Day 209.

Celebrating: new connections, reconnections, deepening connections.
Practicing: asking for help, letting it in, letting folks struggle while giving me what I asked for.
Thinking: about slowing down, accepting the flow, and how to effectively process sorrow
Feeling: hopeful, opened up wide, terrified but plunging anyway
Listening to: Bebe, Pafuera Telaran`as
Smelling: garlic on my fingers
Wanting: to deepen my somatics practice and eventually be a practitioner who facilitates healing for others
Realizing: that we are not our struggles or our traumas
Remembering: that I am a glorious, unique, beautiful, intelligent being
Loving: being alive.

Day 208.

Writer's block.

Day 207.

Day 206.

Accessing joy.

Day 205.

Day 204.

Extremely, intensely, unbelievably lovable.

Day 203.

Day 202.

Day 201.

Loving my aging neck in this one. Seriously. How beautiful our skin can be as it changes. What a lovely reminder of our transience, our temporariness.

Day 200.

Today is the third day of two weeks of non-violent direct action taking place at the White House, protesting the approval of TransCanada's Keystone XL Pipeline, a 2000 mile long pipeline that would start in the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, extend through six states in the US, and end in the Gulf of Mexico. I've seen estimated costs of $7 - 13 billion. TransCanada claims that it would create tens of thousands of jobs. All to pump some oil that has been extracted through an extremely dirty and carbon-intensive process (using fossil fuels to extract more fossil fuels! brilliant!), out of indigenous lands, through the middle of more indigenous lands, (hey, did anybody think about consulting the indigenous folks whose sacred lands we're fucking up? just a quick thought), going through an aquifer that hydrates 30% of the US's farmlands, risking spills, death, health hazards, and crop catastrophe, just to wind up in Texas and fuel some more SUVs.

Day 199.

What is home?

I think I know what it feels like to be seen. I've felt it in instants, in bursts. I've felt it for longer, but just as I've gotten comfortable and I've started to expect it to be around, to be sustainable, it floats away or falls out from beneath me.

I want to stand firm, facing the wind. I want to know that pain happens because it must, because that is its role in everything. I want to know that joy happens because it must, because I need it to, because it is irreplaceable. I want each component of the universe to know that it exists and it does what it does because it is the only thing/emotion/sensation/human/mineral/song/whatever that can fulfill that role. I want to know this about myself: that I am the only me who can be me. I want to feel it coursing through me, making my heart beat faster and my feet move more gracefully.

This is all over the place. But it is perfect. Because here I am, just doing what I am.

Day 198.

In a hurry.

Day 197.

Dignity.

Day 196.

Greazy.

Day 195.

Echo Chamber

Build a home, and open the windows
But don't let the windows turn into doors
Unless you plan on walking out

Build a home, and leave the lights on
While you build another home
And leave the first one to itself, well-lit, yet unknowing

Build a life, and watch it grow
But hide from it when things get loud
Create another, silent life

Build a life, another life
In which everyone shares the same story
And no one else's voice is heard

Build a world, a world in which
You claim everyone's voice and needs matter
Except the ones of people you have left behind.

Or.

Build a world, a world in which
Your comrades aren't afraid to ask you
Who you are leaving behind

Build the world you said you wanted
Not the one that is convenient now
Build a world for everyone

Leave no one behind.

Day 194.

Today's menu:

A Mahfro, with tired eyes
and a side of neck rolls.

Day 193.

Such intense sadness, rage, frustration, fear. The worst of my life. Until I die, I can and will survive anything . . . I've done it for this long. But this pain, this pain. This immense pain, this feeling of having been wronged, and having a false story floating around out there and no chance to defend myself, and having people who told me they loved me and were my friends not even acknowledge this. The biggest hurt I've ever known. How will I ever open up in this way again?

Day 192.

I officiated a wedding yesterday, then partied all night. I am freakin' tuckered. Gotta head out again soon . . .

Day 191.

Not so bright eyed and somewhat bushy tailed.

Day 190.

Sometimes you just can't look cute!

Day 189.

It's amazing how you get what you ask for.

My personal commitment, that came out of my four day somatics intensive a couple of weeks ago, is to cultivate relationships based on mutual care, consideration, and intimacy. Not long after the intensive, my relationship completely disintegrated in what seemed like the blink of an eye, and without any involvement on my end in the process that led to the actual break-up. I am experiencing a lot of thoughts and emotions around this. Mostly a deep sadness around how little my ex-partner shared with me about what he was going through. This is not to demonize him or to make him into the bad guy, but rather just to say that it broke my heart that he had a process that did not involve me at all. Apparently, that is what he needed. People hurt others in their process of saving themselves all the time.

Day 188.

Everything is excruciating.

Day 187.

Breathing.

Day 186.

Two hours of sleep and a day full of friends old and new and I'm trying hella hard to look awake. I'm learning some things. But the biggest thing seems to be that people are in dire need of healing. Deep, real healing, that comes from a place of opening up bravely and profoundly and asking for help, for support, for friendship, and for love. I see so clearly so much of what stands in the way of that - what stands in the way of us believing that we deserve it. How the systems that dictate how we live beat out of us any belief that we deserve all that we have ever dreamed of. How so many of us are taught that we have no right to ask for or expect real intimacy, real support, and real community.

Day 185.

Day 184.

I tried taking and re-taking this picture a bunch of times. I couldn't get myself to come out looking cute. Just couldn't do it. So I look like this right now.

Day 183.

First ever: drunk blog.

Day 182.

Day 181.

I guess I never thought about all the different types of things I could be chronicling on this journey. Some things felt like they would be consistent, solid. Changing, yes, but not completely pulled out from under my feet. And that kind of instability, documented, day-by-day, online? I don't know if it's brave or stupid. But here I am, in my temporary bedroom, looking pretty much how I feel: a hot ass mess.

I have to get it together . . . I got things to do. Feel free to send a little love my way, though. That might help.

Day 180.

This is me on:

three hours of sleep,
extreme heartbreak, and
my friend's recliner in my new home-for-now.

Day 179.

Today: At Grand Lake Coffee House with Jewels, who is making me laugh hella hard. And.

Haiku:

Long been on the brink
Peering over precipice
Diving into change