The Human Story

The Things That Hurt Us Most Aren’t Always Seen

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Few of us are eaten by tigers or stomped to death by fast moving rhinos these days. The things that kill off the modern humans are the things of our environment that move through us in secret biologically or energetically. On a biological level we have a plethora of virus’s and chemicals, bacteria, and parasites. Energetically we are attacked by derision, devaluation, disrespect, and every other voice that tells us we will never be enough. The energetic tole on the body results in threat load symptoms like stress, headache, weight gain or loss, fatigue, erratic emotions, hair loss, and insomnia. We are energetic beings and our threat load is so high that many of us are on the verge of breakdowns. 

Another form of energetic tole on the body is trauma. I’m going to focus on trauma today because it is what I am specializing in because It’s what I understand. Trauma hits the mind and body like a sledge hammer. Every time the mind is triggered into a memory the body is forced to relive that memory as if it were really happening in that moment. It relives rapes, beatings, car accidents, deaths, battles. Whatever has traumatized the unhealed individual repeatedly traumatizes the body. Remember the time you burned your hand? Can you feel the pain memory of that burn? Remember the time you cut your finger? Can you feel the pain memory in your finger?

Now imagine you’re a trauma survivor and you are having a flashback and your anxiety is at it’s max level and suddenly you can’t breath. Your chest has closed up, your throat is closing up, you’re in full panic and you can’t move because even your legs have locked up on you. This is a freeze response to trauma. Many trauma survivors have a freeze response to trauma and to assault. Many can’t even scream for help or move a hand to protect themselves. The freeze response is no joke. If you are a trauma survivor I encourage you to seek out a qualified trauma therapist and work with your body using Dr. Kristen Neff’s Soften, Sooth technique. I’ll go over it but you can find it on her website and in her book, The Self Compassion Handbook. This little book changed my life. 

Another physical response to trauma is very much like freezing but takes place along side fear driven anxiety and it is called armoring. Armoring stiffens the muscles and joints to the point where a person feels unable to draw a full breath, bend, flex, or move without pain. It’s like being the Tin Man minus the oilcan. People experiencing armoring will carry it with them day and night, sometimes for years. They should not rely on pain killers and muscle relaxers alone to help restore mobility. The cure for armoring is therapy, emotional release, the Soften and Sooth technique, and total and complete self love and radical acceptance that this is what happened and this is where you are with it right now. Some of us have survived sexual assault, physical assault and psychological assault so severe that to hear the stories is to become incredulous in the extreme. After all, how the hell can things like this happen? They’re too hideous to be believed. To often the victims are discredited and left alone with their bewildering pain. So if you are a trauma survivor please do not share your story with an unqualified person or power through armoring or you might deepen the trauma or tear a muscle. Treat yourself with loving kindness and the right therapy and the right people and your body will again regain the elasticity it once had.

Soften and Sooth is simply reading your body, finding the painful places. Focus on one place at a time. Place your hands on the pain and massage gently while you tell your body it’s ok, you’re safe. I’m here. This is a protected place. You are protected. If the place in your body that was exhibiting anxiety/tension/pain begins opening up it might start telling you the story of the trauma it holds and what happened. If you can, just be with the pain and accept it as real, integrate the story as real and then rest with the knowledge that a little part of yourself that was hidden has been revealed. This is healing. This is what healing looks like. If it’s too much, write down what you saw and go do self care until you are ready to talk about what you remembered with your therapist. And please only talk about what happened with people who understand trauma. The average person can not deal with your pain on any level. Please be careful with your story. It was buried to begin with because either you or someone else wasn’t ready to hear it.

You’re stronger than you know. You have survived so much and you’re still on your feet. Everyday that you are on the world is a good day. So much love, E.  

Is Heaven A Destination or a State of Being?

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We’ve all seen the clouds lit with pink and gold, surrounding the cherubs and angels, who stoically lift the departed into the glowing heart of God so beautifully rendered by Italian masters, that to see their work is to believe what they depict. We’ve heard the psychics talk about a tunnel of light, and all of are past loved ones, dogs included, waiting to greet us on the other side. Some believe that heaven is in the Pleiades star system, where there’s a library and a place where you go to rest and review your life before reincarnating.

If Heaven is any of these things it still dose’t explain why we got landed here. There are as many reasons for human experience as there are explanations of Heaven and yet none of them bring us much peace. So why are we here? What’s the purpose of pain, love, suffering, joy, birth and death? Who’s idea was this anyway? And boy doesn’t he or she or they have a shit ton of explaining to do. 

There are two statements about life and heaven that have brought me peace. One is that Earth is a  school where God comes to find its self. Say God were to measure its self out by the cup full and pour its self into a meat suit and say, “Ok meat suit, these are your parents, this is your name, and this is your life, now go live. And while you live I’ll see, and feel, and taste, everything you do through you so I can understand better what it is to be alive and faraway from everything I am, and from everything I know.” This concept brings me a measure of peace and sanity because it’s easier for me to believe that I am part of God and God is part of me than it is to believe that we’re just messing around until we die. I prefer the idea of being a holy data collector over being just another cog in the wheel of time. 

So as a holy data collector I would like to return to the idea of Heaven. Jesus, my beloved brother and good friend said, “The kingdom of heaven is within.” As a holy data collector for a supreme being who is living, and touching, and feeling, through me, I like this concept because in practice it not only makes sense but actually bears fruit through daily meditation. Sit still, close your eyes, and go inside the vast space that is you, and see if with time you don’t feel the radiant light of God. Next listen for the development of your inner knowing as it grows louder and louder, helping you make choices throughout the day. When this happens you are well into your awakening. “Be still and know I am,” is no joke, it is a command to be centered, rest in your own silence, and come to know God, the great I AM.

So, is heaven a destination or a state of being? On earth it is a state we can all access if we chose to. After that, does the rest really matter? We know we are energy and energy can not be destroyed so in that fact alone we know our energy selves are immortal. And if God is love, and love is all there is then what is there to worry about. So kick back and be happy, whatever happens, it turns out OK!

In conclusion I want you to know that I love you, that Only the brave come to earth, and that you won the battle just by showing up. 

Living The Word

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I have been asked to write on this topic and have no clue how. This is like trying to describe God’s nose, or the giggle of a happy fish four fathoms deep in the ocean. All I know about Living the Word is that it is all encompassing and life changing, a mystery and an allegory wrapped in a conundrum. So let me get deep, ask my higher self some questions and see what we get.

Ok, living the Word is finding your grace, it is seeing the Christ light within yourself and within every being you encounter whether in person or through media. Living the Word is asking, “What would Jesus do?” and it is holding peace and space and love for your brothers and sisters who are all struggling and fighting their own internal battles. Living the World is finding peace on a battleground, holding a stranger’s hand as they take their last breath, and kissing a newborn baby while you whisper, “Let your light shine little one, that’s why you are here.” 

Living the Word is not complex, but it is in fact so simple that our ego has tortured its concepts into billions of books, talks, workshops, seminars, and therapies. People make money on teaching the Word and yet living the Word is as simple as “love your neighbor as you love yourself,” never forgetting that you need to love yourself first and above all others because without self-love you are a doormat waiting to be stood on and rendered incapable of being of service to anyone. 

Standing in your grace is living the Word because you are accepting your Christ self as absolute, real, and purposeful. The Christ self is a title meaning the part of you that is God incarnate capable of unconditional love. Without understanding that you are grace, without the realization that you are a part of God living in a human experience, and that you were born to express love, live through faith, and thus resurrect the Christ within, you remain unconscious, asleep, and just another human ruled by the relentless ego that will never let you know your worth.

People will fall away when your vibrations no longer match. Old relationships will die and you will grieve the memory of what they were knowing that you outgrew each other. A fifth dimensional person cannot vibrate at the same frequency as a third dimensional person. Neither is good or bad, they are just hummingbirds and bobcats, incompatible.  If you chose this path you must forgive yourself and everyone you have ever encountered. For forgiveness is the road to peace and peace is the road to grace and grace is the road to God.

Worth, Grace, Self-compassion, inner healing, love for others as your brothers and sisters, surrender to the Divine, and total shedding of the old identity, that you though made you who you were, is your awakening process. Your awakening may be difficult, it may be simple, it may be smooth, it may be rough. You get what you expect on this journey. Just know that if you chose this path, this is the price you will pay to live the Word as your Christ self. You pay with change that sheds away your skin every time your consciousness expands, and you know the great I Am on a deeper level. This is being reborn, resurrected, and expanded again and again on a spiritual level. Living the Word is to live as Jesus lived, both human and divine existing in one unconditionally loving being.

You Came Here With Nothing

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Don’t tell me about the leather seats in your Jag or how much it cost you.

You came here with nothing.  

Don’t tell me how your Grandfather built his empire or how your Father is a Congressmen.

You came here with nothing.

Don’t rest on the laurels of this life because your bank account, your fine house, your bright smile will fade, is fading to dust even now. Remember, 

You came here with nothing.

Tell me instead how your soul sings at the sight of a wild flower self sown and growing by the roadside. Tell me how your heart beats wildly when the one you love walks near, the smell of her body quickening your blood because you want her. ’Soul of my Soul,’ your heart sings knowing that her body is only a beautiful addition. Tell me what it felt like to hold her for the first time and wonder how it was even possible that someone so rare could have crossed your path. Tell me your fears, your joys, your exhalations. Tell me again and again what it is to walk barefoot on this Earth called Mother and know the oneness of all things. Tell me!

I want to hear your humanness, I want to wipe the tears from my eyes when I see your soul beam out in joy at the sight of your new grandchild, this new sun rise, this new brick in the wall of your life so beautiful, so pure, so real that this moment of discovery, of pure self, is one of the few moments that actually whispers, “you are alive.” Oh God do not let me languish in a world without moments of divine clarity. Shield me from the wolds where new life is photographed, framed, and put on the mantel next to the trophies and figurines and then sent away to bed. 

Good God, Give me the life of many kisses, of hands held, and food shared. Give me the life of sleeping babies at parents breasts unaware that life goes on around them while still they are included in the oneness, the wholeness, the glory of community. I came here to love and I will love among my people and be called by them ours, as I call them mine. And we will hold each other and prevail in being the light that lights each others way.

Don’t tell me about your promotion, your big house, your yacht, your investment portfolio. Tell me about you and I will love you as you are.

You came here with nothing, and with nothing but your sweetest memories and darkest shames,

you will go. 

The Damnation of the Free Woman and the Rise of The Divine Feminine

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Throughout history free and socially insubordinate women have been demonized, beaten down and killed. We’ve been called witches, cast out of our homes and our villages, and left to die in the wilderness or worse. But I’m not here to talk to you about the violence. I’m here to talk about the freedom.

A free woman in history was often a healer, a sexual revolutionary, a person of divine faith who held prophesy and thus the lives of men in her hands. A free woman was feared and revered and walked where she wanted, when she wanted, without fear. She was a woman of the day and of the night often walking for miles in the darkness to deliver a baby or heal an illness or to seek a vision. In 1178 a Christian ordinance banned women from walking out at night in case they were practicing magic. History called them witches but we now know them to be gifted beings who dared to live outside of the role society had given them.

The Oracle of Delphi was believed to have channelled the God Apollo, and her wisdom guided kings. Her name was Pythia but she was not the only oracle in Delphi. Wise women have been guiding their tribes and villages for time out of mind. In my Gypsy tribe our wise woman was called Bone Mother as in she who casts the bones and knows the future. She is my favorite guide and comes to me often in meditation. In old Norse these women were called Volva, a seeress who practiced shamanism or witchcraft. Witchcraft has only held an evil connotation in Europe since the colonizing Romans came to power. Before them wise women gathered in sacred groves, listened to the spirits of nature and predicted the harvest, deadly storms, and the coming of invaders. They were in a state of oneness with the sacred energies that guide all beings and their visions were respected, their advice sought, and they were admired and protected for their gifts.

So why did the Romans decide to demonize the prophetic female? Women in ancient Rome had no power. They could not own property, they could not vote, they were mostly uneducated and they were handed from father to husband into marriage where their sole job was to give birth each year. A barren woman was an embarrassment, a fertile woman was a joy. However, all her children belonged to her husband and if she was cast off she would not see her children again. 

Now let’s throw in some Christian doctrine like, Exodus 22:18: “Do not suffer a witch to live,” and Leviticus 20:27: “A man or woman in whom there is a mythical or divining spirit, dying let them die: They shall stone them: Their blood be upon them.” Armed with such religious power we can see why the Roman Catholic Church burned, drowned, and murdered several million people for witchcraft. 

Now I want to talk about the rise of the Divine Feminine, a reality that is touching all of us now in very different ways. We have been out of balance for too long and killing off our wise women in order to keep women down. The Divine Feminine is an energy signature that has come to restore balance and recreate our society into something that feeds and nourishes its people. Under her direction we will move away from the war machine called capitalism where we play who can climb to the top fastest and piss on the losers. We’re not playing that game anymore. Grab your balls you Wolves of Wall Street, your boy’s games have brought destruction on the world environmentally, socially, and spiritually.

The Divine Feminine will not supplant the masculine, it will glorify the beauty of the male by bringing him into the balance of his own Divine Masculinity. Balance is restored when every human being is both Divinely Masculine and Divinely Feminine. I didn’t make this up. Millions of people across this planet are waking up to this reality. As men and woman continue to gain grater and grater freedom their natural intuition has bloomed into a clear knowing which is set to free all humans from the suffocating roles they have been forced to endure under the patriarchy.

When I was a child my mother read me a prophesy that said, “The Christ will come again when there are no men and no women.” I take this to mean that Christ consciousness will come to all people when the toxic masculine and toxic feminine is replaced by both the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine together in each being. Christ Consciousness is Unity Consciousness. It is being one with all things. It is accepting your divinity and your brother and sisterhood with all beings. It is embracing your masculine and feminine inside yourselves.

I love you and I see you. We are in the arms of the angels. Great change is taking place. Don’t worry, your penis won’t fall off.

Becoming Empty

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In order to be full of what supports your highest good you must first become empty of what does not. To become empty, you must let go of the roles you were given or that you took on in order to fit into the society that set out to alter you to begin with. After you have set aside your roles you must ask the fundamental question, “Do you remember?” This question has many layers and asks many things. It asks you to peel away the false facade you were asked to take on when you took on your roles, were taught to hug your uncle when really, he made you sick? Were you made to shake hands with a man you knew to be corrupt? Where you made to smile when you just wanted to get down to business and do what you love without having to be pretty or polite.

“Do you remember,” asks you in a fundamentally open way, “Who were you before you started to fake your way through life?” “What did you want before you set aside your dreams and accepted the limiting life society planned out for you?” “What do you want now that you are looking outside the false sense of self you have been living in.” Don’t ever ask how you will get what you want. Instead, say in a strong voice exactly what you want and know it will come in its own way and in its own time.

The next phase of becoming empty is examining your life, the good and the bad, and ask yourself what did I learn? Do not wipe away the tears. Let them flow. You are doing shadow work and shadow work dives deep into the body and the subconsciousness, pulling up the time you bullied a smaller kid for being in the way, the time you pinched the fat on our hip purple and called yourself a disgusting fat pig, the time your mother lost her shit and told you she was leaving resulting in a fear of abandonment that clings to you whether she left or not. Shadow work is a process. For some it is short and for others it is long. You may need to seek out a qualified trauma therapist to help you with this.

The next stage in becoming empty is letting go of the dogma of religious teaching that taught you you were not born in love and divinity. Keep only the teachings that taught you that God is love, you are a sacred child of the divine God, and you are unconditionally loved and supported. Before you were born you sat with God and decided to come to Earth. God asked you if you were certain because God knows this is a difficult mission. When you answered, you said, “Yes.” Then you forgot everything and felt alone and clung to your parents (just as lost), Your society (just as misguided), and your church (just as confused). Now it’s time to remember your divinity and become one with the love of your personal Creator.

Now you are at the stage of quieting the ego. Do not fight it, do not kill it, do not hate it. Remember it is an ancient survival mechanism that said, “hey, that cave over there once held a tiger. Let’s not get close.” In modern society the ego has gone insane. It screams at us to buy the latest, be in fashion, lose that next twenty pounds even when we’re underweight, and don’t look up or talk back or question your reality or the man will take everything, the partner will leave, and you will die alone under a bridge, living off rat meat. (My personal terror, maybe not yours.) The ego is tamed through meditation, self-compassion, and stepping into the now. Right now, as I write this, I am with you fully and totally in the now. I see each word come up on the screen, I feel the chill in the air that fills my lungs, and I have named the gnat that keeps trying to land on my screen. Tom if you’re wondering. He seems rather literate so his name is Tom after my favorite writer.

The other stage (which is a slow falling away kind of process) of becoming empty is releasing everyone who doesn’t light you up after interacting with them. These people are the complainers, the manipulators, the controllers, the know-it-all’s who didn’t do their research, the energy suckers, the cold shoulders you always strive to impress, the social climbers who will drop you when the better deal walks in. You are truly empty when you find yourself completely alone with God, seeking peace in meditation, and finding surrender in the light of the Almighty Creator. Now you are empty. Now your life begins in earnest. Now you will attract authentic love, authentic friendship, authentic career paths, and the home you always craved but never dared to envision. Now you are in the Now. Cast your desires up in prayer and know that they are made manifest simply because your loving parent the Divine, will always spoil you when you are in alignment with your personal highest good.

I Haven’t Forgiven You, I’ve Just Moved On.

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Buddha said, “Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

Anger only holds you captive when you stay in the story with it. Anger only has you by the throat for as long as you keep replaying the record of WHY! I call my recollections of all my past antipathies the memory loop. When I’m caught in the memory loop I am six years old again being told it’s safe to tell my dad what we got him for Christmas unaware that my mother is listening and I’m about to get one hell of a beating. The memory loop reminds me of how my father just sat there as my mother hauled me into the air by one arm and began her savagery. 

The memory loop creates hell on earth. It’s insane and it wants you for company. It will take you into every memory of your life where you are either victim or villain and it will make you relive each scene, moment by moment, until your body is tense, your stomach hurts, and you’ve stopped breathing comfortably because your chest is too tight. The memory loop is working overtime to remind you that life isn’t safe, that you can’t trust, that nothing is fare, and that you are always in danger. Stepping out of the memory loop is hard, it takes constant awareness and time.

I have written before about living in the traveling now. There’s a blog by that name on this site if you’re interested. What living in the now does is it takes you out of the memory loop and brings you into this moment and it’s only in this moment that you are alive and capable of really living. The past is dead, the future does not exist, but right now you are alive, passionate, grateful, breathing, feeling, and real.

There are a hundred people I have tried to forgive. I have sat through classes and seminars on the power of forgiveness and they all say that forgiveness isn’t for the person who hurt you it’s for you and you alone. I agree with that and I find that forgiveness comes and goes with mood, threat load, and exhaustion. I have also read Pete Walker’s book, CPTSD, From Surviving to Thriving, where he talks about crying it out of your body with the deep shaking sobs that release trapped emotion. This is also important. 

What I like best is just being present. When I can stay in the traveling now in love with my life and with myself then the cruelty of my past remains forgiven, healed and locked in the past while I remain where I am right now. I will not be defined by my trauma. I define my life, I live my life, my life does not live me. 

I have done the work. I have cried, prayed, forgiven, surrendered, and let go. I have walked a thousand meditative miles and sat in silence listening to myself breath while my mind healed and I became less attached to the constant screaming of the memory loop. I have freed myself and the last phase of remaining free is remaining present here and now. Give yourself the gift of the now. However healing comes to you, embrace it and enter the now. You can only forgive so many times before it’s time to move on and get down to the joyful business of living.

We were molded in fire but now it’s time to take form.

Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

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It’s that hateful question every child is asked by some grinning old person who means well but has no real idea of the strain they are placing on a young mind. What do you want to be is basically who do you want to be crammed into one sentence that most of us won’t even answer in a life time. We will do many things, be many things, our personalities will shift with our mood like desert sands and we will be and do more and less than we ever knew we could. 

I remember my son’s kindergarten graduation. He was told to decide what he wanted to be when he grew up and this one question put him into such a tailspin of existential dread that he actually became depressed. How could he even hope to know? He was five. We talked about all the lives one person could live in one lifetime and how it was common to change jobs and careers many times as the years passed. In the end he decided he would tell his teacher he wanted to be a stay at home dad and I applauded his decision to think outside the box while coming up with an answer for his kindergarten graduation.

My son is a really good person with a really good heart and he has broken out of every box he has ever been faced with. I don’t think there is a box that can hold him. He’s been thinking outside the box for so long that he’s free in a way few of us will be. That’s why I was confused when he got up on stage after the last twenty five kids had declared their intention of becoming a veterinarian all because the kid before them said that, and stated in a loud voice that when he grew up he wanted to be an underwater treasure hunter. I had never heard that from him. Water had always frightened him and money has never meant a thing. He’s not one of those kids that will read a book for five dollars or clean his room for ten so why the change?

The answer of course is adults. He denied ever saying he wanted to be a stay at home dad, that he’d mentioned it at home but not at school. He’d chosen the safe bet, the manly bet, and the principle came up to me afterwards beaming because he was the only kindergartner who had stuck to his career goal. No he was not a sheep who blurted veterinarian, but he had not been honest, not been himself.

It’s funny how much this little moment has bothered me. It was 13 years ago and yet I still struggle with what happened to his inner authenticity. Had he told them he wanted to be a stay at home dad? And had they reacted the same way they had when he took off his shoes and showed off his blue nail polish? He was five. I had been painting my nails and looked up to see him painting his. I smiled and said, “Nice.” The teacher asked me, “Did you do that? Did you paint his nails?” No I hadn’t, he had, and everyone but me was weirdly upset.

I hate how we treat boys. Honestly I hate how we treat girls too. Society sucks and its patriarchal indoctrination is dehumanizing for both the sexes. We lost two boys in junior high because they didn’t fit into the roles society set for them. They died because of roles. I don’t think a week goes by when I don’t remember their faces. I guess what I want to say here is please don’t ever ask a kid, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Instead maybe ask, “What is the thing that makes you most excited in life?” For my son that was theater and I pray it still is. For my friends daughter, that’s making TickTock dance videos. There are a thousand ways to live on this earth and there are no roles that need to be filled. A boy can be a stay at home dad, a girl can be a detective, I can be a unicorn and hide in my micro studio reaching out to people through WordPress. Be weird, be wild, be tame, be a fruit bat. None of it matters as long as deep down that being is what makes you sparkle.

It’s OK to paint your nails boys. Ladies, shaved heads are sexy. God, please forgive role enforcers who tell children it’s not OK to be who they are. And God forgive the person who told my two friends that Gay wasn’t okay. It was, it is, it always will be. I wished they had lived to see how much the world has changed.

I love you. I’m crying again. We’ve got this. Soldier on my compatriots and do it with sequins.

Gratitude, the Opposite of Resentment, is a Nicer Way to Live

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Happy Thanksgiving. It’s polite to say that even if you don’t mean it. I don’t like Thanksgiving but that’s my problem and just a small part of why I’m not the easiest person in the world to live with. I have opinions and ideas and grudges and resentment and I suck at playing happy, especially on holidays that have lost the spirit of what made them holidays to begin with.

I’m not going to harp on the realities of the first Thanksgiving or how it could have been beautiful and memorable in and of itself, if the colonist had only NOT turned around and killed the Native Americans, who had shared their food stores, in the months that followed. Colonization is a nasty business and much talked about these days, thankfully.

What I am going to talk about is resentment and gratitude and how they can’t exist in the same mind. The be gratefully resentful would be to experience cognitive dissonance. Two competing realities existing in one mind is crazy making in the extreme. I loved my family and I resented the domestic dis-ease that came with the holidays. My mother hated the holidays and made certain that they were miserable for all of us. In the end my sibling and I started doing the cooking and buying mom booze well before we were of age just to get her through the day. Drunk mom was fun mom and we’d take her when we could get her.

I resented the work and the memories that went into making my own family feast because my mind was locked in the past. I missed my grandmother and my grandfather and the grief of the loss of people I loved broke me. After many years my husband took over the cooking and I am grateful to him for that. I have been in cognitive dissonance about most of my life, feeling both grateful and resentful to be alive. I once spent an entire winter flipping the sky off just to let God know how much I resented him for dragging me here.

Now that I’m single and alone I still hate Thanksgiving for the thing it has become but sitting here now over my gyro dinner with baklava and Dr. Pepper I feel less alone. Beside me sits a lit candle, behind that stands red roses for my Gypsy ancestors surrounded by dancing bracelets, and a medallion of the Madonna of Chartres. The moment I prayed and offered this day to my ancestors in gratitude and thanks was the moment I felt God’s peace settle over me like a warm blanket. I have been resentful but I am now grateful. I have been difficult but, in this moment, right now I’m peaceful. I can’t tell you how long these better aspects of me will last, all I do know is that in feeling them I feel God and find rest.

Enjoy your day. Value your family. If your family sucks start a Friendsgiving for all your lonely people. Notice your resentments and study their cause. It’s nice to fix things before they become a habit. Practice everyday gratitude. Past your resentments there are things you are grateful for.

I love you. You are the reason your ancestors worked so hard to survive. We are all family. Bless the hands that prepared your meal. Cook love into your food and if you can’t, order Pizza.  

The Masks We Share

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In therapy yesterday, I told my therapist that I was no longer afraid of my future, that I was riding the wave of what it is to be a single woman in this world. That it’s true that I don’t know where life will take me, but that I do know that wherever I land I will make my home. Over the last few months, I have rediscovered a resilience I had forgotten I had. In living a life that was not mine I had forgotten the cloth my soul was cut from and the girl I was went somewhere I could not follow. She’s with me now. She is me and I am her and we are riding this wave together.

It’s not a tidal wave, or a hurricane, or a tsunami I am surfing. It’s a life wave that most of us ride at some point in our lives. I’m not sad anymore. My heart has mended and I know that I was put on this earth to love and to love well. I know my own grace, my own inner goodness, and I know that I loved fully and absolutely even when all hope was gone. I love still.

Today I met a homeless woman my age. Her eyes were my eyes only lost and sad and wandering. How easy it would be to become her. She started to wander into traffic so I called her and she came to me on my island of a street corner. “A mask,” she said, panicked. “I need a mask.” I rummaged in my bag, pulled out a clean one and gave it to her. “Take care of yourself babe,” I said and then blew her a kiss. She blew me a kiss and I walked to the gym. Our kiss broke my heart because in that short interaction where I saw myself where I could have been if not for the grace of God, I also saw my own pain and fear reflected back at me. “Take care of yourself,” I was talking to me. “Babe,” I was talking to me, the blown kiss, I was sending love to me while loving her for being the me that somehow fell into the insanity that I have fought for so long.

Inside the gym I went straight to the bathroom, locked the door and got down on my knees and prayed out loud. I prayed for all the hungry, and the cold, the lost and the forgotten, the insane and the sane because there is only a hair’s width of distance between one and the other. I prayed for my husband and I prayed for my son and lastly, I prayed for me. When I was done my eyes were swollen with crying and I stared at my wrinkled puffy face and saw the girl I was grown into a strong sane woman who loves…loves…loves…without condition.

I am riding this wave and I don’t know where it will take me and I am doing it with compassion and kindness, forgiveness, and love. I invite you all to join me. Let go of your expectations, your preconceptions, your biases and your pain and remember that somewhere in the depths of a city you are cold and raged and begging for a new mask to wear because you are frightened and alone with no mask at all.

Be humbled. Know the I AM. Find comfort on your knees. Love without condition. Be peace to know peace. I love you and I mean it from the bottom of my soul. I honest to God love you.