Love is as scary as death. And, trust me friends, love lasts longer than death. So keep your eye on it.

I’ve been making my to-do lists. Change of seasons. I’m checking things off and so many are left undone. I sit with myself and work to stay open to feeling. My small mind says it’s about not getting to go to the lake or not having someone to help me haul junk, fix a leak, whatever. Why shouldn’t I be upset by unresponsiveness where a response was wanted? My small mind is full of high excuse. But my high mind recognizes it as a fear of being unlovable. And I start feeling “has God forgotten me? Am I a disappointment? A failure?” And I ask with my mind’s eye, where’s my heart? And then I feel it.

The pain of rejection, the pain of alienation, the pain of neglect are real pains of life. Because we are not meant to feel separate from love. The pain should steer us toward that knowing; we should avoid the false knowing of rejection and acceptability. We can mourn the loss of recognition that comes with personal love, but only so long as we don’t take it personally. The sense of being unlovable is a fault of the human condition. All sorts of crimes are committed under that sickness.

My aunt started a pen pal relationship with a woman in jail who hadn’t received a letter in 12 years. She’s 56 years old and 12 years into a 75 year jail term. She was ill and put into intensive care and moved to the hospital in the jail for further recovery. She came through and wrote that God had given her a second chance at life. Love found her, lost and forgotten as she was, trapped behind bars with no hope of the scene ever changing.

I won’t say “all we need is love.” We have seven chakras for a reason. But if you cannot feel love at any moment in space or time, you have strayed from the path. The Universe can always meet you where you are. And it has love in it. It has desire and containment and any other flavor you’d like.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

From Essential Rumi
by Coleman Barks

I heard one way to ask your higher self a question is to write it in a journal that you keep by your bed before going to sleep at night. So last night I wrote “let me dream about love and wake up remembering.” I wanted a story. Instead, I woke up in the night with the following words clear in my head: “I love existing. Thank you for my existence.” So that’s the message from my higher self.

Moments after those words faded, I was in my petty concerns. How will I make enough money to be able to travel? Did I pay my car insurance bill yet? I woke up in the morning not wanting to go to work for the day, wondering what I needed to get done and what I’d rather be doing.

Somwhere I live below the rippling waves of day-to-day negotiations.

I just walked the creek and there is a new clearing. I thought it odd that landscapers would have cleared that section, but realized it must have been washed-out by the rains. It was undergrowth and trees. Now it’s soft sandy sediment.

I spent the last week on vacation visiting family in Tennessee and North Carolina. It was my first visit to my Mom’s house; the first house she’s had of her own. I have been taking a bit of pride in my own empathy, but I couldn’t feel anything from her. It made me feel nervous and insecure, which is a spiral of projection and I worked to stop it. I have a chest cold, so doing release breathing has been a challenge this week.

My mother is perfect. Others marvel at how she has managed to style her home completely, kitchen remodel included, within just a year of moving in. Her garden is vibrant. Her cakes and pies are perfect. And she at 70 is still beautiful. My family wonders at how much my Mom can get done in a day. “She works until the sun goes down and starts as soon as it comes up” my Aunt told me. I understand the compulsion. When you are doing, there’s no need to feel. There’s a next step to take; a justifying of existence. Like skidding on the surface of oblivion.

There is something I would like to share with her that I accept I never may. There is something I want her to see in herself and her relationship to others that I cannot articulate. Truth is when you fear judgment of others, you radiate judgment of others. Simpler yet: perfection is admirable, but not likable.

On our visit, she took my daughter to the pool and I sat alone and could see four crosses and one crucifix displayed in her house without turning my head. I wondered what it felt like for her, living with all those crosses. And I thought about asking her but realized it was a question she wouldn’t have been able to answer in the way I wanted to ask it.

The next evening we visited my sister. My girl ran around her house chasing the cats and dogs and we talked a bit about work experiences. It was a relaxing evening. And when we got back to my Mom’s house, my Mom offered to sleep on the floor.

I told her no, of course, and it dawned on me that for her love is sacrifice. Her life tells the story. Maybe she has held on to the hope that love is something she would like it to be and not that which it is: a force all its own. I don’t know. I do know that love isn’t a judgment. Love isn’t discriminating. Love is never a sacrifice. Love has a life of its own.

I want to share something with you. There is a lot of intense cosmic energy going around these days. Seems we are all being challenged to be more open-hearted.

I don’t generally do guided meditations, but if you’d like after you read this sit and give it a try and leave a comment to let me know how it worked for you.

Remember a time you were in the most beautiful landscape you can recall. The beach, the mountains, the desert. Whatever the case may be. Remember what the air felt like. Remember what the sky looked like. Remember the sound and feeling of that space. Feel what a lack of responsibility you have for making it happen. Feel how you had to do nothing but appear to experience the magic of it all. There is nothing that needed to be done.

Then imagine that the landscape around you feels the same sense of wonder at your existence, the same sense of appreciation that you are here.

It is so clear to me now that I am an empath and have always been. I don’t know about various types of empaths or what it all means. I just know I work that way. And that understanding gives a whole new context to the difficulties I’ve had in life, particularly in relationships. People don’t act from their feelings; they hide feelings. They don’t appreciate someone looking into their soul. It’s stupid because we all want to be loved and understood – until we are. Granted, I haven’t handled my talent very well in the past. I got angry when I couldn’t get my friends to pull these two halves – action and emotion – together. I thought it meant that they hated me. Why did they keep lying to me? But now I see it isn’t and never was personal. They really don’t know any better.

Most humans walking the face of the earth have *no* idea how they feel, including humans that I love. Except kids. Kids are awesome. Kids can talk about feelings and feel feeling and learn how to use emotional power and they are so generous in doing so. They have no fear of running out of what they are. So it makes me sick that socially we teach them that their feelings are horrid shameful things they need to control. We teach people to repress their emotions until they choke and die on them. Seriously, it takes awhile but that’s what it does.

The problem I have now is the way we support each other socially. It’s full of bullshit. And while I have always been able to feel others, I am acutely aware of it right now. The way people violate each other’s borders in work situations and project personal problems onto colleagues or fears about themselves on to others. A vicious gossip, for example, is usually just voicing all the things they are afraid someone is saying or going to say about them. I want to go up to them, hug them, and tell them no one is judging them even though they are the “problem.” Because I can feel how much pain and fear they are carrying around and they don’t need it. They aren’t going to be able to release it onto others. They only multiply it that way. And they are fine if only they would let themselves be.

At least now I know some grounding exercises and how to give myself the space I need to clear out my own emotional channels. Apparently, its normal to go through this stage where society is just not something you want to engage with. I mean, a customer in line who huffs at the clerk – I can feel what that person is really angry about and why they want to vent on a minimum wage employee who has to take it. I can feel both sides. I’m tired. But I know what is going on for the first time in my life.

Apparently, I am a healer too. Not sure how that works. Not going to worry about it. It will unfold naturally and it already is happening naturally. At a birthday part over the weekend, my daughter stepped on a tack. She was crying and I held her and I put my hand over the puncture mark. I could feel the pain and I took it.

That is what I have done at so many points in my life – felt the pain of others and took it as my own. That is not what I am trying to do any longer. Because being able to absorb pain is one thing; using that talent in awareness to heal people is another. I’m still growing my new layer of skin. The first step is always – heal yourself first.

Namaste.

So, I finally wrote my letter to the version of me who hadn’t done PN. Its strange to realize my life has a new context, even my past. Not that the context is at all new. Just that I am more aware of what always was. Oh, and apparently cursing is good for fire chi. Sweet.

Dear me,
My whole life I sensed I was kicked out of some mysterious tribe. I felt alienation and a vague sense of survivor’s guilt. Recently I had a woman I just met scream at me “bullshit, bullshit” and tell me I was “a fucking liar” when I answered her question “where are you from?” An anesthesiologist told me as I went under for surgery that it was an affectation, the way I spoke. My soul mate, when I told him that people kept asking me what country I was from said “I bet you enjoy that.” Here he was: my home. God, I missed him for so long. And he implies I enjoy the exile.

Bullshit. The whole above paragraph is crap, but I write it so you know that I know where you’re coming from. Why is it crap? Because it’s written from a perspective where someone else has the power to tell you you’ve arrived, that you belong, that you are you. How in the hell can anyone do that until you understand who you are and take the next step of just fucking being that? No one is ready and waiting to ax you for existing. Drop the story. When you are tired enough, you will drop the damned story.

I thought I needed a story to explain myself. I thought I should make up a country to say I’m from so I’d have an answer when people pester me about my origins. I thought I needed to rename myself. I always thought that, but especially after my divorce. Not take a name back, but make a new name for that alter-ego me. The real me. The rejected me. Sort out that accepted me. My lost tribe. But that’s all crap. The part of me I thought was unacceptable, the part I thought needed to be explained…what am I talking about…I don’t come in pieces.

Trust me, you self future, when I tell you that love is real and that the only way love has ever come to you is by coming to you. It isn’t a missing piece of you. It isn’t an attraction designed to push your buttons. You can push your own buttons when you’re up for it. No one is out to get you. You don’t need to save the world. You are not a problem to be fixed. No one is trying to make you pass a test. The only thing that anyone who ever loved you wanted from you was you. Your beingness. Yeah, that’s enough and more than you can dream so don’t huff it off as silly spiritual talk.

You have no idea what healthy borders are. I get the story as to why; the Mom and the Dad and the relationships and the hurt feelings of life. Sorry, but so what? You’re grown-up now and none of that stuff ever has to happen again. So stop replaying it in your head. You’re going to find someone who can teach you some practical ways to keep it in perspective. Its simple stuff and, yes, you are a bit of a genius, but try something new. Try not to be such a know-it-all on the subject of yourself.

Have a little faith. Have faith in all the things you don’t know about you. Because no one is going to step up and give you your place in the world. You’re already here. Set your borders. Respect the borders. And, by God, have some fun existing.

People have told me I’m from everywhere from Russia to Japan. You know what? I’m right here. Exactly where I belong. I don’t care what the story is. A story is a story. Being is a whole other state. PN teaches you the difference. So, get to work.

Good luck,
Me

I’ve been trying to write out a summary of my soul mate connection experience. Steve said it’s an important part of the process for me to close that loop. And I appreciate that. But there are too many synchronicities going on for me to get a full perspective of it all.

I started this blog when I reconnected with my soul mate because I thought for sure I was insane. And if I was insane, wasn’t it the responsibility of the collective to steer me towards sane again? I made the tagline for this site “a living social media experiment.” I wrote my own privacy policy. I shared way more information about myself than I ever had before. I felt I had to because I couldn’t make sense of all the emotion.

Instead of finding rejection or ridicule, instead of getting the “crazy”
verdict I was waiting for, I found companions and encouragement, many through this blog. Well, a bit of ridicule and rejection as well. But only one of those voices came directly at me. And I am so surprised by how many voices of encouragement I’ve found by sharing the unshareable parts of my self.

I started taking self portraits and wondering where all that feeling came from, the feeling and the faces. How can one person have so many faces? Each expression is a new person.

Today, I went to the email folder where I kept all the messages he and I have exchanged over the past year. 777 to date. I could have sworn that number was higher last time I looked.

A soul mate connection isn’t one event or one relationship. It’s an opportunity to be aware of them all. It isn’t my event. It’s an awakening. I’m not amped up with crazy root energy. I’m not blissed-out by some sudden insight into connectedness. I’m kind of amazed that I took on that journey, like Alice in Wonderland. But it isn’t a story, its my life. I’m grateful to be living.

Tomorrow is the third birthday party this week. I was thinking it won’t be long before my contemporaries migrate into needing three packs of candles to be purchased to light one cake. The two grown-ups this week were two packs minus a few. I bought the cakes for both. Me and my girl picked them out together. She pushed the candles in; licked them when she pulled them out; and assisted with the singing and blowing in between.

Tomorrow, my friend’s magical girl turns 7. She fills up the missing candles. She walked the creek with me. She wanted to walk to the ocean when she did it. Longest creek walk I’ve taken so far was under her direction.

I went to the creek just now. Its fuller from the storms. Fresh rocks in the stream. Cloudy. I wonder where the fish will appear next?

I sat and felt the core of my emotions. As I walked back home, I thought about my past year, about this journey, about how scared and confused I was when it started. And then I remembered my past life reading.

I got birth days and death days mixed up. No matter which,
happy birthday, Son of the Moon.

Humans. So, I’m sitting with myself trying to get to the bottom of things and I hit on this question “Why am I human at all?” I let the scenes well up in me; the want, love, lust, pain, brutality, hope, shame, desire, remorse. Some seem from other lives. I can’t sense my unique role. I am not separate from it. I take in a deep breath I let the sensation of witnessing swell in me. I sigh an exhale. On my next inhale, I see it all – all those scenes – swirling in my inhale like smoke in reverse. I can take it all back. It seems an almost-answer to my question.

I sit a bit longer and I think perhaps I could blow up the world with my psychic energy. I fix my eyes on the trees and hear the sounds of the singing night bugs and think how perfectly placed they are, how harmlessly natural. How serene. Belonging. The Universe says the same about me and explains “you can’t just extract the bits you like about life, human or not, and throw the rest away. Blow up the world, but you blow up everything you love with it.”

So I sit. I feel the love, hope, desire of creation. The shadowy aspect makes the direction of the light more clear.

I’m going through this PN course. I can’t really write about the process. It’s part of the process. And it’s been hard on the writer in me to let go of these beautiful transitions. To just let them happen, come and go, unrecorded. And it has been essential for me to not to record them. Words never do an experience justice and it wears the mind out trying. The thinking-mind is amazingly adaptable. It will make sense of anything that’s repeated enough. And it always discourages new experience. That’s why you have to keep it on a leash.

As for the dragons I fight, the story is always fear versus love. And I recognize myself as a moderator between these two extremes. My friend Brian Germain recently wrote a newsletter on the topic of fear and love. He explains how the depth of the fear reflects the depth of the love the fear is masking. I think he’s on to something. As Brian puts it “fear is not who we are, it is just a reflection of a role that is far smaller than we are.”

Whatever it is that you fear most; the may-happens of your nightmares. Study them. Expose them. Let them go. They’re heavy and boring.

Facing fear is work. But that’s what a life is for.

Namaste.

I “know” more than I can write about. I woke up around 3:30am dreaming about the trinity. A pyramid. What it represents. What that top point represents. How the line flows. It’s an intuitive thing. It’s about love. It’s not something I can describe.

I remember being a child and asking my mother to explain the trinity to me. She said it’s a mystery we can’t understand. And, like a buzzer in my head, the word rang out to me “WRONG!” Why would God chose to confuse us; be obtuse; offer us a doctrine to follow that makes no sense using words to follow that are very, very literal and beside the point.

I never tried to understand the trinity of “Father, Son, Holy Ghost” as the Catholic church “explained” it to me. It never rang at all true to me that God is a masculine tripartite being. And now, I dream of the trinity because where love exists between two people, so does God. (And I trust you readers will not confuse “love” with “need.”)

I see this trinity as a mountain people try to climb; the arduous task of the mystics’ journey to peak of the Mountain Qaf; enlightenment. “If only you had the faith of a mustard seed, you could move mountains” Jesus said. What is this mountain, really?

As Attar explains in “The Conference of the Birds” you’ll find what you are seeking does not exist. Paradoxically, you’ve been/had it all along.

Imagine the Catholic church telling me, an eight year old girl, a divorced woman, a failable human being, that I am part of the trinity. I may have actually listened to that story.

I got a news letter from the yoga studio I wish I had time to go to. They’ve started a book club and they’re reading “Only Love is Real” by Brian Weiss. Curious, I googled book reviews to see what it was about. It’s about soul mate connections. So, I don’t really need to read that book. That’s been my past year.

The other night, I thought again of my past life women. I find it hard to say “my past lives.” I feel these women from the inside out. Sometimes I see them. And I try to send them messages of hope and love. Because, if I am them, things turned out better than they ever could have imagined or hoped for. For all of us.

It’s intimidating to connect to the version who is abusive and mean; a woman who treated her son with brutality and abandoned him. She is terrified inside and she never questions her terror. But in moments I let her/myself feel her/my pain and terror. The other night when doing this I struggled with the question: “what I can send her?” And the answer, mine or above me, was let her know only love lasts.

Only love lasts. Only love lasts. Only love lasts.

That truth is enough to ruin a society; all socieities as we know them. No wonder nobody ever teaches us that.

I think positive thinking is bullshit. I’m trying to think of a metaphor that explains why. The best I can think of now is to say positive thinking is to spiritual growth what make-up is to a clear complexion. But its more than that. Positive thinking isn’t just a cover-up. It’s a misdirection.

For example, I can think “positively” about a situation by focusing on what I want from it and ignoring what’s there. I can think “positively” about a situation by telling myself I should be perfectly happy with how things are. But what those “positive” thoughts often equate to are a lack of boundaries and a resistance to change.

The point isn’t to think positively. The point is to find the love you have in/for yourself and the confidence to share it. When you do that positive thinking is just a part of thinking. It takes no special effort beyond that. Not saying it’s easy to get there. We’re trained to pick our thoughts, judge each thought, and toss them into positive/negative piles. But our soul…it actually has a voice all its own.

Not sure I explained that very well, but since positive thinking is promoted as a bit of a spiritual cure-all I felt like writing a note about it. Also, there’s a great video from Abraham-Hicks that explains subtleties of positive thinking pretty well.

My daughter left me a voicemail yesterday morning about her dream. In this dream, she and I went to the store. Inside the store was a house. And “we were walking down the path and the door opened. We went inside and there was a bunny.”

I asked her later, was it a big or little rabbit? And she said medium. Was it white or brown? It was white.

Then she told me about how she caught a sunfish at the lake this weekend. But the news about the rabbit dream came first.

I don’t know what the rabbit means. One site said the rabbit is a symbol we won’t understand until 2080. Whatever. Clearly, a rabbit isn’t something bad to see; fertility, playfulness, and luck. Things like that. And then I came across the following interpretation online:  ”May symbolize being the innocent victim. If so, the dream may be advising you to stop punishing yourself and, instead, accept and love yourself just as you are.”

Well, now, that’s always good advice.

I connected with another past life that I shared with soulmate. In that life I was his Mom and he was my son and I abused and abandoned him. When I connected to understand how or why that could happen, the only motive I got was “mine, mine, mine.” His flesh was mine and I hated myself.

Its funny what we socially think love is.  Love is, love is power, love is me, but love isn’t “mine, mine, mine.”  I can see how often love has been masked, my love has been masked, with a mine kind of passion. That passion makes it hard to give/recieve.

Love is freedom.

I feel like I should update the blog, but I don’t feel like thinking/writing.  I feel like communicating. So, instead I’m sharing a few emails I exchanged with a friend (lucky me) on the subject of love.

Email 1:

Last night I meditated. I felt my sacral chakra in my stomach radiate that by-the-fireplace feeling I get being close to (soulmate). But it’s not him. He is not putting any energy out right now. He has only just realized how wounded he is.

So I sat with this opening and the universe told me “see, how else could you have opened this space in your self without first confronting your feelings for him?” and the universe said that part of me should always be open. [editor note:  should is a horrible word here. More like that space was designed to be open, naturally, and the closure is unnatural.] And I felt it radiate like a power source.

I woke up at 3am again but went back to sleep. Something is going on with energy these days. I suspect this is the kick off for my psychological explosions. It’s about me learning how to manage my aggressive instincts better than I have in the past. And I’m concerned because the astro report says I’m not as powerful as I feel, but do have real energy and courage. I hope I also have the wisdom to handle the energies well. Really, it’s a matter of knowing myself which is a never ending job.

Email 2:

It was clearing myself of the negative feelings of guilt/shame/fear/regret/pain/etc associated with love. Love is a power source, which is what makes it so scary. Because we often feel love as a power someone has over us. We *need* them. It was a lesson in feeling that love as my own power.
 
When you hit on yourself as the source and reciepient of love, the negative things are just other things. Even if someone you love throws them at you. They aren’t you. Those negative aspects are the illusion, the tension that person is experiencing while trying to find/avoid their own core.

It is a matter of being the light instead of seeking it. Oddly, this helps you establish more meaningful borders. Not as a matter of defense, but as a natural course of your own self expression.

Email 3:

Love means you treat people as if they are whole. You don’t give energy over to their flaws, faults, or fears. You treat them as whole. It doesn’t matter if they treat themselves the same way. You can treat them that way, which is how you begin to find your borders. Because you no longer are capable of engaging in the dysfunction. You are no longer able to reflect back the warped view they have of themselves.

I had a powerful series of meditations last winter during which I asked the Universe to be a healer and the Universe told me to heal myself. I’ve been working on it and am sharing with you what I’ve learned so far.

The Mirror.

Everything someone sees in you is something they see in themselves. Re-read that; it’s important to understand. Very few people understand and practice this understanding. Understanding the mirror dynamic in all human relationships is one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself and the world.

It also means that anything you see in someone else (particularly when your perceptions carry an emotional charge) is something you see (or don’t want to acknowledge) about yourself.  There’s a bit of a paradox at work. Sometimes they put on you what they hate about themselves. Sometimes you hate about them something you love about yourself or vice versa. Don’t worry about it. Recognize and work with it. Because that puts the healing power in your hands. If you want to be a healer or just a force of good in the world, heal yourself first.

Understand, actions are actions. But the reasons, the stories, the excuses behind the actions – that’s all projection. This kind of projection occurs all along the scale of human existence. It happens in our intimate relationships as well as nation states.  Sometimes I think the  infamous veil is a mirror. Sometimes I think we – none of us – can be seen. We are the light shining. Polish your mirror.

Objectivity.

You do not need to understand your feelings to recognize and work with them. There is a meditation technique with a name I forget. I found it naturally as a course of doing yoga. The goal is sit with feelings, but to separate the word from the emotion. What this does is bring awareness to the physical sensation of feeling one way or another. Is it in your stomach? Is it hot or cold? The key is to be nonjudgmental about any sensations that come up. I mean, cry if you want to and watch yourself stop. How did the crying change your energy? Not as in “do I feel better or worse after crying” but as in “crying released tension in my throat.” Whatever you find, just look objectively. Objectively. You’ll notice the feelings come and go. Warning: that shit can be intense. Seriously.

This is something that you have to practice. When you do, you’ll find you can experience without projecting or responding to projections, all those old stored, dead energies. This is work. Because our mind, the organ of our brain, is designed to project. It requires daily practice to keep your energy system clean. Don’t sweat the slip ups. Notice them, and get back to work.

Projection.

When you enter a situation without projecting, you immediately activate the healing potential of the energies you interact with. In the case of people, this can be a crazy thing. Because often people will project even more onto you because they don’t understand what is being activated in them.

People will make stories about you. That you are doing or saying that because you’re lonely/unhappy/bored/vengeful. Whatever. IT DOESN’T MATTER. Understand? Because if you try to reason with a projection, you are actually giving force to that. You are building up what isn’t an accurate reflection. You’re scratching the mirror.

Projection is never where truth is – yours or theirs. Stay grounded. Repeatedly take time to ground yourself in exercise, meditation, nature walks, whatever works for you.

It’s strange. Culturally, we’ve gotten so used to feeling bad that it seems unconscionable to let the good/bad judgments and feelings go. If we’re not good/bad, what are we? Unfortunately, all this fear of not projecting creates a tension that prevents people from recognizing and experiencing how good they and other people naturally are. Go for joy.

Truth.

 How do you know if you’re following truth? The truth will come to you like a memory. A personal memory. Not connected to anything else. Not “I think I read that in a book once” or “I remember the time we…and I felt…” Rather, it comes with a spiritual sense of déjà vu. Release yourself to it.

Language fails truth. If you try to articulate it, you’ll find it always comes out as a paradox. You’ll say something that is/isn’t. But you will know it and sometimes be afraid of the duality inherent in it. It’s OK. True is true. There’s no taking sides. You’ll find the truth gets deeper and deeper but never changes. And in the well of truth you’ll find you. What does this mean? Maybe you’re a person who doesn’t love yourself and you’re the last person you want to meet? It’s a paradox, you see? Because in you is everything you’ve ever hoped/loved/dreamed. In you is every joy, goodness, and perceivable beauty. In you is the world and you are its beauty. If you love anyone; if you want good; be a beautiful world.

Namaste.

Yesterday was a good day. I registered my girl a third school (one summer school, one primary school, one pre/after care). This completes the new-school anxiety process – at least for me.

I went on a job interview (don’t tell my colleagues, wink wink). It went well. The guy, director of user experience, had album covers on the wall. I kept eyeing The Specials. The old and new me together, somehow, in that office through that visual. It was nice to talk about my profession as a profession, because it is and I’m good at it.

Back to work, I presented at a conference to 400 people. Most formal setting I think I’ve presented at, although I’ve presented to large groups before. When I checked in, the woman at the desk told me “I thought you looked familiar. I saw your picture (huh? where?) and not that you aren’t pretty in your picture, but you are absolutely gorgeous in person.” I told her “Absolutely gorgeous? OK. I’ll take that.”

I made jokes in my presentation. I almost dared an audience member to stand on a chair and get naked (making a point about social trust, but toned it down). When I finished, my boss whispered “that was awesome.”

At home, I walked my dog in the woods behind my house. I had a moment where I paused in a setting sunbeam and had bliss trickle down my shoulder blades. The words entitlement, as in being entitled to bliss, came to mind. But words lie. We don’t deserve. I work to stay grounded in that because it’s a hard lesson to learn: deserve doesn’t exist.

I meditated. I looked at myself in the mirror. Who is this being I am getting to know more and more each day? She doesn’t deserve anything.

I downloaded some new school DC punk rock song called “Invincible” by Imperial China. The lyrics are “We are phosphenes. We are moving.” Maybe that’s it.

I wish I could pour that sunbeam feeling over each one of you. That’s my problem. You can’t love coat anyone, not even yourself. The next year will be learning more about my boundaries. Love isn’t (only) something to be given away.

In divorce court today, I spotted my husband eying the docket screen and walked up to him and we gave each other a hug. That’s normal behavior, especially in Mediterranean culture: you hug hello. But that action made my neighbor, our witness, well up in tears.

She and I arrived at the courthouse early and grabbed a coffee. She talked about things. The things other people get or do. How wrong and undeserving they are. And I could see that she is in what I now call “the-old-way-of-thinking.” She loves, she gives, but puts herself in a disempowered position because she doesn’t know her own borders.

Husband had red eyes, clearly holding in (or attempting to be holding in) the tears the entire time we spent in court. “When he took of his glasses and wiped his eyes, I wanted to cry” she told me later. Through my eyes, I could see he was living that moment as if it was our wedding day. And I wasn’t having my wedding day. I was having my divorce. Giving attention to his ability to hold and intensify pain wouldn’t bring clarity to that situation. The situation is clear. But, with him, the beginning and the end go together, which is substantial part of why we never found happy together, despite our many many many successes.

I got custody. I got an order for child support that is generous and that I have no intention to collect. I have a parenting partner who I trust completely with the well being of our child. Can’t cash-in better than that.

There were so many points on the divorce path where we were each encouraged to fan the flames of conflict. We were getting a divorce, so clearly we should hate each other; people had a hard time accepting our continued respect for each other and constantly questioned it. We tested it ourselves, we talked it out, and we are the winners. Bonus: we continue to grow our love together in the form of a gift of a girl.

A girl who explained Daddy is still the boss of our family. A girl whose Daddy drove her to Mommy’s house so she could explain in her own words: “I listen to Daddy more than Mommy because I’m scared Daddy will move and get a new kid from the store.”

I held her close while she cried and told her “How scary!” I’m so glad you told us about this! Because that can never, never happen so you don’t have to worry about that. OK?” She’s with Daddy this weekend and next and I think that’s an awesome place for her to be.

The parent/child in me, days later, touched the lessons I held: that touch, as the child in me was taught, is only for punishment or shame. And the Universe told that child in me “its OK, we’ll take care of you.” The Universe touches me all the time and it is neither good nor bad.

It’s OK. We all learn; one way, one life or another. And it’s OK. Because, in the end, there is one reality and it/we goes/go on forever.