a love song

I'm getting over being sick and haven't written in forever.  Not because I've been sick, but because every time I remember I have this blog, I'm conveniently stuffing my face with pistachios in the kitchen and I tell myself one day I will become really witty and insightful and have something awesome to say. Something cool.  Something that Meg from A Practical Wedding would say.  Something that would encourage me to put on my broken, sideways glasses (I really really need new ones).  But I'm just here, watching Dateline, with a sore throat and practicing breathing through my nose.

I'm not even sure why I have this blog because I'm a private person and don't really like technology.  I'm not even sure why people like blogs these days. I have one that I follow religiously (mentioned above, ahem) but that's it.  But these blogs where people just write about their lives and we're all supposed to jump on board? I don't know.  I'm not sure what that says about us.   Are we finding ways to connect and build community or are we really just desensitizing ourselves to real human contact and living in a false reality where you can make your identity whatever you want..You can be the person that you wish you were in the aisle at Whole Foods.  You know, when someone's walking by you on the trail and you both do that halfway-hello thing that sounds like a baby meerkat asking if dinner's ready yet.  Maybe?

I just watched a video someone posted on Facebook; it touched a nerve.  It talked about the distress and fear in my gut that I've been dealing with for so long.   The contradiction between things being so beautiful, so full, so intertwined in my soul, and things being so temporary, so fleeting, so foreign - so much so that I'm just a doll dropped into a dollhouse trying to figure out how to fend for herself.  To find the way out.  To get back home.

I'm realizing, through many storms and forests of panic and anxiety, that Home is actually in the impermanence.  In the uncertainty.  In the fragility.  Home is not escaping fragility; Home is inside of Fragility.  Home sits in the eye of vulnerability.  Where my fears rub against my insides, where my love softens my shoulders.  For so long I have been so petrified to be alive because it means one day I won't be.  Holding anything takes strength, owning anything takes responsibility.  My fear is not my enemy- it shows me where my boundaries are, where I feel safe, and more than anything, it shows me the gaping holes that desperately need to be filled with faith.  It shows me where I'm empty, where I need to connect.  It's a love song from the universe to me.  It gets loud when I don't listen, and when I do,  it gets so quiet- so much so that I am drawn closer and closer until we are one again.

Fall, Flooding & Fear

This year so far has probably been the most soul-changing year I've ever had.

I am happy to be sitting here in September, the month I met my fiance three years ago.

I am happy to be wide-eyed, conscious and to be on this journey of nurturing the relationship between the internal mother in me and my inner child.

 I am learning to hold the reigns of my own life.  I am learning that I do deserve love, and that there is no need to be afraid of my sadness, my grief.

I love this month.  I can start to feel the energy shift in the earth at night, the hint of fall in the breeze, the refreshing hollowness of winter air is just starting to trickle into the saturated summer air.  Things will soon get so bare (as bare as they get in Los Angeles) until there is nothing left but stark, quiet space.  Space for the joy of the holidays, space for shedding of limiting fears and false beliefs, space for stretching, space for growth, space for connection, space for hibernation.  Space for hope.  At the beginning of each season there is a certain hope that I love so much.  The possibilities.  The fresh eyes meeting old traditions.

We picked the perfect place to get married.  A place that is under water right now, at the mercy of rushing floods.  Destruction and rebirth, chaos and cleansing - however you choose to look at it.  But the place we chose is just as sturdy as it is vulnerable; just as grounded as it is fluid; just as ancient and sacred as it is young, new, and vibrant - like the marriage it will give birth to in nine months.

I can't wait for daylight to get shorter this fall.  I can't wait for the quiet peace of winter.

I was told by a dear friend that when a strand of a spiderweb is broken, it actually strengthens the structure of the web instead of weakening it.  Life is fragile, floods are scary, loss is heartbreaking, but the web only gets stronger.  Many thoughts and prayers for Colorado, and for anyone suffering for that matter.