today, after a bath, in the last sunshine.

joining my friends for august break. grateful to susannah for the communities she so lovingly creates. for the month of august, i will be posting daily photos. sometimes there will be words, but not always. most will probably be taken with my iphone.

as this new month begins, i am in a defining moment in my life. a lot is being asked of me. i feel porous and depleted, ravenous and resourceful, curious and careful.

someday, i think i’ll look back and appreciate the honest diary that a month of mindful photos will capture. i hope so.

thanks, sus.

betty. gulu, uganda. april 2010.

it is a constant practice of re-frame. focus. shift.

i pull the inverse, from fear to bravery, and back again. fast as the shutter on my camera.

so bravery feels like this? like swallowing gulps of air and folding inward while moving forward?

the voices in my head are pretty damn loud. the softness of my flesh still holding the things too heavy to confront.

loving in that kind of way that is electric and disrupts rhythm.

i am a thousand times alive. writing in metaphors, but living 100% real.

(my new site is coming very soon. like next week soon! i think i just may have written the last you'll see in this old space. i've lived in a lot of homes in my life and, i assure you, that this new online home suits me like none other has before.  can't wait to share it with you.)

dancer, bali, indonesia. august 2008.

it is monday again, late on this summer solstice, wherein i am sitting in the dark lit only by my laptop screen. my heart is a little racy, maybe from the crazy boot camp exercise class i went to this evening, or maybe because i am humming along with the shift of seasons. everything feels alive, exquisite, wholly perceptible. i am following my experience with curiosity. with tenderness. with faith, forgiveness, and reminders.

new truths emerge with each day. they sit in the tension of my shoulders, in the curve of my back, tie knots in my belly, and eventually make their way to my heart. i am holding them there. allowing for the inevitable release and integration that follows.

many years ago, before marriage and children, i spent a summer in alaska working at a camp for young adults with physical and mental disabilities. between sessions, in the late evenings, which were as clear and bright as daytime, the other staff and i would often jump in the lake and swim. i remember doing so on the summer solstice, all twenty years of me alive and free with anything and everything ahead. today, my solstice meditation is on that memory. one of found friends and fellow dreamers, naked and willing, back floating under a midnight sun with rays willing to shine right through into the next day.

happy solstice, everyone. breathe it in.

and please visit my gloriously gutsy friend jo's monday me post . she is everything real.

i am finding this monday me assignment more and more challenging each week. especially the self-portrait part. today i find it nearly impossible. i am faced with telling the truth of a consuming, human wound that i really don't entirely understand the underneath to, only the experience of. the feelings. the thoughts. and they are this:

physically, i am having a heartbreaking experience with my own reflection. with the package, the container, the face staring back at me. it is as if a lifetime of smaller experiences are compounding into one massive fiery pot begging to tended to, boiled, simmered, and evaporated. it is painful. i am not happy with what i see. what i see looks inflated, droopy, pallid, thick. more so than ever in my life. i want to feel free from this zipper suit, this puffed up sand-bagged
balloon feeling that weights me to this earth. i catch myself setting
deadlines, events or travel plans in upcoming months where i imagine
that i will have transformed by.  future times that i can completely enjoy because
i will be free of this burden. i will have magically unzipped the outer
layers and stepped out as an agile lithe lightbeing.

but i know better. this body is a guide. a teacher. and i've yet to receive all that i can from it.  i think this darkness, this heaviness, literally and metaphorically,
is grief. lifetimes old grief. sadness for having gone through this in so many incarnations. of having spent so much of this life feeling like i was a layer
or two away from truly living. as an other. outside. turning the gaze
outward because taking in my own physical reflection was way too much to process.
and the past moments that i have lived in a body that felt like an accurate
reflection of my true essence were brief, because i feared what it
would mean to fully manifest my most expressed self.

i am surrounded by visions and examples of the lightness of being. open, courageous, feminine soul mates who look into my eyes and tell me how much beauty they see. new ones and old ones. i have always been profoundly blessed this way. and the amazing thing is that i believe them when they say these things. i gaze back and well with tears and some lifetimes-old part of me agrees and owns the power and the radiance that i am told that i posses.

i am practicing staying present. making choices that reflect love and not punishment. recognizing and connecting with healers who will play a role in the transformation that is coming. and i am letting the sadness be. letting go the attachment to future, to later, to "when". there is forgiveness involved. and a heart-opening like i've never felt before.

the weight is a doorway to freedom. it has returned, despite any obvious "cause," to turn my attention toward the opportunity to make peace. and this is me knocking. with two fists.