

A thought that has recently come up in this version of myself that is healing… I’ve always alleged that I wanted to be seen.

I think, today, it’s not about being seen… more about being witnessed. 

Someone can glance at a painting while walking through a gallery. Or...they can stand in front of it long enough to notice the brushstrokes, the places the artist changed their mind, the layers hidden beneath the finished surface.

That's the difference between being seen and being witnessed.

I don’t believe I’ve ever been witnessed.  I think that my willingness to spend my time with avoidant people… lovers and friends... is the reason for this.  Nearly every major relationship in my life has been between me and someone who does not or cannot make room in their life for me.  Relationships stay on the surface.

Recently, I had the opportunity to be a part of a short-term relationship with a man that didn’t spend much time talking about the weather.  He always started conversations with me wanting to know how I was doing, what was my day like, cool things I observed in any experience… Our conversations were deep and curious.  I feel like I actually got to know myself a lot more in the short four and a half months of time.  Every interaction with him was powerful and meaningful.  Which was quite intriguing, because I knew in the beginning it wouldn’t last long.  I battled everything inside me to not become attached.

My favorite part of this entire experience is the fact that I don’t have to heal from it.  While one moment was a bit tricky to navigate, everything else was easy… loving… exceptional. 

I felt like a grown-up doing grown-up stuff at the ending of this phase of the relationship.  We have agreed to remain friends as he journeys off to other places that his heart was calling him to.

While sitting on my front porch, as he relayed his plans to leave and how our adventures would end… neither sadness nor anger, disbelief or confusion were present.  Rather, a wave of excitement and joy came over my body that I struggled to hide. 

For months, knowing that this experience would be short lived, I tried my damnedest to not fall head over heels in love with this man.  I failed miserably.  And, my friends, I must report – it wasn’t that crazy feeling of, “I’d die without you,” that often gets portrayed in cinema.  It was more a quiet knowing that each of us were allowed to be who we are and just let the magic play out when we finally reconvened after our outings in this world. 

It was like the Universe, doing what it does best, sending me a kind of love that I did not know existed.  Right into my lap… everything I’ve always wished that love was.

He showed up the night before he left with flowers and chocolate… just like our very first date.  Then rode off into the wilderness on his new adventure.

I’ve been sitting with my initial reaction over the last few weeks.  Excitement?

Yes.  Some call me delusional, and frankly, I don’t give a damn.  Before the crazy split of my marriage, I had this wild dream… I was running through all of these rooms that were connected.  The man I was running with looked different in each room, but so did I.  The only thing that remained the same was his eyes and his smile.  But the final room brought me back to this recurring dream that I used to have when I was a pre-teen/ teenager.  I walked down this gorgeous marble and gold staircase and at the bottom, walking up was this man’s silhouette that resembled Michael Hutchence (yes, the lead singer from INXS.)  He didn’t just see me.  He knew me, in all my forms.  I knew him, in all his forms.  We were witnesses to each other.

This most recent relationship feels like the jet fuel I needed to propel me into outer space, the place where I look back at Earth with a new understanding, a different perspective and willingness to venture outside of the ideas I had about my own destiny… destination. 

I was never going anywhere ruminating on a relationship that broke my back and my spirit. 

And for this change in perspective and experience through this recent relationship, I will forever be grateful.

I do not know what is around the corner for me.  What I do know is that for no good reason, my heart feels expansive and excited.  What I do know is that whatever is coming towards me feels ancient, familiar, and known on a soul level.  And when I get done with the next many months of nothing but playing in my own sandbox…. I am willing to predict that the kind of love I have ALWAYS desired and ALWAYS deserved will be there for me. Whether from myself or another.  I know what it is like… I don’t have to imagine it anymore.

This morning, the sun found me before I opened my eyes.

It wasn’t trying to wake me.

It was simply reminding me that light has always known where to find me.

Maybe, love works that way too.

Not the frantic kind.

Not the kind that asks us to become smaller.

The kind that witnesses us.

The kind that leaves us more ourselves than it found us.

Today, for no particular reason at all…

I woke up smiling.

 

 

 

Godspeed Wayne!

Wonder was Always the Destination...

Back in September of 2001, ten days after the airplanes struck various locations in the United States, I bravely jumped on a plane and traveled to Paris, France at four months pregnant. 

The funny story started as I was trying to oblige my older partner with the blessing of children.  I was already stuck in the quicksand of the relationship before him and knew that nothing I did, no one I would be with, would much matter.  I played along the whole time.  My friends, my parents, everyone around me liked him… but if I am 100% honest with myself, he was never my jam. 

When my doctor relayed that he was unsure as to why I was unable to have children, after countless invasive tests… All the money we had saved for daycare and nursery furniture and whatever else we may encounter… was used to purchase a giant many weeks long expedition to Europe.  Just before jumping on that plane, I found out that I was, indeed, pregnant…. Wild.

It was a long flight… first to Montreal… then to Paris.  I slept a bunch during the darkness of the flight, only to awaken as the plane neared the big city in the beautiful morning light, with the Eiffel tower and the stunning geometric layout of the city smiling at me.  My heart was so excited.  Never did I believe I was going to experience such a thing…. The girl from the small town…

As we deboarded and entered the space age looking concourse that is Charles de Gaulle, caught a cab to our quaint little hotel in Champs- Elysees, checked in and set our bags down.  I had noticed an outdoor market on the way in.  The man I was traveling with, apparently, did not get enough sleep on the airplane and wanted to crash at the hotel… but I was ready to adventure. 

The bag that contained most of my things did not make the flight with us.  So I needed to find a few things to make my trip a bit easier.  I decided to catch the little market and hit up the pharmacy on the corner.  I remember walking through the market with sheer wonder and awe.  I picked up some dried fruits and a bit of cheese.  I spied a chocolatier! I still have the bag the chocolates came in, to this very day.  And then when I turned the corner… there it was… the Arc de Triomphe and the chaos of cars spinning around it.  I did what anyone would do… walked towards it.  I was not quite sure (yet) how to get to it.  I sat on a bench and watched the madness for a minute.  I was so amazed that I was experiencing something I had only dreamed of since I was young.  (I mean, come on… 4 years of French Classes for some twerp living in Po-dunk Colorado???)  I still have the picture I took sitting right here on my desk and I look at it frequently to remind me that nothing is impossible… that something amazing is right around the corner if you are willing to get out there and experience it.

I will not lie to you.  I’ve had such a rough week.  I’ve had many conversations with that little girl that lives inside.  She has been sad and hurt and reminding me that in Psalms 116:11, it clearly states that, “All men are liars.”  For a few days, that little girl wanted to collect evidence that her oldest fear was true…that people deceive, that love is unsafe, that opening your heart is foolish.

But I’ve been trying something different.

Every time I catch myself building a case against someone, I interrupt the story and say out loud, “Thank you for trusting me to love these men.”

It sounds strange, but it changes the question. Instead of asking, “Why did this happen to me?” I ask, “What does it say about me that I was capable of loving deeply?”

And almost immediately another thought follows: “I’m ready to receive love like mine, too.”

That doesn’t erase disappointment. It doesn’t make painful things painless. But it reminds me that a hard week is not a verdict on my worth.

What originally hurt that little girl?  The one who believes that she must be different, act different, say something different, say nothing and do nothing at all?  Why does she not have faith in herself? 

About two weeks ago, when I knew the end was nigh, I made a game plan. I made myself a six-month promise: to become curious about what lights me up.

So, I’m showing up to gallery openings and live music. I’m taking a pottery class. I joined a photography group. I’m planning a solo trip to Santa Fe and Taos. I’m leaning into the mystical, the creative, the strange, and the beautiful. And somewhere along the way, I’m gathering the people who make me feel most alive.

The goal isn’t self-improvement. It’s self-remembrance.

I promised my children I would take them to a beach this summer.  I tried to find my most inexpensive options (Teacher salary here…) and found trips to North Carolina were fairly affordable.  I also had a friend in New Jersey that said, “Please come this way…” 

But every time I purchase a Powerball ticket, I always dream that my first trip will be to Hawaii… my kids even get in on the scheming… “Mom, I need a new swimsuit to go to Hawaii…” they say to me, walking out of any convenience store with ticket in hand.

Out of curiosity, I investigated what it would take to get me and the littles to Hawaii… and to my surprise, it was less than $1,000 more. 

Guess where we are going for family vacation?! 

It was a moment when I allowed that little girl to get something that she wanted.

She’s tired of being judged.  She’s tired of being overlooked or taken advantage of.  She is sad about losing “friends.”  She is tired of not taking chances. 

My whole life I have done things the way that I thought I had to. There were only a few moments where I spread my wings and done things that I wanted to do… Like standing in amazement at the Arc, alone… or the thrill of punching the gas when the green light on the tree gives me permission… or applying for a house where the light that falls in brings my heart so much joy.  Planning the next 6 months of my life with nothing but being curious about myself makes me smile.

So no, this past week doesn’t get to define me.

A week is not a life. A disappointment is not a destiny. One person’s inability to meet me where I am does not make me less worthy of being met.

I’m still the girl who wandered through Paris alone, turned a corner, and found herself staring at the Arc de Triomphe in complete awe.

I’m still the woman who believes that something extraordinary might be waiting just around the corner.

And for the first time in a long time, I’m not building a life around what I’m afraid of losing.

I’m building one around what makes me come alive.

And while it was fun getting to know another human being… I am so thrilled to center within myself.  To allow myself to absolutely be in love with my own life that any experience such as this, just adds fun seasoning…

And perhaps that's what love has been trying to teach me all along.

Build a life that feels so rich, so curious, so deeply your own that anyone who joins you becomes a welcome companion…

I have always been the destination.

The cake was always mine.

Everyone else…simply the sprinkles.

Love after Love

Derek Walcott

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door,

in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say,

sit here.

Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine.

Give bread,

Give back your heart

to itself,

to the stranger who has loved you

all your life,

whom you ignored

for another,

who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf

the photographs,

the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit.

Feast on your life.

For Millennia, Forever...

Ode to the forever

Beacon of light

For those that need my kind

Of Love

The most.

It happened again

This morning

As the ash fell from the heavens

Fires burning in every

Direction

Around me.

Love

Came out of witness protection

And splattered my heart

Across the

Sky.

I envision for millennia

The splattered pieces

Will fall to the earth

Like stars

And gas

That fashion nebulae

Or just remain a beacon

For those that need my kind

Of love

The most.

I hope to catch a glimpse

Before I die.

Of my kind of love…

Untitled: Perfect Lovers

Oh June…

My blog is titled: The Long Road to Love.  When I started writing 16 years ago, Love to me was merely a destination.  Since then, I have changed my perspective on the matter and have decided that it is a current that our lives move through.  It is what drives the car as we get to wherever it is we are going. 

I recalled the other day, a piece of art that I learned about in one of my Art History courses titled, “Untitled – Perfect Lovers,” by Felix Gonzalez-Torres.  Simple to explain to you, it’s two identical clocks hung side by side displaying the same time… exactly.  At the time, while learning of this piece, I hardly thought of it as art at all.  I only had my own frame of reference… whereas all the “Lovers” under my belt never felt like they were on the same time, let alone the same time zone.

I thought of this piece the other day as I was picking up my phone to text this man that claims to love me, called me… it wasn’t a normal time for a call nor a text.  We just happen to be thinking of each other at the exact same moment.

Former me would be desperate for clarity, answers… What does this all mean?  Where is this going? 

Present me is just grateful to be comfortable in my own skin.  Happy to be independent and free. Thankful for an opportunity to experience what it means to come into the sphere of another human being with emotional intelligence and a desire to allow me to be seen, heard and experienced fully.  I don’t have to pretend to be something I’m not.  I don’t have to shrink myself to be swallowed whole.  As I do amazing things in my career and education, I don’t feel like I’m in competition.  I am allowed to shine and applauded for such things.

How did I get to this point in my life?

Honestly, I’m a little surprised by it myself. 

Did I wave a magic wand?  No.

I’ve been doing this EMDR trip with my therapist.  A lot has come up for me.  There is this space where I am working so hard to redirect my thoughts, align my actions, live entirely out loud, and trust that I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

I don’t think that we arrive on the day of our birth to learn to deal with the world around us.  I am a firm believer that we are here to leave an imprint on the world around us, to enjoy being a human, to follow the path of love… the current… and allow ourselves to be a part of it.

Sometimes, I’ll mention everything I’ve gone through in my life and the ears that hear are so astonished that I’ve made it all the way through.  It makes me uneasy and confused because I was there and nothing truly seemed like it would break me in that time.  Yes, some moments felt really hard… like the birth of my first born in particular.  I feel that I did what any mother would do… and that was whatever it takes.  There was a time, looking at the odds, I assumed he wouldn’t be here forever, and moved forward knowing I had to make sure his little life was the very best I could make it. 

Through these years of unpacking old wounds and trying to heal myself to become exactly who I know I am, I realized that I should be bringing that kind of energy to my own short little life.  What can I do to make sure this is the very best little life I can make it, for me?

I spent so many years trying to understand what happened to me.  Where did “I” go? 

Somewhere along the way, I became the full-time caretaker of everyone else’s wounds, my own wounds, and my own survival. 

I’ve examined every memory.

Analyzed every scar.

Dissected every relationship.

And while there is true value in healing fully, there came a point where I had to ask myself a different question.

What if I brought that same devotion to creating a life I actually enjoy? 

What makes my little heart happy? 

I joined a belly dancing class… I’ve always wanted to learn and have been trying to teach myself for YEARS.  And while I’m not good at it… There was a time when I wasn’t good at walking either.  I have so much fun in class!

I ask myself several times a day, “What would bring me the most JOY?”  And I listen to it and do it… maybe it’s a drive thru Starbucks coffee… Maybe it's a snuggle on the couch with my babies... Maybe it is a walk first thing in the morning. Maybe it’s a motorcycle ride with this handsome guy I know.  Maybe it’s sitting down to paint.  Today I trimmed the hedge in front of my house and planted a tomato plant and pulled some weeds.  I also sat in my forested backyard and took in how the morning light filters through the foliage of the trees. 

I have an idea for a new painting that I’m hoping to sketch out and get started on today. 

I know that giving myself permission to find my highest joy in each moment allows, “Untitled – Perfect Lovers,” to make sense to me. I am on my own time.  My flow comes with content.  Life seems Peaceful and so much more at ease.

Healing wasn’t learning how to survive my past…

Healing WAS learning how to participate in my present, fully.

Some things go absolutely right, listening to my highest joy.  Some things don’t… and that’s okay too.

I know, without a doubt, that allowing myself to pursue joy, moment by moment is what has finally helped me to understand, “Untitled – Perfect Lovers.”

For years, I thought the artwork was about finding another person who moved in time with me. 

Now, I wonder if it means something else entirely.

Perhaps, the first perfect lover is yourself.

The moment your thoughts, actions, values and desires begin keeping the same time.

The moment you stop forcing, chasing, shrinking, proving and performing.

The moment you trust your own rhythm.

Maybe that’s why life feels different these days.  Not because I have arrived somewhere.  But because, for the first time, I am finally on my own time.

 

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

 

The Girl in the Driveway...

Can I tell you a story without scaring you away?

My therapist has decided to pull out the big guns. A waltz down EMDR way… with a side of Internal Family Systems. Mostly because in three years of therapy, all I’ve really done is blame myself for my predicament.

Turns out, much like the dust that forms stars, we brush against many people in this life before becoming that compact ball of fiery goodness.

She warned me that beginning this work might stir up things I packed away years ago and quietly forgot about. So I spent my day dusting off old boxes. It wasn’t entirely terrible.

There once was a girl standing in her driveway shooting hoops when a turd brown Subaru wagon came honking down the road and pulled into the neighbor’s driveway while they were away. A moment later, it backed into hers instead.

Out stepped her friend Jeremiah… and a strange handsome boy she had never met.

It was instant.

I can still describe the flannel he wore. The trucker hat. The Levi’s. The way his dirty blonde hair fell just past his chin in natural waves. And that dang smile.

That girl and that boy carried on a long-distance relationship for nearly four years. They called each other for every win, every loss, every ordinary Tuesday. They were babies, really.

There were “significant others” in their real lives from time to time, but he still sent flowers every Christmas and called every day.

Then one day, he decided to take the leap and move to Colorado.

And she was terrified.

Because suddenly it was no longer a daydream. It could become real.

By then, she had attached herself elsewhere, as they both occasionally did over the years, and she was so afraid of hurting another human being that she ignored herself entirely.

It didn’t turn out the way you’d expect.

That story became one of the boxes in the pile. One I may never have fully unpacked.

Still, it shaped me. It kept me searching for fated meetings, depth, meaning… that feeling of being fully seen.

And even now, nearing fifty years old, a good chunk of my heart still remembers what it felt like to talk to that boy… now man.

Sometimes I wonder what island sands we’d have our toes buried in had we followed through on all those daydreams. I wonder what my life might have looked like if I had followed my heart instead of my head. If I had worried a little more about my own happiness than everyone else’s.

That’s the question my therapist and I keep circling back to:

Where on my timeline did I decide it was more important to please everyone else before myself?

Part of me has been afraid to find out.

Because this characteristic has shaped nearly every interaction I’ve had with the world… publicly and privately. There have only been a handful of times in my life where I stopped the performance and allowed my true feelings to fully exist in the room.

And so we began.

The timeline.

Every important emotional event I can remember, positive or painful. Every story that still echoes.

Then she had me create a visual safe space… and a container for anything too overwhelming to hold all at once.

Because I have some training in brain development and trauma-informed care, I wasn’t entirely convinced this process would work.

What I do know is this: I have long rejected the idea of “blaming my childhood.” My childhood, in so many ways, was beautiful. My parents made sure of that.

To me, blaming my childhood felt too much like blaming them… the two people who have shown up for me with unconditional love over and over again.

I couldn’t do that.

But my resistance softened after taking a certification course focused on childhood brain development and trauma. We discussed how both large and seemingly small experiences can shape neural pathways during critical developmental stages.

For example, imagine a child who goes a week without enough food at twenty months old. The child’s brain learns something: hunger, uncertainty, instability, fear. Maybe the reality was simply that a loving single mother lost her job and was waiting for assistance. Maybe love never left the room at all.

But the nervous system still adapted for survival.

That adaptation gets stored.

Pathways reroute. Others close down.

As educators, we’re encouraged to look at the whole child… not simply the behavior in front of us. We meet them at the developmental age where the wound occurred and help gently reopen pathways that help them out of survival.

And somewhere on the drive home, through tears, I finally asked myself:

If I believe this about children… why wouldn’t it also be true for me?

The truth is, I entered this world soft and sensitive by nature. During those critical years of development, I grew up with a loving mother carrying an overwhelmed nervous system and a father struggling with alcoholism. There was love in our home, but there was also fighting.

My brother and I became less mischievous out in the open and more accommodating. We learned to be helpful. Easy. Pleasing.

Not because we were unloved.

But because children adapt.

And while both of my parents were deeply present in so many ways… and while I feel profoundly grateful to have witnessed my father heal his relationship with alcohol and my mother finally settle into a softer life… I was still a child absorbing the emotional weather around me.

No blame.

Just observation.

That distinction alone has changed something inside me.

Because now I can begin to understand that many of the stories I’ve carried, every heartbreak and attachment and fear of disappointing others, have all been filtered through those early neural pathways.

And the most hopeful part of all of this?

Neural pathways can change.

So here I am. Waist deep in old stories and new understanding. Learning how I came to view the world… and slowly, carefully, giving myself permission to view it differently.

Now is the Time

Hafiz

 

Now is the time to know

That all that you do is sacred.

 

Now, why not consider

A lasting truce with yourself and God.

 

Now is the time to understand

That all your ideas of right and wrong

Were just a child's training wheels

To be laid aside

When you finally live

With veracity

And love.

 

Hafiz is a divine envoy

Whom the Beloved

Has written a holy message upon.

 

My dear, please tell me,

Why do you still

Throw sticks at your heart

And God?

 

What is it in that sweet voice inside

That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know

That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time

For you to compute the impossibility

That there is anything

But Grace.

Now is the season to know

That everything you do Is sacred.

Learning to Orbit Myself...

I wrote… but from a place of confusion.

Hours of pouring something onto the page, or so I thought.
But when I read it back, I realized… it wasn’t my heart speaking.
It was my head.

I received a video recording of my ex… completely trashing me.
Listening to his words, who I’ve “always been,” what I am, what I’m not…
“Good luck to the next guy.”

Hmm.

Then I had my week with my children.
And I watched, in real time, how words like that can shape and shift the way they see me… in just a matter of days.

It’s been incredibly hard to hold.

Years ago, during a long season of breaking, I painted nothing but faceless women… naked, exposed, undefined.

Then one day, something shifted.
Color came rushing back.
I started painting bold, vibrant, Native-inspired pieces… one after another, like something had been uncorked.
It poured out of me. Fast. Unfiltered. Alive.

About three years ago, I began praying for something different.
Begging for it, really.

Peace.

I wrote it over and over again in my journal:
“I have and I am so grateful for peace in my life.”

I didn’t know exactly what it would look like, but I had this image of me, on a quiet deck, coffee in hand, still in my pajamas, watching the sunrise…
not rushing, not striving… just being.

And this morning that’s exactly where I was.

So I scrapped the “poor me” version of this post.

I’m done being the whipping post for someone else’s unhealed version of reality.

Someone else’s interpretation of who I am, how I live, how I love.

I get to decide that now.

From the peaceful sanctuary I’ve built for myself… piece by piece.

I’ve become almost surgical about removing what doesn’t belong in my life.
Careful. Precise.
Like the chef at a brunch carving station, slicing away what doesn’t serve.

Sometimes I wonder what will be left.

But then I remember…
I’m still here.
Still breathing.

So today, in my slippers, coffee beside me, I’m casually looking at budget travel to Portugal… because it’s beautiful, and I’ve always wanted to go.
Belize and Bali are on the list too.

We’ll see which one calls me forward.

But what I really want to talk about today… is balance.

For years, more than I can count, I’ve felt like a spinning top at the very end of its motion.
Wobbling.
Off-center.

I made a habit of stepping back and letting others be the sun while I revolved around them.
Dimming myself.
Telling myself that staying small was somehow… enough.

But then I remembered something.

There are more stars in the observable universe than grains of sand on this Earth.

There is room for all of us to shine.

And shine I have.

I received “Exemplary” on my final evaluation for the state.
I was asked to open my classroom to other educators.
Invited to facilitate at an art symposium this summer.
I sold more prints this month than ever before.
My Vagabond Canvas classes are full again.
My school art show was a success.

And tomorrow is my birthday.

Even with everything this past year has held…
I haven’t felt this kind of happiness in longer than I can remember.

It’s okay for me to be the center of my own orbit.
To be the star I revolve around.

But in claiming that… I also went inward. Deeply inward.
I poured myself into my work and my children.
Protected my solitude fiercely.
Said “no” more than I said “yes.”

And when I did say yes…
life surprised me.

New friendships. Unexpected connections.
People I might have overlooked before, now woven into my life in meaningful ways.

And slowly… I’ve begun to soften again.

To feel safe around men who are not my past.
To rediscover parts of myself I thought might be gone for good.

I’ve laughed.
Felt beautiful.
Kind.
Smart.
Playful.
HUMAN.

I feel more like myself right now than I have in years.

And most of all…
I have Peace.

Not the imagined version anymore.
The lived one.

But here’s what I’m learning…

Peace isn’t something you have.
Just like Love isn’t something you own.

They are energies you move through.

This morning, I wrote from the perspective of my future self: April 2027.

That version of me understands balance.

The Earth rotates around the Sun because of a balance between the Sun’s powerful gravity and the Earth’s inertia… high speed; forward momentum. 

And maybe that’s what balance really is.

Not stillness.
Not perfection.

But movement… held in just the right relationship with itself.

So as I move through Peace, through Love,
through time, desire, and reality…

I trust that I am finding my way into that balance.

 

Beautiful Creature
Hafiz

from Love Poems from God

There is a beautiful creature living
in a hole you have dug,

so at night I set fruit and grains and little pots of wine and milk
beside your soft earthen mounds,

and I often sing to you,
but still, my dear, you do not come out.

I have fallen in love with someone
who is hiding inside of you.

We should talk about this problem,
otherwise I will never leave you alone.

 

The Most Important Love Story I Ever Told...

“Love is an ever fixed mark…”

I woke up late…much later than I normally do.

I like to rise around 4:15, just to make sure I have time to journal, meditate, or sit with the early birds if it’s warm enough. That head-clearing time is the best start to my days.

When I started this new job, I created a small ritual that has helped me tremendously. I lay out my clothes for the next day, prepare my coffee, breakfast, and lunch… and remind myself, even when I’m tired, that “my future self will thank me.”

And she always does.

So when I woke up at 6:15 on Tuesday… I didn’t panic. Not even a bit.

I started the shower, threw on a shower cap, got dressed, put on my makeup, and pulled part of my hair up… messy locks that my students adore.

As I walked into work five minutes late instead of fifteen minutes early… still no panic.

I stopped to look at what was left of the blossoms and thought to myself:
This must be what it feels like to have a regulated nervous system.

Because in years past, my life was nothing but panic.
Everything felt like a five-alarm fire.
Every pebble in the road meant catastrophe.

My parents had dear friends that I absolutely adored... Alice used to say,
“It’s like pole vaulting over mouse turds.”

That was my life.
And I could never understand why.

Today, I had the day off… appointments with my girls.

When I dropped my youngest son off at school, kids and parents alike were waving. I even heard one kid yell, “Where are you going? We need you!”

This came on the heels of notes left behind after our art show… kids telling me they love me, that I’m “cool,” “nice,” and apparently the “G.O.A.T.”

And sitting at a red light, it hit me:

My whole life, I have just wanted to be seen for who I really am.

And somehow… all the love I’ve poured out into the world
has found its way back to me.

I felt like I had arrived.

Not in the way I imagined… but in a way that made me pause and realize:

Life rarely shows up how we expect it to.
But sometimes… it shows up exactly how we need it to.

Over the past few years, my perspective has shifted so drastically that my grief had to turn completely around.

I used to believe I stayed and tolerated so much because fate had knocked on my door.

But what I’ve come to understand through therapy and a stubborn “can-do” spirit is this:

I was the one standing in the way
of the life meant for me.

I had a chokehold on proving to people who discarded me
that I was worth loving, cherishing, choosing.

It never occurred to me.. not once in 27 years…
that what was meant for me would find me and stay.

Not because I proved it.
But because I already am..
sweet, funny, thoughtful, smart…
a chill, cool girl.

I’ve always been.

And then the dam burst.

And I was left standing in the aftermath… a partial foundation,
downed tree debris scattered in only one direction:

Truth.

My grief changed.

It was never about losing someone who loved me.

It was about realizing
I had never fully loved myself enough
to let what wasn’t meant for me
fall away.

I made myself small.
I walked on eggshells.
I took responsibility for someone else’s emotions,
someone else’s harm.

Mark Twain once said:
“If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

This was the biggest frog I have ever swallowed.

And if I’m honest… the hardest part has been forgiving myself.

When Rube was clearing out the house in Florence, preparing to move in with my Aunt Marianne, she gave me a number of things.

One was her college textbook… the complete works of William Shakespeare.

It’s worn now. The binding frayed from years of being held, opened, returned to.

Near the back lives the collection of sonnets.

One of them - Sonnet 116 - became my anchor nearly sixteen years ago, when I found myself discarded for the second time.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments; love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come.

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

 

I knew then that what I had experienced was not love.

I even wrote about it.

What I didn’t know yet…
was how to forgive myself for staying.

That part is still unfolding.

But I understand now:

I made mistakes.
And I am still here… living, breathing, and more than okay.

These days, my life is full.

Family.
Friends, old and new.
Men whose eyes light up when they see me.

Every interaction reminds me…
it is safe to try again.
To believe again.
To begin again.

Every hug from my children, my students, my people…
it all tells me the same thing:

Love has always been here.

Steady.
Present.
Unmoving.

An ever-fixed mark.

And now…
so am I.

I have written.
I have loved.

And finally…

I am learning
how to include myself in that story.

Let this be yours, too.

Let the play,
and the prose,
go on.