it happens every time.

i love the adventure and i am always challenged by the leaving. the comfort of my people. their love, their voices, their touch. they are my home.

and so here i am. at the airport. leaving for mexico in just three hours. i am filled with poignancy, the vulnerability of living. i’m already in that transition zone–the anticipating coming to meet the experience. there is always fear before departure. the release and the letting go. and there is always buoyancy, too. the messages of belief and the offerings of confidence and faith. i sit here, glass of wine in hand, part of me longing for the warm bodies of home, knowing that this is what it is to truly be awake: to be somewhere between longing and calling. to be rooted and also free. to be loved and to be let go. to trust, to allow, to strategize, and to surrender.

with 23 hours to go, 55 people have backed this leg of the doorways project. the lenses are clean, the notepad is ready. i’m shedding layers of what-if’s and writing to you from the continental airport lounge. i just want to do my part. to give what i’ve got to give.

it’s been a big year for me and my people. we’ve learned what it is to experience separation and to find one another again more deeply in love and rooted than ever before. it is hard to leave them, if only for a little less than two weeks. the truth is that i’ve got a family that rocks my world and a world that rocks my heart.

there is room and time for both. and one would not exist without the other. it is in the fully living, the chest open, that freedom expands. the doorways are everywhere, even in the leaving.

next post will be from san miguel de allende…

photo: when we went blueberry picking. i love the muted, not quite in focus, forms. i love them. july 2011.

i used to believe that connections, relationships, were in some way a means to an end. not in a gratuitous using kind of way, but more the how to the why. i presumed that we connect to lead to some understanding. to take us somewhere. to show us something. i would question why certain people showed up in my life. why they were showing up. how i wound up in their company. for what purpose. i would wonder what my contribution was or should be. i asked, constantly, what it all meant.

that has changed.

what if, instead, these friendships, connections, ARE the destination? what if our relationships with one another are what it all comes down to? presence, eye-contact, and, once again, seeing and being seen. what if our whole purpose is to experience one another? and our “work in the world” is the means to THAT end. our connections are the doorways to our freedom.

mind blowing. crazy simple. and such a relief.

i love nothing more than sitting with another human being (or many), and witnessing passion, fear, love, and angst. i love grit. i love honesty. i love humor and vulnerability, sarcasm and grace. this is what i thrive on. and i know this is why i have the abundance of profound and diverse people in my life that i do. whether i am here to photograph, to write, to teach, or just to share my experience of what it is to really connect, i’m realizing is not the point.

the point is you, and I, meeting.

photo: silhouettes on the beach. may 2011.

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)

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.