I turned a year older today. It's been an amazing couple of days. I floated the river with my lovely, munching on local fruit and drinking super~sized Bloody Marys on a raft built for two. I napped and was fed dinner by a witch. Denny's gave me a free breakfast. I ate it with my three favorite people on the planet. My babygirl gave me the gift I so desperately needed...to be heard. My boy hugged me extra hard. I was invited into the forbidden zone where I was offered a strawberry made even sweeter by eating it in that place which I thought I had lost forever. I hung out with my momma then hung out in my hammock. There was a long bath and a book that I haven't set enough time aside to read lately. Dozens of facebook messages, texts, calls and an email offering up pieces of a soul I also thought I had lost forever. My soul sister called me after way too long that then felt like no time at all. I made my list of things to do before my next birthday...after evaluating last year's...and fell a little in love with where I am today, this crazymazing life and the future too.
Through all of that, I had to keep reminding myself that it's okay to be happy today. My birthday this year falls on Father's Day...and I felt myself slipping often into that risky, tricky place of sorrow and regret. I miss him. I grieve the lost opportunities and I regret the missed ones...the missed words as well. It's been a bitter~sweet day and the only saving grace has been that there are beauty~full things going on in this family...in his legacy...that he would be incredulous about and delighted by if he were here to see them.
My greatest gift this year has been that of family, gifted to me by a father whom I didn't get to know nearly well enough. My greatest gift this year has been my sister opening her heart to me and a man raised by my father but with whom I share no blood...who called me "family" and burst my heart wide open.
My New Year/Birthday List:
Go to them. All of them.
Say things. Lots of things.
Listen too. Lots of that too.
Salute the sun. A lot.
The moon too.
Hug.
Kiss.
Hug some more.
Map my desire. Follow it.
GET THAT DAMN PASSPORT.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Three Beauty~Full Things
♥ Leftover Thai food for breakfast, right out of the takeout container.
♥ My old computer fixed...all that lovely past accessible again.
♥ One lone wish left on the plate~sized dandelion in my planter bed.
♥ My old computer fixed...all that lovely past accessible again.
♥ One lone wish left on the plate~sized dandelion in my planter bed.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Mapping my Desire
Danielle LaPorte and I have a long history. Over the course of years and years, she has been accompanying me on a soul journey... motivating, leading, lightheartedly encouraging and making it seem not only possible but absolutely inevitable that I would find my way to my inner amazing. We've never met.
She introduced me to my own White Hot Truth slowly and persistently by enticing me back to her space with stories and soul poetry and goosebumpy truths over and over again. When she chose to walk through her own fire into her own name, her own bedrock, she led by example to not only claim that core identity but to accept even that as fluid...and call the fluidity a superpower. It is.
I was drawn to flesh out her burning questions with my own blazing reality, taking me from invincible at times to totally totalled as well. I learned what I trust. It was in there, it was part of me. But getting it out and making it part of my world instead of just inside of me breathed life into these things I trust. They morphed. They morph. Trust changes, that was the most enlightening bitter pill I've ever swallowed. My mantra was born out of that...a mantra that led my life to peace, connection, fulfillment and ethereal joy that bubbles up from the very core of my being. Then she asked me how I want to feel. I knew. There wasn't a glimmer of hesitation. I wanted to feel more. I purchased the audiobook version of The Firestarter Sessions. She whispered her secrets like a best friend convincing me of my juicy~ness in stereo through my car speakers. I wanted to fill my car with people...people I knew and people I wanted to know and people I didn't know...and, and, and! I wanted them to hear and I wanted to make that eye contact that says "right?" with incredulity and recognition behind it.
It was rockin along. Then there was the Maximum Mayhem Moment, the one that changed everything. Adrift, confused, terrified and displaced...all I carried with me were the beings I adored and an exhausting determination to believe that things would get better. Somehow. Destitute and displaced but with an over abundance of time on my hands, I created a buoy. I spent some days with Danielle LaPorte and others with Marie Forleo, Chris Guillebeau, Tanya Geisler, Lissa Rankin and Kate Northrup. I created a team of coaches to pull me from the pit of despair. I read every word I could find and marinated in them. I watched their videos and downloaded their freebies. I subscribed. I meditated and visualized. I made vision boards and sticky notes and lists. I journaled and I sang and I walked with eyes wide open through parks filled with gnarled and wise oak trees and endless expanses of sand at the ocean's edge. I read poetry. I wrote poetry. The pit of despair faded into appreciation for life, even its despair.
Then there was this:
And on her birthday, like the glorious grounded gracious rock star that she is, she offered it up at a "pay what you can" rate. I paid what I could...and now? Now, I'm desire mapping. For a couple of weeks now, my attempts to begin have fallen flat, I haven't even opened the book.
Last night, unexpectedly alone on a good hair day with uncharacteristically amazing open window weather and fueled by butterflies after a soul to soul reconnection, I lit some nag champa and brewed my favorite "get zen" tea: Saffron Chamomile Spearmint with vanilla stevia in my favorite mug from a coastal trip with my lovely. I turned Pandora on to The Pierces radio. I laid out my softest blanket and spread my tools around me: book. workbook. colored pens. highlighters. the black gel pen that makes my handwriting look like ancient wisdom. laughing buddha. my tiny frog prince. rose quartz charged by my favorite witch. lip balm. A McCabe rock that says "breathe". I called my dog to lay nearby so I could bounce ideas off of him. He's intuitive.
I opened the workbook and the first page has an entry titled "Make it sacred" and states: "Let this process be important and sacred for you-because it is. You're a grown-up, do this in whatever ways feel inspiring. You know how you learn best and what you need to hear yourself think. Crank some rock or rock opera if that's what alters your state. Light a honey beeswax candle. Find a park bench, get a sitter, say a prayer. Do what you need to do to create a container that will allow you to unfold our truth."
I was right where I was supposed to be.
If you believe my dog, I did great work. If you believe me, I rocked the damn socks off of that workbook and I'm only halfway through.
My core desired feeling list is too long but I decided that it's as long as it needs to be right now. It needs some time and space and reason to evolve. Right now? It takes my breath away and I'm in a constant state of butterflies.
My Core Desired Feelings:
Connected
Solidarity
Appreciative
Camaradarie...these may evolve into In Communion
Unfettered
Simple
Peaceful
Light...these seem to be saying Ethereal
Enthusiastic
Awed
Fierce
Adventurous
Curious
Magical
Contagious
Playful...maybe all of these are Magnetic
Now, for action...this day isn't gonna know what hit it!
~A week later, these words evolved into: Succulent. Magnetic. Entrenched. Awed. (with entrenched meaning: enthusiastically connected in solidarity and communion, seeing every person as a camarade together in this wild adventure we share.)~
She introduced me to my own White Hot Truth slowly and persistently by enticing me back to her space with stories and soul poetry and goosebumpy truths over and over again. When she chose to walk through her own fire into her own name, her own bedrock, she led by example to not only claim that core identity but to accept even that as fluid...and call the fluidity a superpower. It is.
I was drawn to flesh out her burning questions with my own blazing reality, taking me from invincible at times to totally totalled as well. I learned what I trust. It was in there, it was part of me. But getting it out and making it part of my world instead of just inside of me breathed life into these things I trust. They morphed. They morph. Trust changes, that was the most enlightening bitter pill I've ever swallowed. My mantra was born out of that...a mantra that led my life to peace, connection, fulfillment and ethereal joy that bubbles up from the very core of my being. Then she asked me how I want to feel. I knew. There wasn't a glimmer of hesitation. I wanted to feel more. I purchased the audiobook version of The Firestarter Sessions. She whispered her secrets like a best friend convincing me of my juicy~ness in stereo through my car speakers. I wanted to fill my car with people...people I knew and people I wanted to know and people I didn't know...and, and, and! I wanted them to hear and I wanted to make that eye contact that says "right?" with incredulity and recognition behind it.
It was rockin along. Then there was the Maximum Mayhem Moment, the one that changed everything. Adrift, confused, terrified and displaced...all I carried with me were the beings I adored and an exhausting determination to believe that things would get better. Somehow. Destitute and displaced but with an over abundance of time on my hands, I created a buoy. I spent some days with Danielle LaPorte and others with Marie Forleo, Chris Guillebeau, Tanya Geisler, Lissa Rankin and Kate Northrup. I created a team of coaches to pull me from the pit of despair. I read every word I could find and marinated in them. I watched their videos and downloaded their freebies. I subscribed. I meditated and visualized. I made vision boards and sticky notes and lists. I journaled and I sang and I walked with eyes wide open through parks filled with gnarled and wise oak trees and endless expanses of sand at the ocean's edge. I read poetry. I wrote poetry. The pit of despair faded into appreciation for life, even its despair.
Then there was this:
And on her birthday, like the glorious grounded gracious rock star that she is, she offered it up at a "pay what you can" rate. I paid what I could...and now? Now, I'm desire mapping. For a couple of weeks now, my attempts to begin have fallen flat, I haven't even opened the book.
Last night, unexpectedly alone on a good hair day with uncharacteristically amazing open window weather and fueled by butterflies after a soul to soul reconnection, I lit some nag champa and brewed my favorite "get zen" tea: Saffron Chamomile Spearmint with vanilla stevia in my favorite mug from a coastal trip with my lovely. I turned Pandora on to The Pierces radio. I laid out my softest blanket and spread my tools around me: book. workbook. colored pens. highlighters. the black gel pen that makes my handwriting look like ancient wisdom. laughing buddha. my tiny frog prince. rose quartz charged by my favorite witch. lip balm. A McCabe rock that says "breathe". I called my dog to lay nearby so I could bounce ideas off of him. He's intuitive.
I opened the workbook and the first page has an entry titled "Make it sacred" and states: "Let this process be important and sacred for you-because it is. You're a grown-up, do this in whatever ways feel inspiring. You know how you learn best and what you need to hear yourself think. Crank some rock or rock opera if that's what alters your state. Light a honey beeswax candle. Find a park bench, get a sitter, say a prayer. Do what you need to do to create a container that will allow you to unfold our truth."
I was right where I was supposed to be.
If you believe my dog, I did great work. If you believe me, I rocked the damn socks off of that workbook and I'm only halfway through.
My core desired feeling list is too long but I decided that it's as long as it needs to be right now. It needs some time and space and reason to evolve. Right now? It takes my breath away and I'm in a constant state of butterflies.
My Core Desired Feelings:
Connected
Solidarity
Appreciative
Camaradarie...these may evolve into In Communion
Unfettered
Simple
Peaceful
Light...these seem to be saying Ethereal
Enthusiastic
Awed
Fierce
Adventurous
Curious
Magical
Contagious
Playful...maybe all of these are Magnetic
Now, for action...this day isn't gonna know what hit it!
~A week later, these words evolved into: Succulent. Magnetic. Entrenched. Awed. (with entrenched meaning: enthusiastically connected in solidarity and communion, seeing every person as a camarade together in this wild adventure we share.)~
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
That One Time I Got Peed On...
"Turn your face, young lady" he said with an authoritative and extremely serious demeanor, reaching for the drawstring on his swim trunks. Just fifteen minutes earlier I had been prancing on the beach where the water met the sand. My bikini was new...black, with ruffles...it was a gift from my mother at my sixteenth birthday party just days prior. Now I was looking up from my seated position on the sand at a rounded belly and dark nippled chest covered by a carpet of salt and pepper hair. So. Much. Hair...all the way to that drawstring. My mind couldn't even conceive what was beyond that, but by all evidence, I was about to find out.
Rewind fifteen minutes and my prancing had taken me past the water line to where the waves began to break. There was a group of us prancers...splashing and laughing and eventually bobbing in the Gulf of Mexico. I was on my back, arms outstretched, feeling the sun on my skin and the rhythm of the waves rocking me gently. I had drifted a bit away from my friends when the pain of a thousand needles simultaneously being shoved under my skin took over my leg. I screamed with every bit of air in my lungs, sure that one of the sharks rumored to be in the waters just ate my right leg from mid calf down. I couldn't do anything but scream, not even turn my face to find my friends. I went under, frozen in my floating pose with no air left in my lungs. I felt myself being dragged under the water and thought, "I didn't even eat lunch yet and I'm going to be lunch," when I realized I was being pulled TOWARD the beach, not into the depths to be devoured.
My arms started working and a strong male voice demanded that I stop my thrashing as I felt the thousand needles on my skin again. Terrified of what I would or wouldn't see, I forced myself to stop moving except to look at my leg. My foot was there and it all looked normal, except for the sand the forceful man had heaped on my ankle. He apologized and quickly scrubbed the sand into my skin. I screamed again, in total flaming agony. Then he ordered me to turn my face and I felt a stinging warmth on the same skin. I could smell urine and in my agonized, near-delirious state, I thought I had lost control of my bladder. I was embarrassed. I was more embarrassed when I realized what had really just happened.
He wrapped my leg in a towel and put me in the back seat of my friend's car with strict orders to go straight to the Emergency Room. We tried. I cried. The drive should have been twenty minutes but the drawbridge that was always such a welcome excuse for why we missed curfew was karmically in operation at the time. An hour and five minutes later, we arrived at the ER. I was welted and the scars remained well past the summer, but the ER couldn't do any more for me than the quick thinking and reacting hairy Samaritan on the beach had.
I don't know what's luckier, that it was my only encounter with a Portuguese Man O'War or the only time a stranger peed on me.
Rewind fifteen minutes and my prancing had taken me past the water line to where the waves began to break. There was a group of us prancers...splashing and laughing and eventually bobbing in the Gulf of Mexico. I was on my back, arms outstretched, feeling the sun on my skin and the rhythm of the waves rocking me gently. I had drifted a bit away from my friends when the pain of a thousand needles simultaneously being shoved under my skin took over my leg. I screamed with every bit of air in my lungs, sure that one of the sharks rumored to be in the waters just ate my right leg from mid calf down. I couldn't do anything but scream, not even turn my face to find my friends. I went under, frozen in my floating pose with no air left in my lungs. I felt myself being dragged under the water and thought, "I didn't even eat lunch yet and I'm going to be lunch," when I realized I was being pulled TOWARD the beach, not into the depths to be devoured.
My arms started working and a strong male voice demanded that I stop my thrashing as I felt the thousand needles on my skin again. Terrified of what I would or wouldn't see, I forced myself to stop moving except to look at my leg. My foot was there and it all looked normal, except for the sand the forceful man had heaped on my ankle. He apologized and quickly scrubbed the sand into my skin. I screamed again, in total flaming agony. Then he ordered me to turn my face and I felt a stinging warmth on the same skin. I could smell urine and in my agonized, near-delirious state, I thought I had lost control of my bladder. I was embarrassed. I was more embarrassed when I realized what had really just happened.
He wrapped my leg in a towel and put me in the back seat of my friend's car with strict orders to go straight to the Emergency Room. We tried. I cried. The drive should have been twenty minutes but the drawbridge that was always such a welcome excuse for why we missed curfew was karmically in operation at the time. An hour and five minutes later, we arrived at the ER. I was welted and the scars remained well past the summer, but the ER couldn't do any more for me than the quick thinking and reacting hairy Samaritan on the beach had.
I don't know what's luckier, that it was my only encounter with a Portuguese Man O'War or the only time a stranger peed on me.
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