Meltdowns Lead to (Parentheses). Apparently.

I always feel so much better after a complete meltdown that I should put them in my weekly calendar.

"Friday, 4 pm, mental breakdown."

Breakdowns empty out the cup - dumping out every emotion and worry, everything I didn’t even know I was carrying, and suddenly I’m all free and light.

Meltdown: 5 stars, would have again.

I always resist the break like mad. I do everything I can to avoid it. I grit my teeth and stuff my emotions into my spleen, because I’m not supposed to have feelings. I watch TV to stave off that wave of fear that really wants in. I eat a hamburger, because - well - I eat a hamburger because I’m hungry and a person’s gotta eat.

But once it finally overtakes me - usually because the universe pushes me to the edge of the cliff and boots me over - and I spend an hour or two sobbing and throwing a, let’s just call it what it is, temper tantrum, clutching my stuffed therapy otter until I finally drag my soggy carcass out for bagels. I’m still kind of cranky as I bolt down my bagel, but at some point, I begin to feel better.

Surprisingly better. Better than I’ve felt in weeks. Incidentally, just about as long as I’ve been attempting to stuff my feels into my spleen where I hope they’ll die a quiet and unremarkable death.

On the heels of feeling better after the ignominious breakdown usually comes an answer to the situation(s) that led to the breakdown in the first place.

(This time, my answer to the work breakdown was “It’s time to be channeling star families now. Yes, it’s weird, but is channeling aliens really that much weirder than channeling Jesus or unicorns? Right. So get on with it.”)

(My answer to the relationship portion of the breakdown was “Hold your self-worth and self- esteem and stay focused on yourself and your work, no matter what the other person is doing or saying or how either of you is flying off the trigger handle.”)

(Two very helpful answers, it must be said.)

But we usually have to allow the meltdown before we get the relief and the answers. Which can be really hard for those of us who fancy ourselves adults who no longer have meltdowns or maybe were scolded or shut in our rooms for having meltdowns as children.

(Which has got to be a conundrum for parents. I don’t pretend to have the answer for this. I’m just trying to parent myself the best I can and not be too hard on myself over the inevitable breakdown.)

But when we finally let it just flow through, the post-meltdown relief is palpable. It’s like you’ve emptied out the bucket of everything you’ve been carrying around - judgment, overwhelm, fear, sadness, worry, pain - and then tossed the bucket into the Pacific Ocean.

When we’re emptied out and feeling better, that’s when answers come.

So what if it requires four bagels, a stuffed otter, and a temper tantrum that would make a three-year-old blush?

Sometimes that’s what being an adult is all about.

Channeling my inner child in a more photo-friendly fashion.

Zooming Out

I have decided to accept that I am a big wooden bucket of messy dysfunction. I’ve also decided that being a big wooden bucket of messy dysfunction is 100% okay. Maybe because the wooden bucket is artisanal. Crafted by a bearded gentleman in Vermont who hand-planes wood harvested from local trees with an axe that he inherited from his great-grandfather or purchased from a different artisanal workshop. It doesn’t matter.

Or maybe because it’s okay to be messy and maladjusted and chock full of undiagnosed mental abnormalities. I’m not going to call them illnesses. I don’t even want to call them abnormalities.* Because I don’t think any of this is abnormal.

(* Let’s call them curiosities. Undiagnosed mental curiosities. That’s much better. It invites exploration and wonder, rather than strife and shame.)

So we get anxious walking out into the world. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with that. Maybe the world is an anxious, angry place sometimes. It’s also full of wild oceans and butterflies and kind people doing their very best in a world that’s not always that kind. Maybe the next time you walk out into the world you’ll figure out something about how to be less anxious in the midst of it and you’ll tell me about it and I’ll say, “Hey, that’s a great idea” and suddenly we are less anxious and more able to notice the butterflies floating above the fray.

Maybe not. That’s okay too. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with hiding in your house for awhile.

We’re all just trying to accept and love ourselves as the messy, dysfunctional, divine beings that we are.

Divine and human, kind and unkind, total jerks and purely loving.

In a phrase, absolutely perfect.  

I’m starting to get mad at labels. Because they’re divisive. But they can also help us categorize our experiences and accept them and learn from them. Oh hey, look! Once again, there are two things seemingly at odds with one another occupying the same space.

Maybe we just need to zoom out. Like putting your fingers on the map screen and moving them together so you see California snuggled against the Pacific Ocean instead of the sushi restaurant on the corner.

Maybe if we give everything more room - our anger and our joy, our messiness and our maladjustment - we’ll start to see the absolute perfection in all of it.

Maybe.

I keep saying maybe because I have no idea. I throw out wild theories like half-done spaghetti in the hopes that something sticks to the wall.

But every time I zoom out on my own life, moving up into the air above it to peer down through the eyes of my higher self rather than my annoyed, anxious self, everything looks very different. Beautiful. Perfect. Fun. A way to expand instead of a mistake. An experience in loving instead of a heartbreak. An opportunity to try something new instead of failure.

Sometimes it’s hard to hold that height for long and I drop ignominiously back down into my cranky human self, but that’s allowed. That’s part of it. The challenge is blending the two - the divine and the cranky - into something resembling fully embodied divinity. Grounded height. Higher self and human self into one gleaming, sweating, star-laden meat suit. I don’t know. I’m struggling with the language because I can’t quite parse this experience. Maybe because I’m still drifting between the two, zooming up and down, in and out.

Trees and butterflies are what I think of as a solution to the zooming quandary. Nature and animals help us bridge the divine-essence-in-a-human-experience gap. Zooming in on a daisy growing through a crack in the concrete or the moss on redwood bark is its own kind of perspective and doesn’t inspire acrophobia.

So when in doubt, go find some trees. Hey, at least it’s getting out of the house. Pick big trees so that if any anxious humans wander your way, you can hide behind a handy trunk.

Oceans are also helpful, though harder to hide behind.

Star Seed Problems

If you've ever found yourself in the bathroom sobbing "I just want to go home" when you are, in fact, at home - you might be a star seed.

I've been ignoring this for a long time because I'm here, I'm human, may as well get on with it and enjoy the benefits of earth (which are chocolate donuts if you were wondering) (most bread products and baked goods, really). But then I found myself crying like a child lost in a shopping mall because I had this bone deep feeling of being alone and far from home and not sure how to fix it - and I realized it's time to dig into this a bit more.

I can feel my work about to deepen again, because looking back on it, most of the people I work with - if not all of them - are star seeds. We have trouble grounding, we have trouble with 3D things like relationships and money, we tend to feel lonely and like we don't belong. Some forget to eat (that's never been my problem) (DONUTS!).

But I'm going to have trouble helping them if I don't have a lock on this myself.

So. Guess it's time to dive into that whole being an alien thing.

P.S. And I thought it got weird with the whole Jesus revelation. NOPE. THERE’S MORE WEIRD WHERE THAT CAME FROM!

P.P.S. As I feel into it, I think I came in with Jesus, decided to stick around to make sure that whole love-and-support-for-all-humanity thing got carried out, and hahaha whoops, no wonder I feel like a failure all the time.

P.P.P.S. (is that a thing?) NOW I NEED A DONUT.

Love: A Smug Tale Of Resilient Rib Cages

“Learning — slowly, slowly — to open up and love when I feel scared, rather than curl up like a threatened porcupine.”

That sentence was written in 2012 as my father was dying. I put his last days on Twitter because it helped anchor me as we floated around the hospital waiting for him to cast off into the next great adventure.

I’m thinking about it now because the anniversary of my father’s death is the day after Thanksgiving and I re-posted the tweets as a “Happy Death Day, Dad! You Were A Good One!” gesture.

Now I keep finding my eyes skimming over that one sentence - and worry that I’m back-sliding.

When we have these experiences, the ones that crack our hearts open, the raw vulnerability feels like it will last. Like this feeling of being broken open will last forever. There’s relief and even joy in it, as everything you’d kept bottled up comes flooding out.

But we rebuild. New experiences come in - like the explosion of three relationships in three years, whoops - and we start adding brick and new spackle to those heart walls.

As humans, we want to feel like we’re on a general upward trajectory. Moving forward, learning the lessons, growing. Onward and upward forever more.

But things just keep happening. Which is the definition of life, I guess.

Life: That Time When Things Kept Happening.

(Quick, someone give me a Pulitzer.)

After the implosion of three relationships in three years, I find myself being careful. Hesitant. Unwilling to blaze in the way I did the last three times.

I don’t want to curl up like a frightened hedgehog, but that doesn’t mean I won’t.

How do you continue to open up and love when it feels like the last few times you tried, your rib cage got caved in by a baseball bat?

I know it’s possible. People do it. I’ve done it.

But letting go of the old experiences to allow in the new ones feels scary. Like I’ll forget something important if I do. Like I’ll lose something.

But I don’t want to be that person who lets fear win. Partly because it doesn’t sound like any fun, but mostly because I want to be smug about trampling fear beneath my fuzzy boots.

Love may not win, but smug will.

DEAR LIFE, I WANT TO BE SMUG ABOUT HOW BRAVE AND LOVING I AM. GOT IT? K THANKS.

How do you throw yourself off the cliff again? How do you face down the baseball bat and say TAKE YOUR BEST SHOT! RIB CAGE OF STEEL, BABY!

Since I don’t know the answers, it seems I’ll just have to keep living life, life where things keep happening, and do my best to show up for the life I want rather than quaking at the mercy of things I’m scared of. That’s really all we can do. While taking whatever opportunities to be smug - and happy - that we can wrangle.

This picture doesn’t have much to do with this post, aside from the fact that I adore these women and also my face is a fairly accurate depiction of my feelings on love at the moment.

Talking to Dragons

On the scale of delightfully strange jobs, talking to dragons is probably near the top.

But now that it’s been a few years, I probably need to stop claiming that channeling unicorns and hurling light with Archangel Michael is weird.

Not that it is or isn’t, especially as jobs go, but because it’s mostly my way of trying to make people more comfortable. Like, “hahaha, I know I’m crazy but what can you do?”

Yes, making people comfortable is generally a good thing, a kind thing, but not when it means diluting yourself for common consumption.

Recognizing my worth has been one of my greatest challenges. It’s tangled up in owning my weird, allowing myself to receive, and … oh my god this is all exhausting. Like, I just got really tired and want to take a nap now.

Part of me just wants to wash my hands of the whole thing, but that’s the problem with Talking To Dragons As a Job (TM). You have to keep plowing through these self-constructed webs. You don’t get to stop, because then you won’t be as effective. (And might not be able to make rent.)

I want to be effective. I want to know my worth, not just as an intellectual concept but as something I fully embody and never have reason to question.

So what would the dragons tell me about this? If I can talk to dragons, may as well ask them for help when I’m riding the struggle bus.

Therefore:

Hi, dragons! How can I recognize and feel my worth?

“By knowing that the wounds of your childhood do not need to inform your adulthood. By steeping in the joy of each moment and knowing that life is ever-changing and you are never stuck. You are never trapped. You are always loved and supported and in divine hands. Surrender into those hands and give yourself a goddamn break.”

(Sometimes the dragons swear.)

Choosing joy and play and fulfillment and abundance sometimes feels harder than anything you could ever do. This is why I talk to dragons. This is why I teach this stuff. Because we teach what we need to learn.

Good Old-Fashioned Primal Shrieking (And Squirrels)

I’ve been doing a lot of primal screaming.

Also, a lot of actual screaming.

This is when living alone is glorious - there’s no one to frighten with your occasional cleansing shrieks. I may have scared a squirrel or two, but since they dive bomb my roof at least once a day, sometimes waking me out of a sound Saturday morning slumber, I feel zero remorse.

Forest rodents beware.

So much has been rumbling to the surface lately that sometimes it’s necessary to let it out with a solid yell. The occasional yelp. Even a whimper or two. Though sliding into the pathetic whimpering usually means it’s time to do something else. Like take a walk in the woods (provided the air quality isn’t currently at You Gonna Die because of the wildfires). Do the dishes, write something, make something, color something. Stand under, sit in, or drink a lot of water. Visit your friend Adriene on her yoga youtube channel (she’s not really my friend but isn’t she really the whole world’s friend?). And of course… yell. How to best shift the sticky, crispy energy is a constant curiosity, something my sensitive peeps (which is all of you, hi!) understand 100 percent.

OH MY GOD I JUST GOT DIVE BOMBED BY ANOTHER SQUIRREL. It sounds like frantic skittering right over my head, mostly because my roof seems to be a major squirrel thoroughfare as they dart between trees.

Anyway, life, am I right? It’s good, all and all. I just shift between feeling like I’m standing on a precipice and like I’m stuck in an extra confining box and I know it’s completely within my power and capacity to shift it in a hot second, but then I don’t. Or I do and then I shift it back again. I don’t know. Energy is weird and I’m still learning (remembering) how it works.

Part of me can’t wait for change, part of me fears change, the rest of me wants potato chips. I think that’s called being human.

Hi, human friends. I hope you’re doing well and letting a good old-fashioned primal shriek whenever necessary.

Here, have a soothing dragon.

Turns Out, I Am Literally The Bee's Knees

I was reading a book in the sun, drinking free coffee (my super power is scoring free coffee) and minding my own business, when a bee decided to land on my thigh.

Memories of my childhood are fuzzy. Our brain processes information differently when we feel intense emotion and, as an empath with no coping skills, I was constantly flooded with feels. So my brain trained itself to survive the moment rather than record it for later. But a few of the memories I do have are of being stung by bees - screaming because a bee bit me on the inside of my mouth after it landed on my sandwich on a camping trip and wearing jelly sandals for a week because the top of my foot was so swollen I couldn’t wear anything else.

So when the bee landed on my leg, I panicked a bit, wondering if it was about to poke me with its stinger.

Then I noticed that it was cleaning itself.

Its little stinger retracted and extended as the bee gently washed its torso and legs and fuzzy little bee butt. I had to consciously keep breathing - in and out - to keep my cortisol levels from spiking, but it was astonishing. I’d never seen a bee take a bath before and I was rather honored that it chose me.

I love it when dogs and children wander up to me of their own accord. Like they’re drawn to me or feel safe with me. Or maybe they see the unicorns over my shoulder. I don’t know. Either way, it always makes my day a little bit better. Same with this little bee giving itself a wash on my thigh, even as I wondered the entire time if I was in for a sharp sting and a few days of swelling.

But the bee continued to bathe itself while I watched and, when it was done, fluttered gently off into the sunshine.

Image borrowed from this lovely Etsy shop.

Dedicated To Everyone Who Confuses The World

From refusing to enter the world (the female doctor trying to deliver me had to call in a burly dude with forceps to yank me out) to some serious sexual dysfunction in my 20s that Kaiser had no idea what to do with for years (that was a festival of terrible, let me tell you) to this morning when my doctor sat staring at me for twenty minutes with a deeply confused look on her face, I’ve been baffling western medicine since 1978.

Guys, this is how I became a hippie in the first place. No one else ever knew what to do with me.

Luckily, I've always been physically healthy. Sure, inside I was a giant ball of traumatized anxiety sponging up every emotion within a three mile radius, but I figured that was normal. Mental and emotional health is so deeply tricky because no one else can see the inside of our heads, and we've always lived there so don't know anything else.

While any number of arguments could be made both for and against my mental health, I feel much better and happier than I ever have in my life and I chalk it up to being a relentless - and one could even claim obnoxious - hippie. Playing with energy healing sorted me out nicely, which is how I accidentally fell into Hippie-As-Profession. When people ask me what I do, I tend to say something like, "I just want everyone to feel better."

Which is both true and also how I end up confusing every well-meaning person who's ever asked me what I do for a living.

Now I'm just laughing in my living room because OH THIS WORLD, YOU GUYS. Do any of us know what to do with it? Even a little?

Since we don't, I think we just keep looking for our own answers, our own truth, and chalk up the days where you get a message from your doctor saying, "I think you can take care of this with an $8 over-the-counter medication, let me know if that doesn't work" as a serious win.

Especially when you spend the rest of that day cheerfully driving down the coast with the top down, eating shepherd's pie in the window seat, and reading your book in the November sun.

And if you come home to a delivery of your new Harry Potter sheets emblazoned with golden stars and owls - well that’s pretty much perfect.

—

(Speaking of rampant hippie-ism and energy healing and being both confusing and confused, I did an energy healing on youtube related to all this today. :)

(Book pictured is Capital Gaines, which I loved.)

Worlds Colliding

Outer World:

Voted, finished laundry, made a doctor’s appointment and a pot of soup.

Decided that was more than enough adulting for one day.

Inner World:

Untangled multiple thoughts, worries, fears, and desires that don’t actually belong to me and sent them on their way.

Played in a future timeline of farmhouse and babies and goats and friends eating barbeque cooked by someone who isn’t me. (Husband? Imported barbeque expert we’re fancy enough to hire?)

Jumped into a novel plot that’s been unspooling in my head for months but hasn’t made it onto the page because my creative resistance has been mighty.

My favorite part of the day:

When the inner and outer worlds begin to blend, because I’m writing or channeling a group session or sharing the inner thoughts of my stuffed therapy otter.

Sometimes when I’m blending the inner and the outer worlds, the soup boils over or I forget to unwind what’s mine and someone else’s and end up on a roller coaster ride thanks to a ticket that I didn’t buy.

I live so completely in my head, in other dimensions, that grounding and remembering to be human is crucial.

Taking a walk through the redwoods, making a cup of tea, crawling into those freshly washed sheets for a rest, feeling my feet in my slippers, looking at the tiny pumpkin sitting next to my copper turkey candle holder because I am autumnal AF.

Staying present and grounded is a constant practice when you spend most of your time jumping worlds and timelines and soaking up other people’s energy. I’m still learning how to wrangle it all in a way that best serves me and the world. I don’t know how successful I am, but surely I’m improving. If nothing else, life is much happier and easier than it used to be.

Whatever worlds you occupy, just keep going. Jumping between them gets easier.

Dive Into Your Destiny!

(I seem to be doing these energy readings every Monday. If I remember, I’ll continue to post them here. Or you can subscribe on youtube, click the little bell, and be notified about these and the other healings I do over there.)

(My general goal right now is to show up either to my blog - right here! hi, friends! - or youtube live every week day. So you can find me here or there mostly daily. :)

Transformation

Transformation can feel like: 

• Every bad choice you’ve ever made rising up to throttle you. 

• Spending the morning in bed. 

• Anger blooming up out of nowhere. 

• Old wounds doing a rain dance on your liver. 

• Crying in the middle of an outdoor mall.

• Wondering if you’re too damaged to get any of the things you want.

• Events you thought you'd made peace with mooning you on the freeway. 

I may or may not have experienced every one of these symptoms in the past seven hours. 

It’s been a fun Thursday. 

I know I’m going through a transformation, but it’s easy to forget that and just feel like I’m failing at life.

Failing at life A LOT. 

Like everything I thought I knew is in question and all of the divine timing messages I get are complete bullshit.

Because obviously I have failed. A LOT.

But failure is a judgment and self-judgment never shows up more powerfully than when you’re about to burst into something new. 

So if you’re in the midst of a WTF-is-going-on-and-when-will-this-end? phase, you’re probably transforming. 

It’s not super fun. It’s rarely easy. But it’s worth it.

Transformation is how we do what we’ve never done before, how we step into our next evolution.

Transformation takes a lot out of you. Sometimes laziness is called for, as your entire system re-boots and your brain re-patterns. You’re doing quite a lot, even if it feels like you’re mostly just watching Netflix and eating half-off Halloween candy. 

But the more chrysalis processes from which you emerge, the faster the transformation goes.

The first few cocoons I crawled into were long, drawn out, painstaking, and painful. Now I can move through something relatively quickly - in a few days or even a few hours. It’s still painful, but I can usually see my way through it or beyond it.

So even though I spent a few minutes worrying that I was going to need years of therapy to work yet another uncovered trauma (good lord, do they never end), I got that nudge that said, “No, you don’t. Just keep moving through the feelings and being gentle with yourself in the process and this will quickly pass.”

It’s easy to make multiple “I Have Failed” arguments when most of your work is in the 5th and 7th dimensions and most of life happens in the 3rd. But if you’re arguing with yourself, it means your brain is far too involved in the process, and the brain mostly just operates as a 3D recording device.

Brains are certainly useful, but not so much in deep processes of transformation for which your brain has zero reference.

Hush, brain hamsters.

In the midst of a transformation, the best you can do is take care of yourself. Lots of gentleness, lots of care for your body and nervous system, lots of nature and water, lots of rest. Zero judgment of your path, your process, or your results. Just let yourself transform.

Times of transformation are not times to expect a lot from yourself externally, because you’re switching worlds and moving internal mountains and getting ready to emerge anew.

Caterpillars halfway to becoming butterflies aren’t getting much done, I guarantee it.

Halfway to butterfly. Hence, totally fine that I have a sink full of dirty dishes.

Witch of Oz

Hiking into Oz isn’t for the faint of heart, no matter what your heart is made of.

Shifting ground and emotional purges and blazing anger, oh my!

As footwear is a crucial part of the journey, I have just purchased three new pairs of brightly colored Converse. Not as good as Dorothy’s ruby slippers, but pink and turquoise sneakers delight my very soul.

Since “delight your very soul, regularly and repeatedly” is the message right now, I consider my new sneakers a wise purchase.

So much is coming up and out. I feel things burning away - work is shifting, my insides are re-patterning, and a lot of space is being created. It’s like I’m becoming something entirely new, though it’s really just a return to what I always was.

We’re cracking open to let in - and let out - more light.

While I need to leave space and time for that, I get impatient. I want to know! I want to know what’s coming, I want to know what’s next, I want to know what to do.

But it’s not quite time yet.

Since my chill factor is predictably low, my “Surrender, Dorothy!” moments are becoming rather frequent. (Yes, I added some punctuation there but I suspect L. Frank Baum will forgive me.)

I’m doing best to surrender what I think should happen and just do what feels good.

I’m doing my best to follow all my intuitive nudges, even when they seem entirely random - like go to the bookstore to buy Capital Gaines on Monday morning and read it instead of work. And it was exactly what my energy needed to shift, so there we go.

I’m doing my best to not let my brain take over, because my brain just gums up the works. My brain doesn’t have the capacity to figure this process out anyway.

I’m doing my best to give myself space, with deep trust that I’ll have everything I need.

I’m doing my best to breathe, to be grateful for all the perfect small moments, to notice what’s happening around me in this moment - the only one that actually exists.

I’m doing my best to remember that it’s all perfect. That my purpose is being fulfilled just by being here, breathing here, letting my heart beat here. Since there’s nothing left to do, no homework, and I’m not on the clock - what do I want to do next? What sounds fun? What wants to come through next?

How can joy and love blaze through today?

Spread Your Wings!

We’re expanding into something new. Here’s some guidance on the current energy and how to step into what’s next for you.

(If you’re drawn to this, there’s something here for you - no matter when you run across it.)

Season of Surrender

Surrender one big thing and life gets all greedy and wants you to surrender more.

Fine. (Goddamn it.)

I was all proud of myself for releasing the life-will-align-with-my-husband-and-babies-plan again, when life went, “Great! Good job! We’re just getting started!” as it rubbed its hands together like a miser in a Dickens novel faced with a large stack of gold coins.

Really? We’re just getting started, life? I thought we were DONE.

“Nope! Not even a little!”

Life, the universe, and everything can be a brutal task mistress, I tell you what.

Because suddenly I went into expansion panic, into an emotional free-for-all around my intuitive work and money.

Sometimes I just want the earth to stop shifting below my feet. Sometimes I want to stop having to yank all my stability from somewhere deep inside, because my insides are tired.

But the universe thinks my insides are doing just fine, and tells me to keep going.

So much of our ego and safety and self-worth is tangled up with our work and creativity and bank accounts. Unspooling those threads feels destabilizing, even as it allows for stronger foundations to form.

Here’s what I’ve learned as I feel into what’s next for me on this ride of fulfilling my earthly purpose:

Get comfortable being uncomfortable. You’re fine.

Lift your hands off the steering wheel. You’re trying to steer a matchbook car and we’re trying to chauffeur you around in a Bentley.

Stop trying to stuff yourself into a box. There is no box and never was.

Surrender. Everything is so much easier and so much more fun this way, please do it already.

Note to self: Surrender isn’t giving up.

Surrender is trusting that there are other forces at work.

Surrender is sinking into the idea that you don’t need to have all the answers. Or any of them.

If things don’t look the way you want or expect, it’s because room is being made for something better.

Since I don’t know what this moment requires, in terms of my work or my money or my writing or any of the life purpose things up for review right now, I have to soften in and trust myself, trust what I’m shown, trust my guides, and know that there is no such thing as failure.

Know that I am protected and loved and supported, just as we all are.

Whenever I check in lately, I get “write more.” Because my plan was always to spend half my time on my writing and the other half on my intuitive work (energy healings, readings, channeling the guides, etc). Maybe that’s the emotional rumbling I’m feeling. My higher self is shaking me down to remind me of what I was always here to do, and what I’ve forgotten or resisted or found hard lately.

So here’s to room for something better, for all of us. Here’s to surrendering into the arms of peace and joy and love and whatever the fuck is in it for us when we finally let the universe wrest control from our hot little hands.

And to writing more, in whatever form that takes.

Death to Happily Ever After

Happily Ever After has finally been beaten out of me.

It only took forty years and multiple loves, entanglements, mistakes, and Oh-Shit-I’m-Being-Weird-Again situations, but I made it.

It’s not as dire as it may sound to those of us who’ve been raised on Disney movies and romance novels.

The death of Happily Ever After means being able to appreciate each day with someone for what it is, rather than constantly grasping for Is This It? Is this The One? Are there babies and an engagement ring in my future? Will I finally get to update my relationship status on Facebook?

It means enjoying the person for who they are rather than what your relationship might be in the future. It means getting to know someone without mentally redecorating their apartment in case you move in one day.

I don’t think life meant to drag my Happily Ever After into a back alley and shoot it, I think life meant to show me how to surrender. How to take things as they come. How to be present in the moment-to-moment of each experience without regretting the past or grasping for a particular future.

When we love someone, it’s natural to want that love to last forever.

And, really, it does.

If I love you once, I will love you for the duration. A corner of my heart is annexed to you and you get to live there forever, like it or not.

I was joking the other day that I need to expand the physical mass of my heart because it’s running out of corners.

He replied, “Good thing your heart is infinite.”

Our hearts are infinite. There is no limit to the possibilities, up to and including Happily Ever After. Some of us do meet that person and choose to keep showing up and loving them until this mortal coil is shuffled, however imperfect and wounded it feels. Some of us have even mastered enough of this human existence to love with ease and pure joy.

Since I want Happily Right The Eff Now, I’m pulling the plug on Happily Ever After.

Because there is no past, there is no future, and my heart has more corners than I could hope to fill in this lifetime.

Dissolving Fear and Guilt with the Magnificent Fire Chicken

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Sleep

Waking up at 5:30 in the morning instead of 3:30 is a significant triumph these days.

I will take my significant triumphs as they come.

Last night was a blissful pass-out-at-ten, wake-up-at-5:30 experience. When I squinted blearily at the clock, I thought it said 3:30 in the blessed am and I was all set to groan and feel put-upon by life when I realized it was actually 5:30. That’s a decent chunk of all-strung-together sleep. I can work with that.

At 5:30, it’s reasonable to get up. By the time you’re dressed and in your car, coffee shops will be open with brewing beans and warm interiors. Not so at 3:30 am. Get up at 3:30 am and all the coffee shops have to offer is dark doorsteps and sadness.

Sleeping is a weird biological imperative. We spend half our lives drooling and snoring into a pillow. Go without it for awhile and innocent passersby beware. Go without sleep for too long and it’s actually dangerous to our health and sanity.

But it also makes complete sense. Sleep is when our brain gets a true rest. Even if our brain is swimming in the murky subconscious, at least we don’t have to paddle with it. We just vaguely remember something the next morning about being chased through Nordstrom’s by a giant lady bug in roller skates.

Sleep is when we drop out of the fight / flight space our nervous system is so often caught in and allow our bodies to heal. Sleep is when our body repairs itself, when our energy knits itself back together.

Sleep is when our higher selves and guides have a chance to work with us - especially if we ask for it, invite it in. Bypassing the whirl of my brain is one of my higher self’s most dire challenges, I expect. So every night before I go to sleep, I ask my angels to bring me my highest reality. To assist me in whatever I need to call in my highest good.

Then I drift peacefully off, trusting that they’re taking care of me as I snore and drool. Trusting that my body is healing and my energy is shifting so that I can wake up the next morning and step back into whatever it is I’m meant to be doing on this spinning blue marble.

In Defense of Timing You Don't Choose and Also Cats

One of my less charming traits is that I get impatient and frustrated when things don't happen the way I think they should, in the exact timing my brain has chosen.

I've been wanting a dog for ages. Years. One could make a solid argument for decades.

Earlier this year, I fixated on it. Determined it was Time for the Dog. Looked at ways to move into a pet-friendly place, even though I love my house and my town. Whined about it more than was really attractive.

Mostly it was because I was lonely. My relationship wasn't going well and, in my efforts to learn how to operate as an empath with good energetic and emotional boundaries, I was spending a lot of time alone, to better sort through what was mine and what was everyone else's.

Moving didn't happen, dog didn't happen, things I was deeply determined I wanted didn't happen.

Instead, I watched a neighbor's labrador puppy a few times over the summer. Sweetest, most adorable dog you could imagine. Also the most exhausting. I could not keep up. I worried about her, gave her too many treats in hopes that she wouldn't notice that she wasn't getting adequate exercise, and eventually crawled home completely worn out.

And I realized I don't want a dog. At least not right now.

Yes, I will have a dog at some point in my life. But for now, I think I just want a lethargic cat. One that will nap with me, and encourage me to stay in bed. One that will lie on top of my computer and nose my book out of the way so I pet it. One that will be 100% fine with too many treats in place of exercise.

I still can't go out and adopt a cat, at least without moving or begging my landlord, neither of which I'm really in the mood for.

But I can go to the cat cafe in San Francisco and spend an hour with a bunch of kitties and drink a bucket of green tea.

Maybe tomorrow will have a different answer but, for now, borrowed cats. Lots of them.

Gently

I'm having the kind of breakdown I tend to have before a massive breakthrough.

Going gently with myself in these moments is key. Don't push too hard, don't expect too much. Now is not the time to expand.

It's the time to soften in.

Notice the present moment, the cloudy sky, the orange leaves scattered through the green, and how lovely it is that you have the ingredients for sweet potato soup and a cashew pumpkin spice latte without having to get in the car and go somewhere.

Tidy the house but don't scrub it like the queen is coming for cinnamon rolls.

Write random song lyrics instead of pages.

Know that the money is coming and you don't have to push for it.

Know that love is coming and you can delete Bumble after a brief spiral through the Human Shopping Network.

You can take it an hour at a time. You can breathe into whatever the experience is right now rather than trying to blast through to the next one.

You can just be. Get excited about the breakthrough without trying to force it. Like a skittish cat, it will come out from under the bed in its own good time.

Hello, Florence!

I want everything in my life to be as easy as getting my new car.

Meet Florence.

Florence is the unicorn of Mini convertibles. She’s everything I wanted and what I didn’t think was possible.

Perfect condition, a price I could manage (not a guarantee with Minis, even a little), and drives beautifully. Apparently, the people who make cars keep improving their products. So if you’re used to driving a 2005 and are suddenly behind the wheel of a 2012, it’s like your entire vehicular world has just been blown.

And everything about the process was easy. None of it should have been.

The very nice car dude who was consistent about handing me snacks, something I deeply appreciate in a person, kept saying, “I’m not really sure how this is happening, but it seems to be working, so let’s just go with it.”

He said it when he showed me the car, which had just been traded in a few days ago by a couple who just used it to drive to the beach. (Hi, Marin County. You’re hilarious.)

He said it when they offered me more for Penelope (my 2005 Mini) than anyone could have anticipated.

He said it when we sent in the financing and it was approved in record time with a super low APR. (I work for myself and that is what it is, but can make financing things weird.)

Here’s how it unfolded, and I’m saying this mainly to remind myself how easy creating the things I want can be, if I just let the process happen:

Know I’m going to need a new car at some point, so keep feeling into what I want (Mini convertible) and being open to something else (any other car in the world).

When the time came and I knew I had to get a new car - not just for my vehicular safety and that of everyone around me, but because my heart couldn’t take the stress any more - I didn’t think too much about it, just decided to visit the Mini dealership as a first step and see what the possibilities were.

Got the strong hit to go Saturday morning, as early as possible. So I did, where “early as possible” = “almost 11 in the morning” and was the first to look at the Unicorn of Mini Convertibles.

As I drove away in my New To Me car, bonus Toad the Wet Sprocket CD I found in the player blasting, another couple was looking at convertibles too, about an hour behind me in the process. Had I been any later that day, they might have scooped up Florence.

But as Nice Car Dude With Snacks said, “Sometimes the person chooses the Mini, sometimes the Mini chooses the person.” And Florence chose me.

I want everything in life to be as easy as getting Florence. I want to let events unfold, follow the intuitive nudges, and know that everything will happen perfectly, however that looks.

Because, voila! That’s how Florence appeared out of nowhere, in the easiest and most joyful manner possible.

Thank you and more of that please.

This is how I want my next relationship to show up. This how I want my next work project to unfold. How I want my new white winter jacket to show up, the one I saw last week and absolutely loved but didn’t buy because it was full price and my frugal little soul sometimes struggles with full price. (Please note, new-winter-jacket-that-will-be-mine-soon matches Florence. Not really on purpose but also not not on purpose.)

When Sally and I had our first adventure with Florence, we fell in love. She drives like a race car (I say, having never been in a race car) and I couldn’t stop smiling as we hurtled around the bends and loops of the California coast. Neither could Sally. Though, admittedly, it can be hard to tell with her.

Welcome to this weird little family, Florence. Thank you for showing me how easy this life thing can be when we allow it.