today, at the brightest moment on the brightest day, on the solstice of the summer, my love surprised me with a reunion ceremony by the sea. he arranged for us to be witnessed and blessed by two wise and beautiful guides, and at precisely 1:01 pm, i was grounded into a moment of pure light. the feeling in my body was not one of giddy excitement, but of a sweet expansive exhale.

the practice of conscious partnership is not for the faint of heart. it requires presence and a commitment to a level of inquiry that reveals all the shadows. but the payoff is transformative. it is nothing short of revelatory. and it is surely a great doorway to freedom.

it is always love that wins.

tomorrow i head to london with my daughter to revel in more proclamations of love. we will be attending the wedding of two fabulous souls who, when i was not so grounded in light, showed me that true raw funny profound transparent partnership was, indeed, possible. i can’t wait to be there, circled up with the tribe, my own love solid in my heart, celebrating the only thing that matters.

And from beyond the intellect, beautiful Love comes dragging her skirts, a cup of wine in her hand. ~Rumi
(freshly inscribed on my resurrected wedding ring)

we are taught to hold the sweetness close. that feminine ripe bounty. the most disarmed and vulnerable pieces. i see in myself how i would eat, spend, withhold when the abundance would show; for fear that scarcity would come again too soon. best hurry and consume now since, clearly, somehow i’ve come into this richness by mistake. surely, i’m not worthy to hold this treasure in my hands.

shame tends to rule this pattern. and it is shame that perpetuates it.

this was the work of my week. to admit. to ask and be answered. to feel every last bit of this very old flavor of shame. and to get out of the way, finally, of the real abundance that is flowing in. i realized that with all the sexy tables and riches in the world, the thing that still matters most to me is connection. sweetness, pleasure, and bounty are truly only savored when rightfully claimed. owned. and then shared.

It’s possible to find what we never lost to begin with–our ability to feel, give, receive, know, question, learn, change–and to allow that to be the wellspring of our worth. When we spend as much time investing in our inner lives as we do in getting and having more, how we live on this earth and inside our bodies will change. ~Geneen Roth,  from Lost and Found: Unexpected Revelations About Food and Money.

photos: my favorite 4 year old on her birthday. may 2011.

i haven’t been writing much because words are not stringing in any order. no thoughts are conclusive. more like stars behind clouds, dust in window light, or one of those intense rapid-fire editing sequences you see in music videos.

my husband told me the other day that he’s always seen me as having one foot on this earth and another in the ethers. that i’m like a helium balloon that he holds onto. i used to resent that. now i kind of think he’s right. and i am grateful to have the love of another to hold the string when i start to float away.

the fusion of opposites has been the topic of the week, perhaps the topic of the year, or of lifetimes. polarities, dualities, magnetism and harmony. in relationship, within the self, past and future, masculine and feminine, wanderluster and cave-dweller.

for the record, i had a crisis. it is done. and, in case it wasn’t obvious, the metaphors of the past 9 months were my way of sharing a marriage that dissolved and disintegrated.

and now, i am happy to announce that, catalyzed through our story of separation and unraveling, my husband and i have found our way back to the thing that brought us together over 20 years ago: love. plain simple impossible-to-argue-with love.

having thrown down an old paradigm of projections and mutual wound preservation, i am now living in a moment of humility, vulnerability, and joy. i had my experience, separate and in relationship, of death and rebirth. of outgrowing a container. of splitting within myself and with the other. of reaching out, reacting, and reaching in. it was messy. it was numbing and awakening. it was lonely, terrifying, and even exhilarating. i have perspective, i have lingering pain (that i must choose how much attention to give), i have awakened truth. i asked for one thing in the process, and that was to live from love and not from fear. i never expected that the scariest thing would be to return to and to recreate this relationship. catalysts be damned, that was what my truth led me to. we are happy and i am grateful.

i just recently viewed dancing in the flames, a documentary about the life and journey of marion woodman, as told in conversations between marion and mystical scholar andrew harvey. i’m not one to explain the journey of another, especially a renowned jungian analyst, so i’ll just tell you to watch the film. i felt so much in common with marion, her life’s work has been to tend to the greatest questions within herself, and through her example i felt so validated in my own journey.

my life’s work? to experience conscious connection. to see myself in others and others within myself. and to seek and share doorways to freedom.

if i have learned anything about myself, it is that i am a whole made of many parts. it is in the integration and alignment of all those parts, even the ones that wrestle in their contrasts, that i find my freedom.

you?

photos: i’ve joined the instagram craze and have been doing a 365 self-portrait project. like most photographers, there is one side of the lens that i most prefer to be on. big lessons in making peace with my own image. i’m fairly inconsistent with it, though, so my 365 will most likely span more like 500 days. whatever. if you are a fellow iphone user, follow me there if you like. username doorwaystraveler.

it has been bone dry in the word well for me these past two weeks. many a draft started and saved. i’ve tried not to attach, not to force, not to care.

and today, i don’t need to find the words. my daughter has done it for me.

today is her fifteenth birthday. fifteen. i cannot remember a time when she wasn’t here. i cannot remember a time when her energy didn’t fill our home with voice, music, brilliance, and opinion. she’s got an exuberance that cannot be reckoned with and dreams to work with doctors without borders and to record her own record of original songs. today she will arrive at the grand canyon on a school trip and i cannot think of a better cathedral for her to be in to dream her way into her sixteenth spin around the sun.

a few days ago, my daughter shared with me her final exam that she wrote for her world history class. with her permission, i am posting it here. again, these words are all hers. the prompt was for the students to define the four pillars of their own religion, and that she did. all i could say after reading it was “i love you,” to which she rolled her eyes and said, “oh god, are you crying?” wise, prophetic, and still sarcastically teenaged. fabulous.

her dad and i take no credit, but we are fantastically proud and crazy in love. happy birthday marandah rain.

What I Believe by Marandah Field-Elliot

Throughout history, each religion is taught as a structured school of thought, as something you must give in to. However, I feel blessed to live in a world where I can create my own faith, where I choose what I believe. The four pillars of my religion are as follows: I bow to the best in everyone, Namaste; I believe in Satyagraha, or non-violence; I think that everyone should partake in Zakat, or charity; and finally, that each individual should have a sense of impermanence.

In the Hindu religion, the most common greeting is “Namaste,” and it loosely translates to “the divinity in me bows to the divinity in you.” I believe that there is true, pure divinity in every single human on the planet, that that is our individual job to seek that divinity out. I know that no one person is perfect, but an essence of imperfect perfection lies in all of us. True, we all have flaws, but each soul is a sort of quirky perfect. In my opinion, the whole point of religion in the first place is being able to access this divinity inside of us. People pray to gods, worship deities, and sing tribal chants in hopes that some outside source will tell us how to become divine. Well, I believe that only you can strive for divinity, it does not come from an outside choice. God or Shiva or Allah or Buddha is in each and every one of us.

The second pillar of my “religion” is also a derivative of a Hindu belief, Satyagraha. It means “non-violence,” and was the essence of Ghandi’s movement. He believed that instead of using violent and forceful protests to achieve freedom in India, he should use his intelligence, faith, and calm power. He is one of my idols because of this. Violence achieves nothing, all it does is put you down to the level of your opposers.

In the words of Ghandi, “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” Instead of fighting, if all the diplomats and leaders of countries worldwide were to sit down and discuss why they wanted to fight, the world would see peace. Peace forms out of unity, out of a feeling that we are all part of something bigger. And essentially, we are. Everyone laughs, sings, and smiles in the same language, everyone on earth has felt anger, pride, happiness, or sadness. Violence only takes these feelings away and makes people numb to our similarities.

In order to be a true Muslim, it is said that you must partake in “Zakat,” or charity. Each individual, not matter what there socioeconomic status, must give 2.5% of their belongings or money to a charity. Living in a community that is as fortunate as Santa Barbara, I feel that it is beyond necessary to partake in some sort of charity. Every person deserves basic living standards, like medical care, clean drinking water, food and education, and I think that it is our job as the human population to help everyone have these things.

I am so grateful to live in the place that I do and have the lifestyle that I have that I think it is crucial to help those less fortunate. Charity, or whatever you want to call it, has become such a status symbol for wealthy people “helping the African children” and such, that sometimes I feel our modern world has lost the essence of what it is. The pure joy of helping others is the best feeling a person can have, and it is out of joy that we can truly live life to the fullest.

The final pillar of my faith is impermanence, the Buddhist belief that life is in constant motion. Often, I am called out in my day to day life for not thinking about the future or living a little too much in the moment, but I don’t care. Of course you should be wary of consequences and where you want to go in life, its essential to have goals, but I love living life for each moment it throws at me. As discussed in Siddhartha, life is like a river. You cannot control the river, you cannot stop the river, all you can do is follow its path and treat each moment like a beautiful gift. I adore having no idea what will happen next in my river.  I am enjoying each exciting bend and holding my head high through each rapid. I am challenged every day, whether it be from my insecurities or outside sources, but I try to keep in mind that everything fades, and everything changes.

If I was a leader of a religion the one piece of advice I would give is to believe in yourself. There is divinity in you, there is divinity in me, and the only way we can reach that is leading a fulfilling, beautiful life. Fill your existence on our planet with no violence when possible, it will lead you no where. Be as giving and caring as you can, because it is this that brings true happiness. And finally, carpe diem! Grasp each moment like it is your last, and be exactly who you want to be. Life is too short to pretend you are something that you’re not, so go follow your passion, fall in love, do something that others would laugh at like dancing in the rain or singing out to the world. This is my religion, my world of divinity, peace, giving, and impermanence. This is what I believe.

photo: one of my favorites of her. taken over a year ago.