A thousand paths has she traveled, each one promised joy -- promised peace.

I've found that expanding my 'having-ness' level is the key to seeing bigger and more beautiful results from both my magical and my practical workings.

Look forward on what is to come. Bless it all -- not with saccharine gratitude, but the kind of raw and holy blessing that honors the blood and guts and gore and heat and sex and hard work and giving up and giving in and the howl of loss and burning down and rising again.

I was choosing to be sad -- like, actively (though not necessarily consciously) choosing to be sad. Sadness is not my default setting so it took great effort to create and sustain this emotion.

Home is where the heart is but the heart was in shreds. The homeland was unrecognizable from the start.

Up there I can be a part of something other than myself. I can look up and my gaze can be reflected anywhere, and if I don't think too much, I can find the reflection of that gaze and follow it to where I need to be.

Spiderwebs of self-doubt and grief and neuroses, of you're not good enough, thin enough, pretty enough, you're misshapen, you're going to die young, you haven't done enough, you are selfish and messy and too intense and you don't do enough and you're always poor and why can't you take care of yourself better and you're almost middle-aged and you're lazy and you lack talent and nobody truly loves you and you're truly unlovable, and... and... and...

Pause. Listen to the rising and falling hymnals within your chest. Realize how level your breathing has become. Remember the days when it was quick, short, paralyzed. Let go and ride the natural ebb and flow of your breathing, and understand how much that communicates about you, your body and your evolution.

A fallen angel, some might say; that was my nickname, a play on angel, as a child.

I was in a relationship that I knew wasn't of the highest good for me. There was a nagging in the pit of my stomach that refused to leave me alone. The fear told me to stay. The fear told me that I was comfortable and that he loved me and I wouldn't do better. My heart was completely blocked. After months of battling these feelings and exploring what they meant through a daily meditation practice, I made the leap of faith and left. What happened after that calls for a while other article. Let's just say that my life took its true course, and I have never been happier or more expansive!

Today, my heart is going out to all of the people who are dreading this Saturday. Typically, Saturdays are highly anticipated. Typically, Saturday is the most celebrated day of the week. But this week that won’t be true for some. Why? Because it’s Singles Awareness, I mean Valentine’s Day. There are going to posts on Facebook boasting beautiful roses and other grand romantic gestures. There will be declarations of love and adoration. Kissing selfies will abound, I’m sure. And so will sadness, and disappointment, and unfulfilled longing from the people and hearts who are hoping for love, but have yet to find it. For those hearts, this won’t be a joyous day. It will be a day that intensifies all of the above emotions. It may even be a day of bitterness and biting comments about how stupid this day is. How it’s all about commercialization. How...

As I write this, I think to myself: I don't even know if you are looking for me. I just pray that you are searching for your missing piece, and that missing piece may be me. I don't know if life has put in front of you the things that I could never give to you. Who knows, you may have just lost sight of me too?

See, we can't outrun darkness; we can't hide our light. We're here: carbon, constellations, pools, caves. Trees, leaves, worms, grout. Rust, polish, stillness, waves. We're here for the whole ride. Not just the nice parts. So, I am strapping on my big girl boots and pulling up my big girl pants, and I am marching into the fray. I am walking the El Camino de Santiago this summer. I am heading to Kenya to meet the elephants, one way or another. I am drinking wine and watching the stars drop into the ocean. I am writing books and sending my words out into the world. It's not that I am not afraid. I am. It's just that I am unwilling to stay small in order to stay safe.

I get the story. In theory, I always did. But I understand it more now that I have experienced wanting someone else to have that last piece of cake. Sometimes I want them to have it. Occasionally. Maybe only rarely. But I have given up the last piece of cake. And I really like cake. I know there is sweetness in giving. In nourishing someone else. I get that.

And anyway, I'd like to think you'd understand me anyway. I'm only just trying to tell you that I love your voice. It's my own dream, after all. I've got no wish to be careful in love.

The fear will stay with you, child, but not forever. Because sometime after you've stepped into your third decade, you'll make a remarkable discovery. There's a piece of you, buried, that's part wolf. It is this wild part that will keep you free, so you mustn't worry so much.

With the clock inevitably ticking, I decided to live the most awesomely enriched life that I can create for myself. Why the heck not make the most of this incredible gift of life? I am here for a good time, not a long time.

I want the grit. I want the grime. I want you to splay your heart so wide open that it gets all over mine.

I have a conversation with nature all day. It helps to squander the monkey mind that lurks when I sit to compose anything.

While I'd been playing grown-up, that little girl had it out with my darkest fears.

I have stood on the edge of darkness, filled with bitterness and contempt. I believed that I had been dealt an unfair hand. I folded that hand. This felt more like a crumpling up, similar to a piece of paper being thrown in the trash, not even worthy of recycling.

Virtually everything I knew and thought and believed has been unearthed. But dirt is still dirt, whether it is in a pile or packed below the surface.

There is a huge difference between listening to the stream of life and leaning into the current versus trying to direct the stream itself.

Have you been yearning for a sister circle as much as I have? Then start one. That is what I am doing for 2015. If you happen to be in the Philadelphia area, my circle is forming now, so hop on board.

If my stomach had a personality, it would be verbally abused, black and blue, torn apart, and beat down. It would have absolutely no self-confidence because it was always told it wasn't good enough. For the past eight years, we have been in an abusive relationship.

We are literally a perpetual prayer. We're continually sending requests, in all sorts of directions, consciously, unconsciously, through verbal expressions, energies and vibrations. We ask. We receive. And in receiving, we see who we believe ourselves to be.

I wish you enough loneliness to learn that hanging out with yourself isn't such a bad thing, and enough companionship to give a daily reminder that you are never really alone.

We can choose to heal ourselves and those shadows we have disowned. Remember that we have all emotions, ways and moods, there is no separation. We are all a diverse whole. Every time I judge another, look down from up on high, all I really see down there is a part of me I left behind.

I realize the magnitude of what I have just experienced, and I start to cry. I wrap my arms around her and she lays her head on my shoulder.

I don’t want to stay young forever. I want this human life -- all of it. I want to experience the profound gift of a whole human lifespan, grey hairs and all.