it is my instinct to throw off my clothes and jump in. i have to. there is something deeply elemental in me that cannot resist. i have to allow the rocks to leave imprints on my knees and fingertips, while a stray twig holds my hair back so i can see. i have to build the fire, set the table, create home.

he knows all this. he steps back and allows; and hangs the hammock for me while i do what i must.

and, together, we remember how to be on our own, in the most simple of needs, with the newest of our longtime love.

back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith.
~henry miller

photos: big sur, ca. mostly 5d MkII, with a splash of iphone.

last year on this day, we took new marriage vows. today we will leave for a few nights of sinking our feet into the earth in big sur. while it is foggy this morning, i can feel the brightness of this day, of this life, of the countless blessings around me.

this has been the year that i claimed embodiment as my intention. with each passing day, i have felt myself come more deeply into wholeness. i am knowing who i am in a way more integrated and expansive. my birthday is on the winter solstice, half a year’s slowly shortening days from today. it is because of connections with my love and with friends like sas, that, i too, have learned to trust my intuition, to release the anxious and the inhibited.

and, because it is she that i will swim naked with when the sun takes it’s longest annual rest, today i will proclaim alongside her what will have transpired between now and then.

before the winter solstice i will have:

returned to a regular yoga practice.

begun earning an abundant income in exchange for offering my gifts to the world.

traveled somewhere i need to go.

completed the physical transformation toward embodying my most beautiful, radiant self.

shared my biggest dream.

continued with a daily practice of capturing what is most beautiful and connected.

prayed daily that i will know the path of action toward the greatest ease, grace, and abundance for myself and for my family.

cheers to the sun, my friends. to faith, to forgiveness, to what brings us together–our light.

once the realization is accepted that, even between the closest human beings, infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky.
~Rilke

happy anniversary, my love.

i am most comfortable in the true grit. in the silt and sulphur, warm and real and pungent. i am completely at ease with your blood and your tears.  i feel safe in the company of those with dirt under their fingernails and secrets on their tongues. i am sensitive, raw, layered, capable, and receptive.

having been on the receiving end of painful language yesterday, it has taken hours into days to move through the impact of being spoken to harshly and with the intent to hurt. we all wind up here, in the entanglement of our emotions and our cumulative pain. it is an inevitable result of our merging stories and our humanity. we are wired to protect and to defend. and still, it is the softness, the vulnerable between the sternum and the spine, that i long to connect with–our sweetness, our common, our understanding. this is what i will mine for, even through the discomfort of an experience of being wronged, accused, and violated.

i believe in inherent goodness. in best intentions and in truth and love. i believe in forgiveness and also in protection. i do not want to run from any situation that triggers discomfort. but i also know when it is time to step back, to be quiet, to feel, and reflect. under the blanket of fog and silence this morning, i am remembering who i am.

and who i am is as vast and as small as any other. as young and as old. as sensitive and as solid. i am permeable, layered, and weighted to this earth–doing the best i can to stay present, grounded, here. and to see you, really see you, as the same.

The purpose of this journey is to find the voice of the deeper wisdom, the one not connected to the rational voice that keeps throwing up the ‘ifs’.
~marion woodman

big milestones this month. a daughter now sixteen and driving. a son leaving elementary school and inches taller than i am already. there has been less time for introspection. prayers have been sung behind the wheel of my car, while shuttling from one celebration to another.

but still, i gather and collect. taste and feel the heat of each moment on my skin. so many vignettes and tableaus, fragments and glimpses of beauty. i’m not able to capture it all, but the old fear of missing it is lost. i know that i am in it and that it is impossible not to blink once in a while.

sometimes when i try to focus, my field of vision becomes this luminescent blur. all light and shapes, a fusion of the details into one lovely abstract. i like to think of those blended visuals as what it is to connect. when it becomes no longer milestones and moments, snapshots and captures, but rather the intangible oneness that is always there. patient, waiting, ours.

i look out (and in) with offering. with gratitude and a less insatiable hunger. i feel met and known. fed, in love, in time.

as the summertime calls, i want for nothing, will indulge in everything, and wish only the same for you.

photos: more and more instagram. follow me: @doorwaystraveler