seems each time i ready myself to leap farther, the Big Baggage wants to come with, filled with the skeletons and accumulations of other Heavy Things that lay waiting in the closet. before i know it, i am over-packed and beyond the Weight Limit of what is comfortable to carry. i am burdened. rendered less mobile. confronted.

while it is familiar to be loaded with extra pounds going into a journey, i'd be lying if i said i wasn't at all frustrated by the prospect of having to take this Stuff with me. and of having to lay it all down again. to decipher need from patterned coping, what is nourishing from what numbs, hunger from filling.

this time, i'd really like to take less with me. the places i am going ask for me to be free and agile, to carry only what is easy and necessary. i need to leave self-judgment behind. i've got no room for awkward and amateur or do-i-deserve-this. old traveling companions like fat-girl-in-the-room and starving-for-sweetness simply don't fold well and take up too much luggage space.

when we check our baggage, there is an inherent risk. it might not be there when we Arrive. it might just get lost.

for the first time ever, i see this as a marvelous possibility.

inspired by the book that is rocking my world: Women, Food, and God by Geneen Roth.

watch her read from the book here.