Lay it all out. Scream till your voice threatens to leave, and then wail some more. Let it loose; primal and raw and messy. Cry all the tears you’ve sealed deep inside.

accept your catalogue of regret, gather close your imperfect history, this life can be violent, crucible grace doesn’t always look pretty, grief is a complicated ghost and we are all in some way haunted.

Become solid with the ways and hows and whys of your existence in this world. Learn how you breathe and eat and sleep and dream when you are not intermingled with another...Take the time first to learn where your edges and center live. To learn the blessings of your solitary heart. To learn your solid ground.

Can we do this? Can we find in this love a gossamer thread of redemption to coax into a late night tangle of limbs and lazy Sunday mornings? Will you follow me into the interplay of light and shadow?

If we were born with the collective wisdom of the cosmos implanted in our being, our task is only this: to live and seek and love until we’ve removed barriers that unlock it all.

I’m not nearly as strong as you. I can’t leave.

Not a factory, no mass production. No hard metal conveyor belt or soulless assembly line. It feels good to give. But it feels especially good to give like this...

Not a factory, no mass production. No hard metal conveyor belt or soulless assembly line. These were made at a kitchen table while sticky fingered littles play underfoot.

This is where reality lives. In the epicenter of the paradox. Right at the meeting point of love and loss and life and leaving and beginnings and grief and joy.

You are fully ready now. Embrace the disorderly conductivity that flows like lifeblood through the heart and root and white hot heat of you.

and words are tripping out of me spilling out of me pouring out of me like they have been too long on lockdown

Loving yourself first is the path to wholeness. And from wholeness, we can open to loving others in fullness – even those who are not ours to have.

Refuse to remain stagnant. Stop accepting the status quo. Do not let society dictate how you feel or live or love. Not one more day of allowing your past or your family or your community to choose your life for you.

I crave a depth uncommon, I crave a meaning deeper than surface...

With the removal of all that does not serve, there is space cleared to call home what is already yours.

Come outside with me now, under this curtain of stars. Lift your daydream face to the moon, love. See it mirror your own dark craters back to you, brilliant and beautiful. Feel the truth of it on your translucent skin.

I cannot heal you. I cannot fix this. But I can help you gather the scattered and broken parts and hold them to the light. I want you to catch a glimpse of what I see, a kaleidoscope configuration composed of color and geometry and all of your broken pieces arranged in imperfectly perfect symmetry. You are broken. You are whole. You are beautiful. I honor you.

You are afraid. Yes, baby, of course you are afraid. This is so much bigger than you. Your heart is pounding with the magnitude of this space you are in. There is so much risk. So much potential for it all to fall away; breath by imperceptible breath or in one fell swoop that knocks your entire life into oblivion. Who wouldn’t be afraid? This is one of those pivotal moments, isn’t it? One of those make or break points? So much hangs in the balance and everyone is looking to you for that all-important answer. And you are terrified. Dear god, you are fucking terrified. I am too. We all are. We have all got dragons to slay. Every last one of us.When we feel the heat of fiery breath we either want to suit up and do battle or tuck our tail between our legs and run for the hills. Those are the natural responses. Ones that make sense based on a lifetime of conditioning. That is...

A firmly whispered No, beginning in your heart and moving through your body until it finally bursts forth, can be an inspiring declaration of truth.

I want no timeline, no agenda, no company. I am free to watch and absorb. To talk only when I want to. To turn cartwheels in the street, or laugh out loud, to make love to a delicious stranger, to let the delight of random things roll through my body and take me over for no other reason than that they delight me.

I know nothing. This is the lesson of my fourth decade. The absolute lack of certainty. The unlearning of truths. The releasing of dogma.

You’ll be full with your own fierce reality. Unapologetically, divinely you.

You don’t need a wedding or a baby or a new job. You are reason enough. You are always reason enough. Make today the anniversary of your arrival. Rent the ballroom. Open the bar. And whatever you do, don’t forget the piñata.

Take a breath. Now let it out. Release old scripts. Say goodbye to characters who have served their purpose. Reject plots that keep you playing small.

“All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.”

“I wish I knew if I’m doing the right thing…”

I long resisted the mysterious otherness of this practice. Yoga belonged to people who were not like me, who were more than me. I negated my ability to release that fully into anything, not just bending and twisting into pretzelesque shapes, but giving myself over to something so far beyond physical.

You ache because you cannot take it all in, and you ache because you cannot possibly make it all better.

Oh love, there are so many things I do not know. So many I will never know. A handful that require giant blinders, protecting me from what I’m not yet willing to know. The list of things of which I am dead certain is far shorter. But of the few tender truths on which I would stake my existence, this is one that I know to be solid and real.

Blessed be your slaughtered dreams and your cynical projection.Blessed be your secret shame. Blessed be your whispered confession. Blessed be your primal roar.

Happy does not have enough substance or grit to encompass all that I have torn down and the existence I built from the rubble... Happy is no longer enough to contain the totality of this life that you have claimed.