What do we share when we stop hiding ourselves away? This is, of course, the internet, social media, the shame over guilt culture of appearance and perfection, and in these realms we skirt the truth, muddy it up, maybe forgo it all together. What happens when we decide, I'm going to share it? We're free.…
Spirit
Widening Rings
When you first start feeling less afraid, you want someone to pinch you. Is this real? And do I deserve it? After the exhaustive stretch of hyper-vigilance and over the shoulder gazing, of expecting lurking danger at every turn, the realm of trust and serene neutrality can feel like a trick. Sleight of hand only,…
the story and The Story
Long before I set out on a spiritual path of recovery, I felt some sort of kinship with some great beyond. Even as a child who had little interest in Sunday school and no discernible relationship with God in a religious sense, I prayed all the time. I prayed out loud before I went to bed…
The Through Line
"The stable solution is the individual who tells the truth." Like any relatively young person stumbling along and thirsting to learn, there is plenty that I don't know and understand. Because I tend to write so personally and from direct experience, much of what I state on here vacillates and changes. As I have grown up…
Savor It All
"Savoring" is trending right now as part of mindfulness work, meaning that if we can spend just a few more seconds each day really taking in and delighting in that which is pleasant - the sun on our face, laughing with a friend, a delicious meal - we are increasing our ability to feel joy and…
The Highest Value
I've been thinking quite a bit about values lately and what matters most to me deep in my guts. What am I on this earth for? What is actually important? How meaningful are the things that sometimes seem worthwhile but that tend to cause suffering? Some people put values into the context of, what do we worship?…
Rebel With a Cause
My first rebellion was at fourteen, and it was all about sneaking out and getting transformationally high. I wasn't trying so much to be a bad girl (no weird piercings and black lipstick for me, and barely even a fuck you to my folks) as I was trying to connect and feel at one with the…
Squeaky Clean
I can remember the first time I felt truly clean, and I think I went off and wrote a poem about waterfalls and the color blue. Nerd. I was trying my best to express what it meant, that feeling of a freshly scrubbed inner space. Like linens washed in lavender water, or what I imagine a…
To Thine Own Self, Be True AF
My guess is that if Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be all about not giving a fuck what others thought. (You know, in the healthy, anti-codependent, non-sociopathic way.) Let me declare, just to gain even more credibility here, that I used to be sort of obsessed with astrology. Give me a break, I was fifteen. And though I…
Little Children
How often I feel like a confused child, looking skyward for guidance, desperately wanting to be told, "this is why things are the way that they are. This is what you must do." There is no such explicit guidance, except maybe in a god or higher power, but even from that we are never really…
A Full Life 