oh it has been such a long time

What's been going on? Where have I been? Everything's changed in my world since last we spoke. I've left my job at the law firm, taken a trip to Peru, unwound. It's been a season of healing. I haven't done much writing at all, which I do regret because the insights from this time have been myriad and rich - but it feels like a deep integration rather than some kind of transformational rollercoaster. I feel like I'm getting my land legs again - trusting my intuition, practicing only kindness towards myself. Spending lots of time in the kitchen, on the couch, outside. Thank Goddess.

I'm thinking about shaving my head, just to spare myself the experience of clumps of hair coming out into my hand every time I brush my fingers through my hair. But you know what? Hair loss is the most profound catalyst for change that I could have asked for. Here's what I'm realizing:

(1) The Universe does not hate me or want me to suffer. In some ways I have been making choices all my life that have been leading up to this experience.
(2) I now know what choices I need to make for my body to experience optimum wellness, and it's up to me to make them.
(3) It's never as bad as I think it is.
(4) Complaining, crying, and feeling like a victim *don't* grow hair.

The choices (see #2) are dietary and attitudinal ~ I'll spare you the gory details regarding the former. As to the latter, it is truly a mindblowing thing to see how I have this particular experience-frame, or thought-structure, or formula, and all my life I just plug in different variables into the formula for approximately the same result. Oh, woe is me, I am suffering from (_insert physical appearance issue here_) . . . nobody will ever love me! I am doomed to remain small, unseen, and unexpressed!

Um, no. Useful though that system may have once been, it yields only diminishing returns at this point. The butterfly, all dripping wet, inevitably nudges its way out of the chrysalis. So blindly I go, making one choice at a time, with only self-love as my guide through the unfolding present moment.

Say it with me: I am ok. I am ok! Feel that. It can be difficult to really let such a radical statement of self-acceptance into your body, but when you do, it's pure medicine from the tips of your toes to the crown of your head. That's where I want to live, so that's what I'm practicing. And I'm getting stronger all the time.

Last week I went with my mother to New York City. Being there, I admit, interfered somewhat with my faith in humanity. There are just so *many* of us! And we all want to consume what we want to consume, get what we want to get, realize the dream. We all walk around Manhattan dazed from too much light, noise, heat, linearity, from too many people. It's nearly impossible to avoid the endless cycle of purchasing and throwing away things in plastic containers in New York. With all that endless speed and aggression, all that disregard for geologic time, how do people even remember themselves to be human?

On Thursday my mother and I stood in the rain at the family gravesite, out at the Flushing Cemetary in Queens. I made a small ceremony over the beautiful box containing my grandmother's ashes. We prayed, my mother and I, for her spirit to pass with lightness and grace, to go home gently. Even such a troubled soul as she should be received by the earth for her rest. Even such an embittered lineage may be sweetened with a honey offering.

Kindness. Returning to the body. It is ok, everything is ok, I am ok. These truths arise in my field of vision again and again, like curious hummingbirds. I am learning that there is nothing to heal, after all; only a life to accept and to joyfully live. It's so easy!